Italian Paintings of The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

National Gallery of Art
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS

Italian Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Paintings
Italian Thirteenth and Fourteenth

Century Paintings
Published March 21, 2016
Generated March 21, 2016
To cite: Mikls Boskovits (19352011), Jason Di Resta, Italian Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Paintings, NGA Online
Editions, http://purl.org/nga/collection/catalogue/italian-paintings-of-the-thirteenth-and-fourteenth-centuries/2016-03-21
(accessed March 21, 2016).

National Gallery of Art, Washington

CONTENTS
01 History of the Collection
08 Notes to the Reader
14 Credits and Acknowledgments
18 In Memoriam: Mikls Boskovits
27 Andrea di Bartolo
30 Christ on the Cross [reverse]
42 Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple
60 Madonna of Humility, The Blessing Christ, Two Angels, and a Donor [obverse]
72 The Nativity of the Virgin
90 The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple
108 Bulgarini, Bartolomeo
113 Saint Catherine of Alexandria
135 Byzantine 13th Century
136 Enthroned Madonna and Child
148 Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne
175 Daddi, Bernardo
180 The Crucifixion
193 Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels
205 Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers
225 Jacopo di Cione
229 Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels
251 Duccio di Buoninsegna
257 The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew
294 The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel
Contents

309 Fei, Paolo di Giovanni
313 The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation
328 The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple
346 Gaddi, Agnolo
350 The Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels
365 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing Christ [middle panel]
388 Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire
triptych]
412 Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the Archangel Gabriel [left panel]
435 Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel]
458 Giotto
462 Madonna and Child
501 Baronzio, Giovanni
505 The Baptism of Christ
530 The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist
555 Madonna and Child with Five Angels
580 Grifo di Tancredi
583 Christ Blessing
606 Saint James Major
629 Saint Peter
652 Lippo Memmi
656 Madonna and Child with Donor
671 Saint John the Baptist
699 Lorenzetti, Pietro
703 Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with
Angels [entire triptych]
Contents

720 Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel]
737 Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right panel]
754 Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel]
771 Lorenzo Monaco
776 Madonna and Child
788 Margaritone d'Arezzo
792 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints
811 Martino di Bartolomeo
815 Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony Abbot [right panel]
827 Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Peter, James Major, Anthony Abbott, and a Deacon
Saint [entire triptych]
839 Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel]
852 Saint Peter, with Saint James Major [left panel]
864 Master of Citt di Castello
868 Maesta (Madonna and Child with Four Angels)
892 Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes
896 The Mourning Madonna
915 The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist
934 Master of Saint Francis
938 Saint James Minor
963 Saint John the Evangelist
988 Master of the Washington Coronation
991 The Coronation of the Virgin
1016 Nardo di Cione
1020 Madonna and Child, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man of Sorrows [entire triptych]
Contents

1038 Madonna and Child, with the Man of Sorrows [middle panel]
1056 Saint John the Evangelist [right panel]
1074 Saint Peter [left panel]
1092 Paolo Veneziano
1096 The Crucifixion
1115 Puccio di Simone
1120 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle panel]
1144 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels, and Saints Anthony Abbot and Venantius [entire
triptych]
1168 Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel]
1192 Saint Venantius [right panel]
1216 Allegretto Nuzi
1220 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle panel]
1244 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels, and Saints Anthony Abbot and Venantius [entire
triptych]
1268 Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel]
1292 Saint Venantius [right panel]
1316 Simone Martini
1321 The Angel of the Annunciation
1340 Saint James Major
1366 Saint Judas Thaddeus
1392 Saint Matthew
1418 Saint Simon
1444 Tuscan 13th Century
1445 Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Saint Peter, and Two Angels
1460 Vanni, Andrea di
Contents

1465 Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Agony in the Garden [left panel]
1482 Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and the Descent into Limbo
[entire triptych]
1499 Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Crucifixion [middle panel]
1516 Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Descent into Limbo [right panel]
1533 Concordance of Old-New Attributions
1535 Concordance of Old-New Titles and Dates
1539 Concordance of Old-New Artist Names and Life Dates
1541 Bibliography
Contents
national gallery of art online editions

Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
History of the Collection
The National Gallery of Arts collection of Italian paintings is considered the most
important in America and among the finest and most comprehensive in the world.
To provide the most authoritative scholarship on the earliest paintings in the
collection, the Gallery turned to one of the leading historians of early Italian art,
Mikls Boskovits. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
is a fitting memorial to Mikls, who did not live to see the project to completion.
Mikls shared responsibility for the previous volume, on the Gallerys fifteenth-
century Italian paintings, with David Alan Brown, curator of Italian painting at
the Gallery, and others. Here he is the sole author of the catalog entries, while
Laurence Kanter, chief curator for the Yale University Art Gallery, wrote the
introduction.
Due to the Italian collections size, scope, and quality, the decision was made
early on to divide the catalog into four volumes, corresponding to the standard art
historical designations of medieval, early Renaissance, high and late Renaissance,
and baroque and rococo. The first of these, published in 1996, deals with the later
Italian pictures, those dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
previous volume took up the fifteenth century. The present volume treats the
medieval works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The Italian panels discussed in this catalog are not nearly so numerous as those
dating from the fifteenth century, and, though well known to specialists, are
perhaps less familiar to the art-loving public than are the Gallerys holdings of
works by Leonardo, Botticelli, Raphael, or Titian. All the same, this part of the
collection holds works by artists who were some of the most important Italian
painters in all of art historyGiotto and Duccio, for example, and in the case
of the great Sienese master, the National Gallery of Art is the only institution in
the United States to own not one but two panels from Duccios monumental
masterpiece, the Maest. In addition, many of the Gallerys Italian paintings from
the late medieval or Gothic period are highly important, culturally speaking, and
all of them possess manifold aesthetic attractions of their own. Displayed on the
main floor of the West Building, they occupy two galleries and share a third with
History of the Collection 1


fifteenth-century works, while a large Duccesque altarpiece, because of its size, is

kept more or less permanently in storage. The online edition of this catalog also
includes a recent acquisition, Andrea di Vannis triptych, one of many new works
acquired by the Gallery from the Clark collection at the Corcoran Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC. (This picture was acquired after Mikls Boskovitss death.)
Many of the paintings cataloged in this volume are small works painted for private
devotion; others are fragments from multipaneled altarpieces. In many cases,
the larger central panel of a dismantled polyptych has remained in Italy, while
the other surviving elements are scattered in museums throughout Europe and
America. An effort has been made, therefore, to suggest the original context for
these works through schematic reconstructions, with photographs of the other
panels making up the complex in question. Such reconstructions will help users
of the catalog understand the panels original purpose and meaning. At the
same time, these irregularly shaped fragments were often put into rectangular
frames as if to suggest that they were small easel paintings. The Gallerys formal,
balanced hanging system has not altered this approach, though in some cases
new frames approximating period frames have been substituted.
Many of these panels were also cut down, shaved in the back, and cradled to
prevent movement, with the unfortunate result that much technical evidence
about them has been lost. That said, careful examination in the Gallerys
Conservation Laboratory has produced a considerable amount of new technical
information, such as the fact that Andrea di Bartolos double-sided Madonna
of Humility (cat. 1, 1939.1.20.a, b) was in all likelihood a reliquary, x-radiography
having revealed roundels for holding relics beside the gable.
The present catalog is the first to offer a candid, thorough assessment of the
condition of the Gallerys earliest Italian paintings. The staff of the Gallerys
painting conservation and scientific research laboratories carried out systematic
examinations and documented the results in formal technical reports. Professor
Boskovits then used these reports as the basis for his remarks in the technical
summaries that precede each entry. The technical summaries are therefore
an integral part of the entries; they aim to inform the reader about the state of
preservation of each painting, which affects any effort to determine its attribution
or date.


Nearly all of the Gallerys earliest Italian paintings belonged to two collectors
whose holdings complemented each other. Andrew Mellon (18551937), the
Pittsburgh industrialist and financier who served as US Treasury Secretary,
founded the Gallery in 1937 to rival the great national art collections in Europe.
Not an adventurous collector, Mellon had conservative taste, running to Dutch
and English portraits and landscapes. But the national gallery he envisaged for
Washington had to have early Italian paintings to be representative, so in addition
to masterpieces like Botticellis Adoration of the Magi (1937.1.22) and Raphaels
Alba Madonna (1937.1.24), Mellon sought out earlier Italian pictures by equally
renowned masters. Clearly, he was thinking of how the museum experience
should begin: the Gallerys first accessioned painting is the rare Byzantine
Madonna owned by Mellon (cat. 7). The earliest painting in his collection, the
Mellon Madonna, as it came to be called, demonstrates the eastern influence
that informed many of the Italian painters who followed. Another painting, Saint
Peter, Christ Blessing, and Saint James Major (cat. 21, 1937.1.2.ac), was then
believed to be by Cimabue, a major precursor of the Renaissance profiled in
Giorgio Vasaris Lives. The three panels, grouped as a triptych, had been in the
famous collection of Italian primitives in Paris owned by Alexis-Franois Artaud
de Montor (17721849). In this catalog, Boskovits has reattributed the panel to a
contemporary of Cimabues named Grifo di Tancredi. In the case of another work,
The Nativity (cat. 11, 1937.1.8), the great name borne by the painting has stood
the test of time. The Nativity scene, accompanied by lateral panels depicting the
prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, belonged to one of the most famous Italian paintings
of the Middle Agesthe mammoth, double-sided Maest altarpiece, which
Duccio di Buoninsegna painted for Siena Cathedral in 13081311.
The Nativity came from the front side of the predella, or base, of the Maest,
while the other Duccio panel in the Gallerys collection, Christ Calling the
Apostles Peter and Andrew (cat. 12, 1939.1.141), was detached from the back of
the polyptych. This second predella panel was donated, with the majority of the
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian pictures, by the American dime-store
magnate Samuel H. Kress (18631956). Kress also sought out masterpieces
by great names, like the Duccio or Giottos fine Madonna and Child (cat. 17,
1939.1.256), which is displayed in the same gallery. But, unlike Mellon, Kress
seems to have been genuinely fond of Italian paintings and acquired them
systematically. He aimed to build the largest and most comprehensive series
of these works in private hands.[1] Kress originally intended to form his own


museum, but he was persuaded to join his holdings with those of Mellon in the
newly established National Gallery of Art. By 1941, when the Gallery was opened
to the public, Kresss donation consisted of 375 Italian paintings, and the Kress
Foundation later added many others. Kresss decision to bring his collection to
Washington led to an extensive revision of his holdings over a period of years,
culling its numbers to focus on the major masters. In the 1950s it was divided up,
with the most important examples being purchased for or retained by the Gallery,
and others, including some that formed part of the original donation, dispersed to
smaller American museums.[2]
Samuel Kresss lifelong devotion to Italianparticularly early Italianart may be

seen best, perhaps, in his seventeen-room duplex apartment located at 1020 Fifth
Avenue across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Kress displayed
his collection in pseudo-Renaissance interiors, where, in a setting of period
furniture and decorative arts, marble and tile floors, carved chests and tables,
and lead-glass windows, they were meant to evoke the world from which they
came. Photographs of the Kress apartment, dating to the 1930s, feature Duccios
predella panels, Giottos Madonna and Child, and Agnolo Gaddis Coronation of
the Virgin next to a staircase, as well as the marvelously preserved little Nardo di
Cione triptych hanging over a bed.
This catalog follows upon and effectively supersedes the pertinent entries in
Fern Rusk Shapleys Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, published in 1979.[3] The
Gallerys early Italian paintings have long been a focus of scholars attention, but
while the present catalog assiduously records these views, whether in agreement
or contradiction, in every case it also offers a fresh examination of the works.
Similarly, the bibliography provided for each painting includes virtually every
significant citation. The history of ownership is also given in greater detail than
heretofore, thanks in part to information available from the Getty Provenance
Index and to archival research. All exhibitions in which a work appeared are
included, because of the increasing importance of exhibitions for art historical
investigation.


The donation of these thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian paintings to the

Gallery on the part of Mellon, Kress, and others took them out of the private realm
and made them accessible to a wide public, who we hope will find this catalog
interesting and useful.
David Alan Brown
July 2014
NOTES
[1] On the formation of the Kress Collection, see Marilyn Perry, The Kress
Collection, in A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the
Samuel H. Kress Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, 1994), 1235;
and Colin Eisler, Gold-Ground Art and the Cold War: Solving the Great Kress
Mystery, Partisan Review 49, no. 1 (2002): 6774.
[2] This process of improving the selection at the Gallery and at the same time
bringing Italian art to smaller museums may be seen in the successive catalogs
of the Kress holdings in Washington. See: National Gallery of Art, Preliminary
Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941); National Gallery of
Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel
H. Kress Foundation, 19451951 (Washington, DC, 1951); National Gallery of Art,
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H.
Kress Foundation, 19511956 (Washington, DC, 1956); National Gallery of Art,
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (Washington, DC,
1959).
[3] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC,
1979).


COMPARATIVE IMAGES
The Carpaccio Bedroom in the Samuel Kress apartment The Venetian Sitting Room in the Samuel Kress
at 1020 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1938/1939, with paintings apartment at 1020 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1938/1939,
now in the National Gallery of Art. The Gallerys Nardo di with paintings now in the National Gallery of Art.
Cione triptych (cat.35, 1939.1.261.ac) hangs over the bed. The Gallerys Madonna and Child by Giotto (cat.17,
Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art 1939.1.256) hangs on the wall at right. Department
Library, Washington, DC of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library,
Washington, DC


The Venetian Sitting Room in the Samuel Kress The Entrance Hall in the Samuel Kress apartment
apartment at 1020 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1938/1939, at 1020 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1938/1939, with
with paintings now in the National Gallery of Art. paintings now in the National Gallery of Art. The
Duccios The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels by Agnolo
(cat.12, 1939.1.141) is at lower left. Department of Image Gaddi (cat.16, 1939.1.203) hangs at left.
Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC
To cite: David Alan Brown, History of the Collection, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,
NGA Online Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/italian-
paintings-of-the-thirteenth-and-fourteenth-centuries.html


Notes to the Reader
The paintings cataloged here are arranged alphabetically by artist. For each artist,
there is a short biography with bibliography, followed by individual entries on
paintings. Each entry begins with the National Gallery of Arts unique accession
number, the title of the work, execution date, medium, dimensions, credit line,
and a transcription of signatures and/or inscriptions. This heading is followed by
a technical summary, provenance, exhibition history, scholarly entry, notes, and
bibliography.
The following conventions are used for dates:
1250 Executed in 1250
c. 1250 Executed sometime around 1250
12501265 Begun in 1250, finished in 1265
1250/1265 Executed sometime between 1250 and 1265
c. 1250/1265 Executed sometime around the period 12501265
Dimensions are given in centimeters, height preceding width preceding, for

certain dimensions, depth, followed by dimensions in inches within parentheses.
For all paintings at least two dimensions are given, first that of only the painted
surface, and then that of the overall support. Sometimes depth dimensions
for paintings on panel are also given; these are at times approximate, when a
cradle prevents a precise measurement. Parenthetical phrases provide precise
descriptions of additional measurements taken. Framed dimensions are also
included when frames are integral to the panel. The measurements are so
exact in order to aid scholars in making and evaluating reconstructions or the
ensembles to which a number of the panels once belonged.
Notes to the Reader 8


If present, signatures and/or inscriptions on the paintings are recorded as

accurately as possible. In these transcriptions, a slash with a space on either
side indicates a new line; a slash without these spaces indicates that the slash
is included in the original text. All directional references to signatures and
inscriptions are given from the viewers perspective.
The Provenance section gives the names of all known owners. A semicolon
between two names indicates a direct transfer of ownership of the painting,
whereas a period indicates uncertainty about the chain of ownership and the
whereabouts of the object between two documented owners. The names of
dealers, agents, and auction house sales are given in parentheses. Notes provide
sources, details of research, and discussion of outstanding questions.
About a third of the paintings cataloged here passed through the hands of
Duveen Brothers, Inc., a company headed by Joseph Duveen with offices
in London, New York, and Paris. The firms records, now held by the Getty
Research Institute in Los Angeles, are an important source of information and
are referenced frequently in notes to the Provenances; copies of the referenced
material are in NGA curatorial files. Approximately two-thirds of the paintings
were acquired by Samuel H. Kress himself or the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
in New York, which has kindly provided copies of its acquisition records to the
Gallery; they are held in Gallery Archives, with copies of relevant material in
NGA curatorial files. No fewer than seven paintings, including Duccios Nativity,
were given by Andrew Mellon. The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust
has made copies of its records available to the Gallery, where they are held
both in Gallery Archives and, as appropriate, in curatorial files. Every effort has
been made to provide the exact location of these records. Another third of the
paintings were acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York, which
has kindly provided copies of its acquisition records to the Gallery; they are held
in Gallery Archives, with copies of relevant material in NGA curatorial files.
Exhibition histories through 2014 record the presence of the paintings in special
exhibitions or as individual loans from an owner to another institution. They are
as complete as possible and include exhibition catalog numbers, unless it is
indicated that there was no catalog or the catalog was unnumbered, and a note if
the painting was reproduced.


The references for each entry lists with full citations and in chronological order,
only those texts that specifically discuss the National Gallery of Art painting in
question. An exhaustive Bibliography on the general subject of thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century Italian paintings is provided at the end of this volume.
Unless otherwise indicated, all altarpiece reconstructions are by Mikls Boskovits.

Comparative figures of panels that once belonged to the same altarpieces as
Gallery panels use dates proposed by the author.
Each entry includes a Technical Summary, which discusses the materials and
techniques used by the artists in the creation of the paintings, as well as any
changes and documented treatments. They are based on the contents of
the examination reports prepared by members of the National Gallery of Art
department of painting conservation.
Each painting was examined unframed, in visible light, front and back. The
paintings were examined with a stereomicroscope with magnifying power up to
100x and under ultraviolet light. X-radiographs were taken to answer questions
regarding the paintings construction and condition. Infrared photography and/or
infrared reflectography was used for each painting to reveal underdrawing,
compositional changes, and condition. The results of these examinations are
discussed only when they yield information considered essential to interpretation
of the painting.
The medium of the paint has not been analyzed unless stated in the Technical
Summary. The medium is estimated or known to be egg tempera paint for all
paintings in this catalog. For the panel supports, the type of wood is specified
only if the wood has been analyzed. Any scientific analysis that was used to help
understand the paintings is cited. The procedures and equipment used for this
analysis are described below.
The conditions of the paintings vary. Many paintings cataloged here were originally
created as components of altarpieces with engaged frames, most of which were
removed when the altarpieces were dismantled in earlier centuries. Where present,
the barbe, the lip of gesso remaining after an original engaged frame was removed,
is noted as a measure of the painted designs original dimensions. The separate
panels were often later cradled. The cradling process usually included shaving


down the sides and thinning the back of the original wood panel, marouflaging it
to a backing, and attaching wood shims to the sides. Some of the panel paintings
were transferred from their original supports, a process that retains the paint and
ground layers but substitutes a fabric support for the original wood one.
Treatments performed by Gallery conservation staff after acquisition are

described briefly in the Technical Summaries. Occasionally, records of earlier
treatments are included in the Technical Summaries. Damages such as paint
losses should be assumed to have been repaired and inpainted. Significant areas
of inpainting are discussed in the Technical Summaries. The varnishes are all later
replacements and impart no information about the artists choice of finish.
Instrumental Methods of Analysis
A variety of techniques and instruments were used to examine and analyze the
paintings in this catalog. The equipment is described below:
Energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS): Small samples were examined with energy
dispersive spectrometry using an Oxford Inca 300 spectrometer with a Super
ATW Si(Li) detector on a JEOL 6300 SEM.
Fourier-transform infrared (micro)spectroscopy (FTIR): A Thermo Nicolet

Nexus 670 instrument was used, fitted with a Continuum microscope. Spectra
were collected in transmission mode at 4 cm-1 resolution. The samples were
compressed between two windows of a Diamond Cell (Spectratech).
Gas chromatography / mass spectrometry (GC/MS): The samples were

methylated with TMTFTH (TCI America, 0.5M in MeOH) or hydrolyzed using
6N HCl for 24 hours under vacuum. After removal of the HCl, the amino acids
were silylated with MTBSTFA/TBDMCS. Samples were examined by gas
chromatography/mass spectrometry on a 30 meter DB-5 column, a Varian Saturn
CP3900 gas chromatograph, and a Saturn 2100T ion trap mass spectrometer.
Infrared examination: When infrared examination is designated as Vidicon,

a Vidicon camera system was used, which included a Hamamatsu c/1000-
03 Vidicon camera fitted with an N2606-10 or N214 lead sulphide tube and a
Kodak Wratten 87A filter. When infrared examination is designated by microns,


one of four cameras was used: a Kodak 310-21X PtSi camera configured to
1.52.0 microns, a Mitsubishi M600 PtSi camera configured to 1.22.5 microns,
an Indigo/FLIR Alpha Visible-InGaAs camera, and a Santa Barbara Focalplane
SBF187 InSb camera. The latter two cameras were configured with various band
filters between 1.1 and 2.5 microns. For the Kodak and Mitsubishi cameras, the
images were captured using a ScionPCI framegrabber card in a Macintosh
computer with Scanalytics IP-Lab software. For the Indigo/FLIR camera, the
images were captured onto a Dell computer with an IMAQ capture board housed
in a Magma external PCI box, and IRVista software. For the Santa Barbara
Focalplane camera, the images were captured using a Windows Empower tower
computer and WinIR software. Nikon 55mm macro, 50mm macro, and 35mm
lenses were used with the various cameras, as were Astronomy J, H, and K
filters. The infrared reflectograms were automatically mosaicked and registered
to a reference color image using a novel registration algorithm developed
by George Washington University and the National Gallery of Art. For more
information see Damon M. Conover, John K. Delaney, and Murray H. Loew,
Automatic Registration and Mosaicking of Conservation Images, in Optics for
Arts, Architecture, and Archaeology, vol. 4, ed. Luca Pezzati and Piotr Targowski,
Proceedings of SPIE, vol. 8790 (Bellingham, WA, 2013).
Optical microscopy of cross-sections: Small paint samples (c. 0.25mm2) were

removed using a scalpel and were mounted in polyester-type resin blocks. The
samples were cut at right angles to the layer structure and polished using silicon
carbide papers and examined using a Leica DRMX microscope.
Polarized light microscopy (PLM): Transmitted polarized light microscopy

of dispersed samples was conducted using Leitz Orthoplan and Leica
DMRX microscopes. Particle identification was accomplished by comparing
characteristic featuresincluding particle size, color, refractive index and relief,
birefringence, extinction characteristics, pleochroism, and anomalous polarization
colors of the unknownto those of reference materials in the Forbes Pigment
Collection and other reference collections.
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM): Small samples were prepared for optical
microscopy and examined with a JEOL 6300 scanning electron microscope at
magnifications 100x10,000x. A Tetra backscatter electron detector was used to
obtain BSE images.


X-radiography: X-radiography was carried out with equipment consisting of

a Eureka Emerald 125 MT tube, a Continental 0-110 kV control panel, and a
Duocon M collimator or a Comet Technologies XRP-75MXR-75HP tube. The
image was captured on Kodak X-OMAT film or digitally using a Carestream
Industrex Blue Digital Imaging Plate 5537. The scanned x-ray radiograph films or
digital x-radiograph captures were automatically mosaicked and registered to a
reference color image using a novel registration algorithm developed by George
Washington University and the National Gallery of Art. For more information see
Damon M. Conover, John K. Delaney, and Murray H. Loew, Automatic Registration
and Mosaicking of Conservation Images, in Optics for Arts, Architecture, and
Archaeology, vol. 4, ed. Luca Pezzati and Piotr Targowski, Proceedings of SPIE,
vol. 8790 (Bellingham, WA, 2013).
X-ray diffraction (XRD): The Philips x-ray generator XRG 3100 was used with a
tube with a copper anode and nickel filter. The paint sample was mounted on a
glass fiber in a Gandolfi camera. Data were collected on film, and line spacings
and intensities were estimated using a calibrated rule.
X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF): This is a noninvasive analytical technique,

which was carried out using one of two systems. The first system used a
secondary emission Kevex 0750A spectrophotometer equipped with a rhodium
tube with either a barium chloride secondary target or a molybdenum secondary
target using a variety of excitation conditions and a silicon lithium Si(Li) detector
with a resolution of approximately 155eV @Mn K. For this system the range of
Rh tube excitation was 40kV60kV and 0.4mA2mA. The second system used
a Bruker ArtTAX Pro XRF spectrometer, which uses primary excitation and is
equipped with a helium (He) flush, a rhodium (Rh) x-ray tube, and a capillary optic
lens with an analysis area of approximately75m. In this system the x-ray tube
voltage was 50kV, the current was 200A, and the accumulation time was 200
seconds.
To cite: Notes to the Reader, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and

Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://
www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/italian-paintings-of-the-
thirteenth-and-fourteenth-centuries.html


Credits and Acknowledgments
Producing the definitive catalog of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian

paintings in the National Gallery of Art has been a highly complex undertaking
that could not have been accomplished without the contributions of many
individuals for more than a decade. We are supremely grateful to the late Mikls
Boskovits, who brought a lifetime of expertise to this project and whose care
and connoisseurship illuminate every page. Due to Miklss unexpected death
we do not have the list of institutions and individuals he surely would have
wished to thank; we would like to express our appreciation to those with whom
he collaborated and corresponded for all they have added to this monumental
achievement.
After Miklss passing, Laurence B. Kanter, chief curator of the Yale University Art
Gallery and himself the author of more than one catalog of early Italian paintings,
generously agreed to undertake the role of volume editor. In this capacity, he
diligently ensured that Miklss voice and precise scholarship were preserved.
He was supported by Daniela Parenti, director of the department of medieval and
early Renaissance art at the Uffizi, who kindly undertook the task of reviewing a
late version of the text. Sonia Chiodo, director, and her associates at the Corpus
of Florentine Painting were also close colleagues of Mikls, and we thank them
for their efforts as well. We are particularly grateful to Miklss widow, Serena
Padovani, retired director of the Galleria Palatina and a scholar in her own right,
who guided the manuscript to completion.
As always, we would like to extend our thanks to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
for its continuing commitment to the Gallery, its collections, and its work. At the
Kress Foundation we are especially grateful to President Max Marmor and the
Kress Board for their support.
The efforts of the publishing office were vital to seeing this manuscript through to
completion. From the death of the author, to the Gallerys decision to publish both
online and in print, to a collection whose very nature is more unique and complex
than many, the editors and designers overcame many challenges. The content
Credits and Acknowledgments 14


presented here is thanks to their efforts and we believe Mikls would be pleased.
I extend warm thanks to Judy Metro, editor in chief, for her support and rigor; to
Chris Vogel, deputy publisher; to Wendy Schleicher, design manager; John Long,
print and digital production associate; and Katharine Adkins, program assistant.
We are also grateful to the former senior editors responsible for the initial phases
of the catalog, Mary Yakush, Gail Spilsbury and Karen Sagstetter, ably assisted
by Magda Nakassis. Sally Bourrie, senior editor, and Lisa Shea, admirably carried
the complex and demanding project to conclusion. Contributions by Research
Associate Jason Di Resta were invaluable in confirming facts and ensuring that
Miklss scholarship was presented accurately.
David Alan Brown
August 26, 2015
Earl A. Powell III, director
Franklin Kelly, deputy director and chief curator
Curatorial, Italian Paintings

David Alan Brown, Jason Di Resta, David Essex, Gretchen Hirschauer, Diana
Mellon,
Publishing Office
Katie Adkins, Sally Bourrie, John Long, Judy Metro, Magda Nakassis, Karen
Sagstetter, Sara Sanders-Buell, Wendy Schleicher, Mariah Shay, Lisa Shea, Gail
Spilsbury, Chris Vogel, Caitlyn Woolsey, Mary Yakush
Conservation
Joanna Dunn, Sarah Fisher, Jay Krueger, Douglas Lachance, Merv Richard,
Elizabeth Walmsley


Curatorial, Northern Baroque Paintings

Henriette Rahusen
Curatorial Records and Files

Anne Halpern, Nancy Yeide
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

Elizabeth Cropper
Imaging Services
Peter Dueker, Lorene Emerson, Lee Ewing, Katherine Mayo, Alan Newman, Greg
Williams, Barbara Wood
Registrar
Frank Adams, Jesse Clark, Elizabeth Concha, Robert Cwiok, Susan Finkel, Lehua
Fisher, Michelle Fondas, Joan Ganzevoort, Douglas Jackson, Andrew Krieger,
Goven Martinez, Johnnie Mizell, Carson Murdach, Dan Randall, Pierre Richard,
Mike Russell, Lewis Schlitt, Dan Shay, David Smith, Gary Webber, William Whitaker
Scientific Research Department

Barbara Berrie, John Delaney, Michael Palmer
Secretary and General Counsel

Nancy Breuer, Elizabeth Croog, Hilary Evans, Isabelle Raval
Technology Solutions
Charles Alers, David Beaudet, Katherine Blackwell, Susan Farr, Andrey
Forostovsky, Vadim Gulyakin, Vladimir Morozov, Yuriy Rastorguev, Linda Stone,
Laszlo Zeke
Web Production
Carolyn Campbell, John Gordy
National Gallery of Art Library

Charlotte DonVito, Lamia Doumato, Andrea Gibbs, John Hagood, Faye Karas,
Missy Lemke, Yuri Long, Rodrick McElveen, Thomas McGill, Gregory Most,
Jacqueline Protka, Neal Turtell


Beyond the Gallery
Carla Brenner (overviews author)
David Bull (conservation)
Laura Glassman (proofreader)
Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Berensons Villa I

Tatti, Florence
Patricia Inglis/Inglis Design
Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence
Alberto Lenza (typist)
Dave Luljak (indexer)
Judith Sacks (copy editor)
Lorenzo Sbaraglio
Peter Spring (translation)
Martha Vaughan (reconstruction illustrations)
To cite: Credits and Acknowledgments, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth

and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://
www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/italian-paintings-of-the-


In Memoriam: Mikls Boskovits
This catalog of Italian paintings at the National Gallery of Art includes some of
the earliest and most important works of art in the Gallerys collection. Smaller in
the number of entries it comprises than its companion volumes covering Italian
paintings of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth/eighteenth centuries, it
must nevertheless be understood to occupy a more significant place than they
within its own field of study. In part this is due to an organic development in the
history of collecting that led the great European national and princely collections
to concentrate their acquisitive efforts elsewherespecifically in later periods of
Italian artleaving great masterpieces of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
unclaimed on the market when American collectors entered the lists in the last
decades of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century. It
was in turn the seemingly unquenchable appetite of American collectors that led
scholarship of Dugento and Trecento painting to grow beyond the dilettante and
local antiquarian interests that dominated its formative stages into the rigorously
disciplined approach that defines the study today. This catalog represents the
fortunate confluence of these two interrelated strands: it is an encounter between
the most refined and consequential assembly of early Italian paintings in this
country, ranking among the greatest collections of such material anywhere
outside of Italy, and the most original and influential scholar of this material,
Mikls Boskovits, a man who defined many of the canonical presumptions on
which the modern study of the period is based.
Miklss association with the Gallery began nearly a quarter century ago, in 1990,
when he was invited to catalog the bulk of the Gallerys extensive collection of
fifteenth-century Italian paintings. Having demonstrated both his command of
the field and his suitability to large, demanding projects with the publication of
indispensable catalogs of the early Italian paintings in the Gemldegalerie in
Berlin (written between 1977 and 1980, published in 1988) and in the Thyssen-
Bornemisza collection (1990), he had been recommended for the task by Sir John
Pope-Hennessy, then recently retired as consultative chairman of the department
of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Gallerys choice
In Memoriam: Mikls Boskovits 18


proved to be an inspired one. Mikls brought to his assignment in Washington

a preoccupation fundamental to the best cataloging of early Renaissance art, a
preoccupation perceived at the time, and even described by the scholar himself,
as antiquated or even futile:
I tried to clarify questions related to authorship and date before

turning to other problems.... I am convinced that without first
determining the coordinates of the position of a painting in the
artistic geography of its time, it is impossible to evaluate correctly
the meaning or study the background of the work.
Mikls was by no means the first scholar to express his priorities in these
terms, but he was by any standard of measure the best qualified to achieve
reliable results: the most wide-ranging in his experience and interests and the
most gifted in his insights and judgment, a perfect match for the breadth and
depth of the Gallery collections. Published in 2003, the result was a magisterial
volume, coauthored with Gallery curator David Alan Brown and others, that was
immediately embraced and will long stand as a standard reference source and as
a model for similar efforts at other public institutions around the globe.
It was only logical, therefore, that Mikls should have been asked to continue
what he had begun and turn his attention to the precedent material at the Gallery,
the paintings from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the late Middle Ages,
the period in which he first made his mark as a scholar. The equation between
author and subject that had been so beautifully balanced in the fifteenth-century
paintings volume promised to be equally so here, but with subtle rephrasing: due
partly to the accidents of survivalthe number of paintings from the fifteenth
century known to us today, as well as their regional distribution, is astronomically
greater than from the fourteenth century, whose numbers in turn dwarf those
from the thirteenth centuryand partly to the relatively late date at which
American collectors entered the competition for their ownership, Washingtons
extensive early Renaissance collection comprises numerous high-quality works
that are representative of the greatest masters, yet certain of the thirteenth-
and fourteenth-century Italian paintings are arguably more significant, as they
constitute prime examples in the history of Trecento painting and in some cases,


in all of art history. A number of these paintings are, in fact, seminal or definitive
examples of their type or even the only surviving example of a type. Furthermore,
although identification of authorship and chronology are in general far more
approximate and tenuous exercises in this period, only a fraction of the Gallerys
collection could be said to be of controversial or unsettled attributionreflecting
the trophy-hunting proclivities of Andrew Mellon and the Wideners and the
judicious process of selection from Samuel Kresss ecumenical holdings.
For paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, attribution and dating do
not so much represent fixed geographical coordinates, speaking metaphorically,
as they do in the fifteenth century. Rather, they are temporary markers of the
current state of scholarship, indicators of modern trends of thought that may or
may not have anything to do with the historical reality they are meant to encode.
A thorough catalog of the Gallerys Dugento and Trecento paintings might
well have contented itself, therefore, with summarizing the plentiful existing
bibliography and explaining historiographically its meaning. Mikls has done
all this, of course, and it is not surprising that for an unusually large number of
entries, references to the latest or the most in-depth study of a given problem are
citations of articles or books or exhibition catalogs that he himself had written.
But Mikls moved far beyond the practical limitations of this approach and in
so doing has created a new type of collection catalog, one that doubles as an
encyclopedia of its period. Each entry is conceived as a small artist monograph,
an explanatory roadmap of a painters entire career rather than just a concise
indication of the position of one work of art within that career. This catalog is
a summation of forty or more years of thought dedicated by the author to a
wide range of problems; it is a scholarly testament and a precious legacy. The
editors have made it possible to consult the catalog for spot-checks of data or to
retrieve specific items of information or opinion. The reader should be cautioned,
however, not to overlook the value and indeed the pleasure of perusing the
catalog, of walking slowly through its corridors of thought seeking not to answer
any particular material question but to frame endless new questions on the
foundations of its solid edifice of scholarship. In a very real sense, this is a highly
personal achievement of Mikls Boskovits as much as it is a catalog of the
collections of the National Gallery of Art.


While Mikls Boskovitss position of authority within the field of Dugento and
Trecento studies is unrivaled, it is not unchallenged, and it is important to
understand something of the nature of these challenges in order to extract
maximum value from the arguments and discussions that he crafted. The modern
study of late medieval Italian painting may be said to have taken serious form
only in the early years of the twentieth century with the generalizing, often
insightful but sometimes superficial researches of pioneering art historians such
as Bernard Berenson and his contemporary Osvald Sirn. Their work was, by
and large, scattershot rather than synthetic, generated as much in response to
specific problems that came to their attention (frequently by visits to little-known
collections or by the appearance of interesting or significant works of art on the
market) as to an urge to create a fully articulated history of the period. It was,
furthermore, handicapped by an even more severely limited pool of documented
historical facts than is available to historians today, a lacuna that was addressed
more or less contemporaneously with the work of exploration they themselves
were undertaking. By way of example only, when Berenson wrote his scintillating
analysis of Duccios accomplishments in the first edition of his Central Italian
Painters of the Renaissance (1897)an analysis, it must be said, that has not
been improved upon to this daythe artists life dates were calculated on the
basis of sixteenth-century anecdotal evidence and the range of his activity was
believed to have extended a full twenty years after he is now known to have
died. Berenson, in other words, had no basis for distinguishing between the work
of Duccio and that of his many pupils and imitators. He was nevertheless able to
extract the key elements of Duccios style and translate them into English prose
of memorable effectiveness, scarcely a word of which needed to be amended
in preparation for the second edition of his book (1909) even though all the
documentation of the artists life on which we now rely had in the intervening
years been discovered.
The following generation of scholarship in this field was so completely dominated

by one personality, Richard Offner, that his name has come to be synonymous
with a distinctive analytical approach and definitive judgments of attribution.
Offner, a German-born scholar who passed nearly the entirety of his professional
career in the United States as a professor at New York Universitys Institute of
Fine Arts, sought to replace the approximations and generalities of Berensons


scholarship (which he affected to despise) with a narrow-focused precision

(that has in turn come to be an object of light-hearted derision) leading to such
excesses of critical finesse as the division of the stylistic penumbra dependent
upon the Cione brothers studio output of the middle decades of the fourteenth
century into no fewer than fifty-six independent and fully characterized masters,
a wholly improbable number of painters able to support themselves within the
limited economy of post-plague Florence. Offners scientific, taxonomic approach
to studying the fourteenth century was often criticized and reformulated by his
brilliant contemporary, the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi. Longhi rarely
stooped to concern himself with the minor luminaries unearthed (or fantasized)
by Offner, but instead, like Berensonwhom he disparaged even more than did
Offnerconcerned himself primarily with the peaks of accomplishment of the
major masters, reorganizing their chronologies and their genealogies of influence
into a new structural outline of history for fourteenth-century art throughout the
Italian peninsula. Longhis influence was immense, disseminated through the
exhilarating imagery of his elegant prose style and by the army of his students
fleshing out the hints and insights adumbrated in his copious, narratively complex
footnotes. Offners influence was equally far-reaching but owed little to his prose
style, which can best be described as impenetrable, or to his students, who were
few in number, but rather to the ambitious publishing project he initiated, the
multivolume Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, to which he
devoted himself until his death in 1965.
When Mikls Boskovits emigrated from Hungary to Italy in 1968, Offners

Corpus had progressed only as far as the generation of the Cione brothers and
two of their immediate followers, Giovanni del Biondo and Andrea Bonaiuti.
Perceiving that the end of the fourteenth century remained as confused and
poorly understood as had its beginnings before Offner began his magnum
opus, the younger scholar appointed to himself the task of pushing this project
forward, resulting in what probably remains his best-known, unquestionably
his most often used publication: Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,
13701400 (1975). Shortly afterward he undertook, with the blessing of the
Institute of Fine Arts, a comprehensive editing, revision, and completion of
the entire Corpus, which, though it was never finished, substantially revised
Offners vision of fourteenth-century Florentine history. It is Mikloss version of


Offners worksynthesizing Offners and Longhis divergent points of view and

subjecting each to his own acutely revisionist approachthat represents, with
few exceptions, the point of departure for all modern research in this field. It
was, furthermore, the experience of editing the granular, even microscopic, and
painstaking attention to detail that distinguished Offners books that led Mikls
to scrutinize with equally penetrating and judicious attention the other schools of
Italian painting in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. His complete
bibliography is surely greater and more original than that of any other scholar of
the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Italy, with the notable exception of
Roberto Longhi, while the number and dedication of his students is comparable:
together with his longtime friend and sometime rival Luciano Bellosi, Mikls
trained most of the younger Italian scholars working in this field today. In a
very real sense it may justifiably be said that the study of Italian thirteenth- and
fourteenth-century painting belongs to Mikls Boskovits.
A key component of Miklss approach to the study of fourteenth-century

painting was his ability to extract from the infinitesimal distinctions of difference
elucidated by Offner those features or aspects of style that are truly significant or
consequential and recognize these same features in groups of works that Offner
had considered unrelated. In this way, he combined many of the separate masters
created by Offner into successive and interrelated stages within the career of
a single painter. The results were not only a more credible overall view of the
artistic production of any given period or place, but also a more organic vision
of the artistic personality of any given painter. Mikls understood and embraced
the attendant obligation of describing the maturation process of his hybrid artistic
constructs, how one proceeded from the qualities characteristic of group A
through those found in group B to end at the achievements of group C without
once stepping outside the confines of personality X or Y. It is a testament to the
acuity of his vision that very few of these newly created hybrid personalities have
ever been challenged by other scholars and that students today have access to
plausible, sometimes demonstrable, reconstructions of the early career of major
artists of which their forebears were entirely unaware. There is, of course, a risk
to this approach, that constant attention to the links between otherwise distinct
categories might obscure the lengthening differences between characteristics at
either extreme of the reassembled chain. It is possible to quibble in this regard


with some of Miklss reconstructions, but these are generally quibbles of detail,
not of essential principle. It is an inescapable conclusion that his research and
his approach to artistic classificationto the fundamental discernment and
evaluation of similitudehave brought us closer than ever before to a reliable
view of the history of artistic production during these early periods of culture in
pre-Renaissance Italy.
Mikls had completed all but the final revisions of his text for this catalog before
his untimely death on December 20, 2011. He had shared his entries with me,
we had exchanged correspondence concerning the small number of points on
which we disagreed, and he had graciously incorporated his responses to my
observations in the text or footnotes of the relevant entries. I am pleased to
say that some of my objections were proven to be ill-founded by close physical
observation of the paintings, when previously unnoticed technical considerations
tended to support Miklss original conclusions (for example, cats. 1, 8, and
3841). In a few cases it may be said that we agreed to disagree (cats. 6, 7, 35,
and 42). Only in one case, that of the incomparably beautiful Goldman Madonna
by Giotto (cat. 17), has subsequent technical study undermined his carefully
constructed arguments, tending to support the association of four surviving
elements from a single complex as hypothesized by an earlier generation of
scholars over Miklss contention that the four works derive from two different
complexes and represent two different phases of Giottos career. It must,
however, be recognized that technical evidence is just that: evidence, not proof. It
remains possible that Mikls was correct; the evidence is certainly discouraging,
but in no way does it fully disprove his arguments. In this as in every other case,
therefore, the text of the catalog entry has been left precisely as the author
wrote it, aside from minor editorial revisions to assure that the English translation
adheres as closely as possible to the meaning and tone of his original Italian
manuscript.
No collection catalog is meant to be the last word on its subject; at best it intends
to be the most accurate summation or conclusion possible given the state of
knowledge at the time it is written. Knowledge is not static. Mikls Boskovitss
greatest gift to posterity was the platform he created from which knowledge
could more securely advance, leading inevitably to corrections and improvement


over his own work. We are all tremendously fortunate to enjoy the fruits of his
generosity, enabling our own work to be better than it could ever be on its own.
This catalog is in some respects the highest platform he built, and from it we can
see further across the terrain of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy
than ever was possible before.
Thank you, Mikls.
Laurence Kanter
January 2014


Mikls Boskovits, Courtesy of Serena Padovani Mikls Boskovits at work with students Ada Labriola
and Daniela Parenti in the Corpus of Florentine
Painting Room at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in
Florence, 1997. Daniela Parenti, who is now director
of the department of Medieval and Early Renaissance
at the Uffizi, assisted Mikls with his research for this
catalog and also reviewed a late version of the catalog
text. Courtesy of Serena Padovani
To cite: Laurence Kanter, In Memoriam: Mikls Boskovits, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Centuries, NGA Online Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/
italian-paintings-of-the-thirteenth-and-fourteenth-centuries.html


Andrea di Bartolo
Sienese, active from 1389 - died 1428
BIOGRAPHY
Sienese painter and miniaturist, active in various towns in central and northern
Italy, Andrea was the son of Bartolo di Fredi and father of Giorgio and Sano, also
painters. His artistic career no doubt began in his fathers shop; his hand can in fact
be recognized in some important commissions executed by Bartolo in the 1380s, in
particular the polyptychs of Montalcino and the frescoes in the Augustinian church
in the same town.[1] He participated, alongside his father and Luca di Tomm, in
the realization of the now lost altarpiece for the chapel of the shoemakers guild in
Siena Cathedral.[2] In 1394, by then an independent artist, Andrea began a period
of activity in the Veneto, as attested by the altarpiece of five blessed nuns of the
Dominican order (Museo Vetrario, Murano), a painted crucifix in the monastery of
Santa Maria at Zadar in Croatia, and some frescoes in the church of San Francesco
at Treviso.[3] The altarpiece of the Annunciation and saints signed by Andrea di
Bartolo, now in the Museo dArte Sacra at Buonconvento, probably bore the date
1397. Painted after his return to Tuscany, it testifies to his gradual abandonment of
some of the harshness of his fathers manner, employing figures compact in profile
and devoid of linear complexities, but enlivened by a brilliant palette.
A desire to espouse the figurative ideals of late-Gothic art is ever more clearly
expressed in Andreas works from the early years of the fifteenth century onwards.
He thus elongated the proportions of his figures and enlivened their movements
with more expansive gestures and more agitated drapery. Moreover, the example
of the works of Taddeo di Bartolo, who had returned to Siena after a long absence
c. 1400, led him to seek a more naturalistic rendering of skin, hair, fabrics, and
surface textures in general. In other respects, however, he remained essentially
faithful to the figurative formulae of his fathers art. The panels of a disassembled
polyptych, the larger part of which still remains in the cathedral of Tuscania
(Viterbo), and the four lateral panels of a polyptych, dated 1413, in the Franciscan
church of the Osservanza in Siena, illustrate well this phase in Andreas art. The
polyptych in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (no. 220), the Assumption of the
Virgin in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the polyptych divided
between the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and the Galleria Nazionale in Urbino
Andrea di Bartolo 27

probably document the development of his art in the following years.
Andrea di Bartolo is also known to have worked as a painter of miniatures during

the last years of the fourteenth century. His most significant contributions to the
genre include his participation in the decoration of the choir-books of the Eremo di
Lecceto (now in part in the Biblioteca degli Intronati in Siena) and those
particularly fine in qualitycommissioned by King Henry IV of England for the
Franciscan Custodianship of the Holy Land in Jerusalem (now in the Museum of the
Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in that city). A second period of activity in the
Veneto in the last years of Andreas life has also been inferred.[4]
[1] Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei des
14. Jahrhunderts (Disentis, 1994), 453467, 469476, 485488, 500501. Some of
the panels of the triptych from the church of San Francesco, in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena until 1997, were later reunited with the remainder of the
altarpiece in the Museo Civico at Montalcino. See Alessandro Bagnoli, Museo
civico e diocesano darte sacra di Montalcino (Siena, 1997), 24.
[2] The painting, commissioned in 1389, was completed in 1391; see Monica Butzek,
Chronologie, in Die Kirchen von Siena, vol. 3, Der Dom S. Maria Assunta, bk. 1,
Architektur, pt. 1, ed. Walter Haas and Dethard von Winterfeld (Munich, 2006), 96,
97 n. 1267, 100, 101 n. 1324.
[3] Gaudenz Freuler, Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso dAntonio Cafarini, and
Sienese Dominicans in Venice, The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 570586.
[4] Gaudenz Freuler, Presenze artistiche toscane a Venezia alla fine del Trecento:
Lo scriptorium dei camaldolesi e dei domenicani, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il
Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:498.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1921 De Nicola, Giacomo. Andrea di Bartolo.

Rassegna dArte Senese 14 (1921): 12-15.

1982 Cecchi, Emilio and Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta. In

Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte. Exh. cat.
Palazzo Publicco, Siena. Introduction by Giovanni Previtali. Florence,
1982: 313-326.
1986 Kanter, Laurence B. Giorgio di Andrea di Bartolo.

Arte Cristiana 74 (1986): 15-28.
1986 Leoncini, Monica. Andrea di Bartolo. In

La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. Edited by Enrico
Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:551-552.
1987 Freuler, Gaudenz. Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso dAntonio Cafarini,

and Sienese Dominicans in Venice.
The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 570-586.
1992 Freuler, Gaudenz. Presenze artistiche toscane a Venezia alla fine del
Trecento: lo scriptorium dei camaldolesi e dei domenicani. In
La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Trecento. Edited by Mauro Lucco. 2 vols. Milan,
1992: 2:480-502.
1992 Kasten, Eberhard. Andrea di Bartolo. In

Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und
Vlker Edited by Gnther Meissner. 83+ vols, Munich and Leipzig,
1983+: 2(1986):973-977.
1994 Freuler, Gaudenz.

Bartolo di Fredi Cini: ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei des 14.
Jahrhunderts. Disentis, 1994.
1997 Bagnoli, Alessandro.

Museo civico e diocesano darte sacra di Montalcino. Siena, 1997: 24.
2002 Labriola, Ada, Cristina De Benedictis, and Gaudenz Freuler.

La miniatura senese 12701420. Milan, 2002: 177-253, 338-344.
2006 Butzek, Monica. Chronologie. In

Die Kirchen von Siena, 3: Der Dom S. Maria Assunta, 1: Architektur, pt. 1.
Edited by Walter Haas and Dethard von Winterfeld. Munich, 2006: 96,
97 n. 1267, 100, 101 n. 1324.

Andrea di Bartolo
Christ on the Cross

[reverse]
c. 1380/1390
tempera on panel
painted surface: 30 18.6 cm (11 13/16 7 5/16 in.)
overall: 30 18.6 0.8 cm (11 13/16 7 5/16 5/16 in.)
framed: 52.7 x 34.3 x 7.9 cm (20 3/4 x 13 1/2 x 3 1/8 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.20.b
ENTRY
The painting belongs to an uncommon genre of Byzantine origin of devotional

icons painted on both sides.[1] It is a simplified version of the portable diptych in
which, as in the example discussed here, the Madonna and Child was usually
represented on the obverse, and Christ on the Cross on the reverse.[2] The
peculiarity here, however, is the presentation of the Virgin according to the
iconographic type of the Madonna of Humility: Mary is humbly seated on the
ground instead of on a throne. Yet at the same time she is venerated as Queen of
Heaven by two angels who flank her in flight, and blessed from above by the half-
length figure of Christ, who appears in a trefoil, surrounded by seraphim.[3] On the
reverse of the panel is an isolated image of Christ on the Cross, unattended by the
usual figures of mourners, soldiers, or onlookers who allude to the event of the
Crucifixion. That the image was intended as a panel for private devotion is
underlined by the presence of the minuscule figure of the female donor kneeling in
front of the Madonna to the right; some scholars have identified her as a nun.[4]
At the time of the panels first emergence in Florence in the 1920s, art historians
expressed rather disparate views about it. Roberto Longhi, in a manuscript
expertise probably dating to the years 19251930,[5] considered the image of the
Madonna likely a work of a close follower of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from
1315; died 1344), identifiable with Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) or with
Simones brother Donato, whereas that of Christ on the Cross on the reverse
seemed to him a later addition by a painter close to Paolo di Giovanni Fei (Sienese,
Christ on the Cross [reverse] 30


c. 1335/1345 - 1411) dating to the final years of the Trecento.[6] In 1934, similar
expertises were sought from other leading art historians of the time. F. Mason
Perkins, followed by Giuseppe Fiocco and Wilhelm Suida, attributed it to Andrea di
Bartolo; Bernard Berenson also accepted this attribution. For his part Adolfo
Venturi came to the conclusion that it was an autograph work of Simone Martini,
while Raimond van Marle spoke of a close follower of Simone, probably
identifiable with his brother Donato.[7] The catalogs of the National Gallery of Art
(1941, 1959) accepted Longhis proposal.[8] In a polemical article (unpublished),
Richard Offner contradicted this, preferring to leave the panel in anonymity.[9]
George Martin Richter (1941) also rejected Lippo Memmis hand, arguing for an
attribution to Andrea di Vanni (Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413) in a youthful phase, when he
was still working in Lippos shop.[10] Charles Seymour and Hanns Swarzenski
(1946) also placed the attribution to Lippo in doubt.[11] Nonetheless, Andrea di
Bartolos responsibility for the execution of both sides of the painting was gradually
recognized, beginning with Millard Meiss (1936, 1951), followed by the catalogs of
the Gallery (1965, 1985) and Fern Rusk Shapley (1966).[12] All the more recent
contributions to the literature accepted this attribution, with the exception of
Gaudenz Freuler (2009), who considered the image of the Madonna of Humility as
executed by Bartolo di Fredi, possibly assisted by his son Andrea di Bartolo.[13]
The date of the painting, however, has given rise to considerable divergence of
opinion. It was thought to have been executed by Memmi as early as c. 13301340
in the first catalog of the Gallery (1941).[14] But in the later catalogs of 1965 and 1975
and in Shapley 1966 it was dated to c. 1415.[15] In the meantime Meiss (1951)
supported a dating to c. 1400, while Hendrik W. van Os (1969, 1974) offered the
view that it must have been painted before the end of the fourteenth
century.[16] Shapley (1979), returning to the question, concluded that the date may
be in the 1380s.[17] For his part Creighton E. Gilbert (1984) seems to have favored
a later dating: around 1394.[18] Freuler (1987), van Os (1989, 1990), and Daniele
Benati (1999) accepted this hypothesis, as well as Gilberts suggestion that the
painting was commissioned by the Dominicans of the monastery of Corpus Domini
in Venice, consecrated in 1394, and connected its execution to that year.[19] In
1994, however, van Os seemed to have abandoned this position, preferring a
dating to c. 1415.[20] Bearing in mind that the connection of the panel with the
Dominican nuns of Venice is purely conjectural and seems contradicted by the fact
that the donor in our panel is not dressed in the habit of that order,[21] the
terminus a quo of 1394 should now be excluded from discussion of our panel.


Some help in establishing the panels date can, however, be derived from an
analysis of its punched decoration, undertaken by Mojmir S. Frinta (1998).[22] This
scholar identified the presence in our panel of some punches already used in
paintings produced in the shop of Bartolo di Fredi, as well as in youthful paintings
by Andrea: I refer in particular to the polyptych in the museum at Buonconvento,
probably dating to 1397,[23] and various paintings that art historians have
unanimously assigned to Andreas initial phase.[24] But especially significant to me
are the stylistic affinities with works by Bartolo dating to the mid-1380s or shortly
after, in which signs of Andreas assistance can, I believe, be glimpsed: Adoration
of the Magi, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, to which the Adoration of
the Cross now divided between the museums of Altenburg and Charlottesville
formerly belonged,[25] and Massacre of the Innocents in the Walters Art Museum
in Baltimore, probably part of the polyptych executed by Bartolos shop for the
church of SantAgostino at San Gimignano in 1388.[26] In these paintings the
harsher features of Bartolos style are softened, the swirling calligraphy is
attenuated, and the emotional tensions give way to a rather somnolent tranquility
whichin conjunction with the close morphological affinitiessuggests Andreas
participation. The Christ on the Cross of the reverse, though more hasty in
execution, recalls the similar passage in the Adoration of the Cross, no. 50 in the
Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg, of which it seems indeed a simplified version. The
Madonna of Humility of the obverse, on the other hand, with its minute, exquisitely
chased detailing, reveals close affinities especially with the figures of the mothers
in the Massacre in Baltimore,[27] suggesting it was a work realized by Andrea,
when he was still working in his fathers shop.
It may be added that the composition of the Madonna of Humility evidently

enjoyed considerable success. The artist replicated it many times.[28] The example
in the Gallery is likely to be one of the earliest, together with the signed version
published by Berenson, its whereabouts now unknown.[29] In the later versions
the figure of Mary seems to expand to fill the painted surface, which is enclosed
within an arch decorated on the inside with cusping and sometimes with figures of
the Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate placed in medallions in
the two upper corners.[30] At the same time, the gold-tooled carpet that covers the
floor is replaced by a flowering meadow; the design becomes more simplified,
while the line of the hem of the Virgins cloak is wavier; and an increased number
of angels surround the protagonists.[31] Such late Gothic developments, however,
are characteristic of far later phases in the artists career. Here he is still strongly
influenced by the figurative formulae of his father. This is evident both in the


paintings ornamental decoration and in its stylistic features, both indebted to

Trecento models.
NOTES
[1] See Annemarie Weyl Carr, Bilateral Icons, in The Oxford Dictionary of
Byzantium, ed. Aleksandr Petrovich Kazhdan (New York, 1980), 2:980.
[2] This type of panel, painted on both sides, is exemplified by no. 1062B in the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin, a work by Francesco di Vannuccio, though there
the two sides are reversed: Christ on the Cross Flanked by Mourners and
Devoteesis painted on what can be considered the obverse,
while Madonna and Child with Saints, painted on glass, is on the reverse;
Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin,
Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 3537. According
to Laurence Kanters plausible hypothesis (written communication), the
Washington panel was originally a reliquary, accompanied on the obverse
by roundels containing relics.
[3] While the presence of angels in adoration alludes to the theme of the regina
coeli, the image of the Christus Logos probably refers to that of the
Incarnation; cf. Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death (Princeton, 1951), 153154; Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und
Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969),
120121.
[4] Creighton Gilbert (1984) identified the donor as a Dominican nun. From this
he inferred that the painting was commissioned by a monastery of this
order; various scholars accepted his argument, but Victor Schmidt (2005)
refuted it, rightly pointing out the impossibility of recognizing a member of
the Dominican order in a lady wearing a long, white headdress which also
functions as a cloak. The figure can more plausibly be identified as a
matron or widow. See Creighton E. Gilbert, Tuscan Observants and
Painters in Venice, ca. 1400, inInterpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia
dellarte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice, 1984),
109120; Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal
Devotion in Tuscany, 12501400 (Florence, 2005), 265 n. 82.
[5] Roberto Longhi, who had been a consultant of Contini at least since the
early 1920s, presumably wrote his expertise, in Italian, immediately after
Continis purchase of the panel c. 1925.
[6] Longhi, in his letter to Contini, declared that the Madonna of

Humility senza dubbio una vera e propria gemma della pittura senese
della prima met del Trecento al seguito immediato di Simone Martini (is


without a doubt a true and proper gem of Sienese painting of the first half of
the thirteenth century in the immediate following of Simone Martini). The
painting, in his view, had been painted by the same hand as the panel with a
similar Madonna of Humility in the Gemldegalerie, Staatliche Muzeen zu
Berlin (no. 1072), then attributed to Lippo Memmi, or to Simones little-known
brother, Donato Martini. According to Longhi, the image of Christ on the
Cross on the back of the panel was painted by an entirely different hand,
some forty years after the Madonna.
[7] See copies of the expertises in the NGA curatorial files. Only Wilhelm
Suidas is dated, to August 1935.
[8] National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and

Sculpture(Washington, DC, 1941), 133134; National Gallery of Art, Paintings
and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (Washington, DC, 1959),
34 repro.
[9] Richard Offners long article, written on the occasion of the opening of the
National Gallery of Art, only got as far as galley proofs (in August 1941) but
was never in fact published. Copies of the proofs are kept in the archive of
the Corpus of Florentine Painting, Florence. Commenting on cat. 1, Offner
wrote, The attribution to Lippo can only be accounted a piece of ingenuous
wishfulness. The panel is not by Lippo simply because it shares none of his
essential artistic characteristics.... It lacks...any suggestion of Lippos facade-
like, immobilized composition.... How vague...are the bases of attribution
may be judged from the wide discrepancy of opinion on the authorship...
between Lippo and Donato (the latter being as shadowy a figure as is
known to art history)...and Andrea di Bartolo. I should incline to agree with
the tendency of the latter opinion, if it implied a later dating than Lippos, but
one must stand resolutely against the attribution.
[10] George Martin Richter, The New National Gallery in Washington, The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177.
[11] Charles Seymour and Hanns Swarzenski, A Madonna of Humility and

Quercias Early Style, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, no. 30 (1946): 139.
[12] Millard Meiss, The Madonna of Humility, The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 437,
n. 8; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death(Princeton, 1951), 2223, n. 34; National Gallery of Art, Summary
Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 7;
National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated
Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 18; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from
the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London,
1966), 66, 67.
[13] After the delivery of the present text to the Gallery, I realized with pleasure
that Gaudenz Freuler, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:252,


also considered Madonna of Humility, The Blessing Christ, Two Angels, and
a Donor [obverse] a painting executed not later than the 1390s. On the
other hand, I am unable to see in it any trace of Bartolos hand, even if the
young Andrea was evidently influenced by his fathers style.

Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 133134.
[15] National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and

Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 7; National Gallery of Art, European
Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1975), 10;
Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 67.
[16] Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death (Princeton, 1951), 2223, n. 34; Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und
18, 120, 187; Hendrik W. van Os, Andrea di Bartolos Madonna of
Humility, M: A Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 6,
no. 3 (1974): 21, 25.
[17] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington,
DC, 1979), 1:3.
[18] Gilbert believed that the woman represented as donor was a Dominican
nun, who appeared in an undress costume, without the outer elements
worn in public, that is, the black mantle. Hence it is very attractive to
suggest [he continued] that the Washington panels [the images painted on
obverse and reverse] are the survivors of the very set blessed by Cardinal
Dominici in 1394, at the [consecration of the] new observant convent in
Venice. Creighton E. Gilbert, Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice,
ca. 1400, inInterpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia dellarte in onore di
Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice, 1984), 114116. Some later
authors considered this hypothesis, advanced by the scholar with caution,
almost a demonstrable fact.
Sienese Dominicans in Venice, The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 577; Hendrik W.
van Os et al., eds., The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland, trans. Michael
Hoyle (Florence, 1989), 29, 32; Hendrik W. van Os, Sienese Altarpieces
12151460: Form, Content, Function, vol. 2, 13441460 (Groningen, 1990),
76; Daniele Benati, in Da Bernardo Daddi a Giorgio Vasari, ed. Maria Pia
Mannini (Florence, 1999), 56.
[20] Hendrik W. van Os et al., The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in
Europe, 13001500, trans. Michael Hoyle (London, 1994), 74.
[21] See note 4 above.
[22] Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and


Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 44, 48, 224, 230, 351, 479.
[23] Sources mention the fragmentary polyptych now in the Museo darte sacra
della Val dArbia at Buonconvento as an altarpiece signed by Andrea di
Bartolo and also furnished with a fragmentary date that could still be
deciphered in the second half of the nineteenth century as 1397; Serena
Padovani, in Serena Padovani and Bruno Santi, Buonconvento, museo
darte sacra della Val dArbia(Genoa, 1981), 2325. There is now no trace of
the inscription, but the proposed reading of the date is quite compatible
with the stylistic features of the work.
[24] We may cite as paintings belonging to Andreas debut the Stories of Saint
Galgano now divided between the Museo Nazionale in Pisa and the
National Gallery in Dublin; the altarpiece in Buonconvento (see above note
23); and the portable triptychs in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena and the
National Gallery in Prague. See, respectively, Enzo Carli, Il Museo di
Pisa (Pisa, 1974), 6162; Homan Potterton, Illustrated Summary Catalogue of
Paintings (Dublin, 1981), 6; Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena,
vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 203; Olga
Pujmanov, Italienische Tafelbilder des Trecento in der Nationalgalerie
Prag (Berlin, 1984), pl. 20.
[25] Wolfgang Loseries, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel LindenauMuseum di

Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and JohannesTripps (Siena, 2008), 6672.
[26] Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei
des 14. Jahrhunderts (Disentis, 1994), 260272.
[27] Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, no. 37.1018; Federico Zeri, Italian Paintings
in the Walters Art Gallery, ed. Ursula E.M. Cracken, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1976),
1:4850.
[28] Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen
Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), 187188, figs. 6274, cited and
reproduced several versions of the composition. One of them, however,
formerly belonging to the Stoclet collection in Brussels (fig. 66), is of
dubious authenticity.
[29] Bernard Berenson, Lost Sienese Trecento Paintings, 4, International

Studio 98, no. 404 (1931): 3031.
[30] As in the panel signed by Andrea, formerly in the Ehrich Gallery in New
York. See Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der
sienesischen Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), fig. 67.
Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), figs. 62, 63, as well as the panel
formerly with Moretti in Florence: Daniele Benati, in Da Bernardo Daddi a
Giorgio Vasari, ed. Maria Pia Mannini (Florence, 1999), 5661.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support (contrary to Shapley 1966, 1979) is a single piece of wood, with a
vertical grain and about 1 cm thick, painted on both sides.[1] The panel has a slight
convex warp relative to the obverse. It has been cut down along its upper edge.
The top of the original gable is truncated, and in order to make the outer shape
rectangular, triangular insets were added on both sides (approximately 1.5 cm on
the top and 3 cm on the vertical edge on the left, and 1 cm along the top and 2 cm
on the vertical edge on the right, as seen from the front). The original engaged
frame has been lost and replaced by a modern one.
The painting was executed on the usual gesso ground, over which a thin red bole
was applied in the gilded areas of the obverse. The reverse was silver gilt.[2] An
old photograph [fig. 1] [3] shows that the painted surface on the obverse ended
approximately 1 cm from the lateral and lower edges and that the unpainted area at
the sides of the gable was at that time gessoed. A later photo, probably from
c. 1940/1941, proves that in the meantime the upper corners had been regilded.[4]
On the reverse the painted area extends to the edges of the panel. The x-
radiograph [fig. 2] shows impressions of three roundels on each side of the gable,
the upper pair cropped in half at the top of the panel. This is evidence that the
panel functioned as a reliquary, containing in its now lost engaged frame seven
circular cavities (allowing for one cut off at the top of the gable) to receive relics.
No underdrawing was found during an infrared examination (Vidicon),[5] but
incised lines mark the placement of the principal figures. A green undermodeling is
visible beneath the flesh of the figures on both the obverse and the reverse. The
painted surface of the obverse is fairly well preserved, with some inpainting in the
donors robe; some small, scattered paint losses; and some abrasion in the
Madonnas robe. On the reverse the silver gilded area is heavily rubbed and the
image itself is damaged by scratches, paint losses, and wormholes.


TECHNICAL COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 1927, Andrea di Bartolo,

Madonna of Humility, the Blessing Christ, Two Angels,
and a Donor, c. 1380/1390, tempera on panel, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection.
fig. 2 X-radiograph, Andrea di Bartolo, Madonna and
Image: Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence
Child, c. 1415, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Stephen Pichetto examined this picture in 1940 in response to a request

made to him by the Gallerys then chief curator, John Walker. Pichetto was
the restorer for the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and he was specifically
asked to clear up whether the Madonna of Humility and the Christ on the
Cross were painted on the same panel. Pichettos notes indicate that he
determined that the support was one piece of wood, painted on both sides.
(Walkers letter of October 1940 and Pichettos documentation are in NGA


curatorial files.) It is unclear why Fern Rusk Shapley stated that the paintings
were executed on separate panels. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from
1966), 66, 67; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:34. The painting was examined again in 1988,
2008, and 2011, and it was consistently determined to be one panel; see
report dated August 31, 1988, in NGA conservation files.
[2] Using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), the NGA scientific research
department analyzed the gilding, and it was found to be silver (see
forthcoming report in NGA conservation files).
[3] This photo, probably taken sometime before the acquisition of the painting
by Samuel H. Kress in 1927 (see Provenance), belonged to Roberto Longhi
and is now in the archive of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi in Florence.
[4] During his 1940 examination of the painting, Pichetto removed the modern
engaged frame and made sketches of the placement of the image on its
wooden support, indicating also the pieces of new wood added to the panel
in the upper corners (see NGA curatorial files).
[5] Infrared reflectography was performed using a Hamamatsu c/1000-03

Vidicon camera.
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Italy, c. 1920.[1] (Alessandro Contini, Rome [from 1930, Count
Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi]); sold October 1927 to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955],
New York;[2] transferred 1929 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift
1939 to NGA. [1] In his expertise dated 8 August 1934, commissioned from him by
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (copy in the NGA curatorial files), F. Mason Perkins
states that he had seen the painting for the first time in an Italian private collection
fifteen years earlier. [2] The bill of sale for sculpture, maiolica, furniture, antique
velvet, and several paintings, including a "Madonna and Child by Lippo
Memmi...given to Donato Martini by some experts," is dated 5 October 1927 (copy
in NGA curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1936 Meiss, Millard. "The Madonna of Humility." The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 437,
n. 8.


1941 Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of

Art, Washington, 1941: 133-134, no. 131, as by Lippo Memmi (?).
1941 Richter, George Martin. "The New National Gallery in Washington." The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 177.
1943 Pope-Hennessy, John. "A Madonna by Andrea Vanni." The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 83, no. 484 (1943): 177.
1946 Meiss, Millard. "Italian Primitives at Konopit." The Art Bulletin 28 (1946):
6.
1951 Meiss, Millard. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death.
Princeton, 1951: 22-23, n. 34, 134.
1966 Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection:
Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 66-67, fig. 174.
1968 Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian
and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 2:8.
1969 Os, Hendrik W. van. Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der
sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 18, 120, 187, pl. 10b.
1971 Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolos Assumption of the Virgin." Arts
in Virginia 2 (1971): 5.
1972 Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth
Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 6, 228, 346, 645.
1974 Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolos Madonna of Humility." M: A
Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 6, no. 3 (1974):
21, 25.
1979 Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery
of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:3-4; 2:pl. 1a.
1982 Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte. Exh. cat.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 292.
1983 Kasten, Eberhard. "Andrea di Bartolo." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon:
Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und Vlker. Edited by Gnter
Meissner. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1983-1990: 2(1986):976.
1983 LArt gothique siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfvrerie, sculpture. Exh.
cat. Musee du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 274.
1984 Gilbert, Creighton E. "Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice, ca.
1400." in Interpretazioni Veneziane: studi di storia dellarte in onore di
Michelangelo Muraro. Edited by David Rosand. Venice, 1984: 113
(repro.), 114-116.
1986 Maderna, Valentina, ed. Il polittico di Andrea di Bartolo a Brera
Restaurato. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Florence, 1986: 10-11, 17.
1987 Freuler, Gaudenz. "Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso dAntonio Cafarini,
and Sienese Dominicans in Venice." The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 577.
1989 Os, Hendrik W. van, J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, C. E. de Jong-Janssen,
and Charlotte Wiefhoff, eds. The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland.
Translated by Michael Hoyle. Florence, 1989: 29, 32.



Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 3(1992):514.
1998 Frinta, Mojmr S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 44, 48, 224, 230, 351, 479.
1999 Mannini, Maria Pia, ed. Da Bernardo Daddi a Giorgio Vasari. Exh. cat.
Galleria Moretti, 26 September 1999. Florence, 1999: 56.
2005 Schmidt, Victor M. Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion
in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 222-223, 265 n. 82.
2009 Bellosi, Luciano, ed. La collezione Salini: dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 2 vols. Florence, 2009: 1:250, 252.


Andrea di Bartolo
Joachim and Anna Giving

Food to the Poor and
Offerings to the Temple
c. 1400/1405
tempera on poplar panel
painted surface: 44.1 32.5 cm (17 3/8 12 13/16 in.)
overall: 45.7 34 0.6 cm (18 13 3/8 1/4 in.)
framed: 48.3 x 36.8 x 4.1 cm (19 x 14 1/2 x 1 5/8 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.43
ENTRY
The three panels in the National Gallery of Art collection (this work, The Nativity of
the Virgin, and The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple) form part of a larger
series of scenes from the childhood of Mary, of which a fourth component is also
known: Joachim Leaving Jerusalem now in the Keresztny Mzeum at Esztergom
in Hungary [fig. 1].[1] Since two of the episodes, Joachim and Anna Giving Food to
the Poor and Offerings to the Temple and Joachim Leaving Jerusalem, are seldom
found represented in art, there are good reasons to assume that the sequence
would have originally comprised at least four other, more commonly illustrated
scenes, namely, the Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, the Annunciation to
Joachim (and/or to Anna), the Meeting at the Golden Gate, and the Betrothal of the
Virgin.[2] These (and possibly other) scenes would have accompanied a central
image of the Madonna and Child,[3] or of Saint Anne with the Madonna and
Child,[4] a Coronation of the Virgin,[5] or a theme such as the Annunciation or
Pentecost.[6] It is difficult, therefore, to reconstruct the dismembered and
dispersed altarpiece of which our three panels would have formed part, also
because we do not know exactly how the surviving scenes from the life of the
Virgin were related to the main image of the altarpiece. The fact that the grain of
the wooden support is vertical would seem to exclude the proposition that they are
fragments of a predella,[7] and the hypothesis advanced in the past, that our
Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple 42

panels could be fragments of a reliquary cupboard, seems to have no

foundation.[8] They could have been fragments of a vita-icon type panel, with a
whole-length figure of the Madonna and Child flanked by a vertically arranged
series of scenes of her life.[9] Such an image, however, would appear decidedly
old-fashioned in Siena after the mid-fourteenth century. A more likely alternative
format is suggested by the cases in which Sienese painters of the late fourteenth
century, such as Taddeo di Bartolo or Andrea di Bartolo himself,[10] produced
paintings in a form similar to thirteenth-century dossals, with a large-scale
representation at the center, flanked by narrative scenes in two superimposed
orders [fig. 2] (see also Reconstruction). A round-arched termination, enriched on
the inside with cusped moldings, would be very appropriate for this kind of
altarpiece. In Siena in this period, and in Tuscany in general, the wood grain of the
support in a vertical panel is invariably aligned vertically, and in a horizontal panel
horizontally. It cannot be excluded, of course, that the painting was realized during
the artists stay in Venice or in the Marche and not in Siena, as Laurence Kanter, in
correspondence, suggests. He points out that carpentry practice in the Venetian
territories frequently aligned panels parallel to the shorter axis, so in the case of a
horizontal altarpiece the wood grain would run vertically.[11] He further notes that
the incised profiles of the original frame moldings on our panels argue for a
Venetian provenance. In Tuscany, engaged frames were applied before the panels
were gessoed or gilt. In Venice, they were added afterward, and their profiles are
often found inscribed on the picture surface as a guide to the painter.
The scenes from the life of the Virgin painted by Andrea are based on an
apocryphal text called De Ortu Beatae Mariae et Infantia Salvatoris, attributed to
the evangelist Matthew. Later sources enriched this narrative with additional
episodes. According to the legend, the marriage of Joachim (father of the Virgin
Mary) and Anna remained childless for many years, a state that was interpreted by
the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem as punishment for grave sins. Therefore,
Joachims offering of a sacrificial lamb was rejected, and he was expelled from the
temple. The scene represented in this work is usually identified as Joachim and the
Beggars but refers instead to a previous episode in the life of Marys parents. A
version of the legend, evidently familiar in Tuscany, recounts that Joachim and
Anna lived in a particularly charitable way, dividing all their worldly goods into
three parts: a third was allocated to the poor, another third to the temple, and only
a third was kept for their own needs.[12] In the panel at the Gallery, we see, to the
left, Joachim distributing loaves of bread to the poor, while his wife is presiding
over the delivery of sacks of grain to the temple, where a priest receives them. This

episode would have been followed by the lost scene of the priests rejection of the
offering of a sacrificial animal and the Expulsion from the Temple, the premise for
Joachims Abandonment of the City, which is described in the painting now in
Esztergom.
At this point in the sequence, other episodes usually illustrated in cycles of the
childhood of Mary are likely to have followed: namely, the Angels Annunciation of
the Birth of Mary both to Joachim and to Anna, and the Return of Joachim to the
City, linked with the Meeting of Husband and Wife at the Golden Gate. In the
following scene of the Nativity of the Virgin, Andrea faithfully followed the model
proposed by his father, Bartolo di Fredi, in the cycle of frescoes in the church of
SantAgostino at San Gimignano and elsewhere:[13] in the foreground at the center
we see a young woman seated on the ground, supporting with one arm the
newborn child who stands on her lap, back turned to the viewer, while another
woman, also crouched on the ground, is gesturing with both hands towards the
child, as if inviting the baby girl to come to her arms. Further in the background we
see two standing women: one is just entering the room through a door in the rear
wall, bearing a bowl of food in her hands; the other is pouring water into a basin for
the childs mother to wash her hands. Anna is shown reclining on the skillfully
foreshortened bed to the right, its curtain drawn back. On the other side of the
scene, Joachim and another elderly man are seated in a barrel-vaulted loggia
adjacent to the room of the childbirth, awaiting news of the event. The following
scene, The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, also resembles the
corresponding fresco by Bartolo in San Gimignano,[14] but in this case both
paintings reveal the influence of a celebrated prototype frescoed by Pietro and
Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the facade of the Ospedale della Scala in Siena.[15] The
scene represents the episode of the three-year-old Mary being taken by her
parents to the temple; the child spontaneously ascends the flight of steps to the
temple, where she would reside until the age of fourteen. By painting the temple at
an angle to the picture plane, displaced to the right side of the composition,
Andrea seems, however, more faithful to his fathers more dynamic and modern
composition than to the Lorenzettian model.
After initial attempts to attribute the three panels to Bartolo di Fredi,[16] art
historians in general accepted them (and also the fourth now in Esztergom) as the
work of Andrea.[17] The generally accepted date for them is c. 1400 or shortly
thereafter.[18] A proposal to insert them into the catalog of Giorgio di Andrea[19]
has found no acceptance in the literature. G. Fattorini described the three

Washington panels as akin to the Adoration of the Magi in the Salini collection
(Castello di Gallico, near Asciano, Siena), which he dated to the first decade of the
fifteenth century.[20]
From a stylistic point of view, the scenes from the childhood of Mary can be
compared with such paintings as the six stories of Saint Galgano now divided
between the Museo Nazionale in Pisa and the National Gallery in Dublin (these,
too, most likely originated as parts of a panel in the form of a dossal);[21] various
portable triptychs in the museums of Altenburg,[22] Philadelphia,[23] Prague,[24]
and Siena;[25] or the paintings on a casket in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena.[26]
Unfortunately, none of these paintings is securely dated. Since the only
documented works of the painter have been lost, the one secure point of
reference for the chronology of his career remains the fragmentary polyptych in
the Church of the Osservanza at Siena, dated 1413.[27] The lack of other secure
points of reference explains why the chronological reconstruction of Andreas
works remains so beset by uncertainty. For example, his signed Assumption of the
Virgin (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond) sometimes is considered to
belong to his early period, and sometimes to his full maturity.[28] Some clues for a
reconstruction of the artists career can, I believe, be deduced from the miniatures
painted by Andrea for the choir-books of the Eremo di Lecceto near Siena,
probably during the 1390s.[29] The strong compositional simplification and
charged color of these miniatures reveal significant affinities with the scenes from
the life of the Virgin being discussed here, and thus seem to confirm that they
belong to a relatively precocious phase in Andreas career.
Comparisons of the Gallerys panels with the figures of saints in the Church of the
Osservanza in Siena (1413), on the other hand, show that the latter belong to a
more advanced phase in the artists career. Some lateral panels of polyptychs,
such as that in Tuscania Cathedral, of which the predella has also survived, are
easier to compare with the Osservanza saints. In contrast to the tall and slender
saints of the Osservanza, who wear draperies furrowed by long, close-set, sharply
undercut folds, those of Tuscania are more robust in physique and more placid in
expression; their statuesque figures seem to indicate an earlier date of execution,
somewhat closer in style to the group of miniatures Andrea probably realized in
the last decade of the fourteenth century.[30] If this conclusion is correct, and if
therefore the crowded scenes thronged with corpulent and largely immobile
figures in the predella in Tuscania testify to Andreas art around 14051410, it
seems reasonable to propose a dating to the very first years of the Quattrocento

for the Gallerys scenes from the life of the Virgin. The compositions in these
panels are reduced to essentials, and no signs are yet visible either of the more
spacious layout of the scenes or of the greater liveliness of the figures that can be
seen in the stories of Christ in the now dispersed predella that should probably be
connected with the Assumption in Richmond and in other altarpieces reasonably
considered later than the Osservanza saints.[31]
The closest stylistic affinities of the Gallerys panels therefore are with works
whose figures are more robust and more sedate in character. Paintings that fall into
this categoryapart from the polyptych in Buonconvento and the altarpiece now in
the museum in Murano, both datable to the last decade of the fourteenth century
include the fragment with the Virgin Annunciate formerly in the Minneapolis
Institute of Arts and the fragmentary Saint Michael Archangel in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena (no. 63), for both of which Laurence Kanter (1986) proposed a
provenance from the same altarpiece of which the Gallerys panels originally
formed a part.[32] Apparently, during these yearsthat is, the first fifteen years of
the fifteenth centuryAndrea especially painted small-scale works for private
devotion, such as the abovementioned portable triptych no. 133 in the Pinacoteca
of Siena; this resembles our scenes from the life of Mary not only in the proportions
and physiognomic types of the figures but also in its peculiar compositional
devices.[33] In another triptych datable to this period, that of the Lindenau-Museum
in Altenburg, the cloak of the young female saint of the left leaf is closely
comparable with that of the majestic Saint Anne of The Presentation of the Virgin
to the Temple. Another comparable work [34] is the Adoration of the Magi now in
the Salini collection, which recalls the Washington panels both in the statuesque
pose of its figures and in the characteristics of its architectural backdrop.[35]

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Reconstruction of a dispersed altarpiece by Andrea

di Bartolo (color images are NGA objects): a. Joachim and
Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the
Temple; b. Expulsion of Joachim (?), lost; c. Joachim
Leaving Jerusalem (fig. 1); d. Annunciation of the Birth of
Mary (?), lost; e. Lost; f. Meeting at Porta Aurea (?), lost; g.
The Nativity of the Virgin; h. The Presentation of the Virgin
in the Temple; i. Marriage of the Virgin (?), lost
fig. 1 Andrea di Bartolo, Joachim Leaving Jerusalem, c.

1400/1405, tempera on panel, Keresztny Mzeum,
Esztergom, Hungary

RECONSTRUCTION
Click on any panel in the altarpiece reconstruction below to see an enlarged version of the image. Color reproductions in the
reconstruction indicate panels in the National Gallery of Art collection.
Reconstruction of a dispersed altarpiece by Andrea di Bartolo:

a. Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple
b. Expulsion of Joachim (?), lost
c. Joachim Leaving Jerusalem (Entry fig. 1)
d. Annunciation of the Birth of Mary (?), lost
e. Lost
f. Meeting at Porta Aurea (?), lost
g. The Nativity of the Virgin
h. The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple
i. Marriage of the Virgin (?), lost
NOTES
[1] No. 55.148; 46 34 cm. The painting, its provenance unknown, was
purchased by Cardinal Jnos Simor, perhaps in Rome, for the museum in
Esztergom between 1867 and 1878; see Mikls Boskovits et al., Christian Art
in Hungary: Collections from the Esztergom Christian Museum (Budapest,
1965), 52. Its original gold ground was evidently removed at an early date,
and it, like the Washington panels, was regilded during a nineteenth-century

restoration.
[2] On the role of Joachim in Italian cycles of the childhood of Mary, cf.
Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de lenfance de la Vierge
dans lEmpire byzantin et en Occident, 2 vols. (Bruxelles, 19641965),
2:154159; Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 4, pt. 2: 3854.
[3] As an example we may cite the vita-icon, name piece of the Master of San
Martino in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa, in which the main image at the
center is flanked on either side by six superimposed stories from the life of
the Virgin. See Enzo Carli, Il Museo di Pisa (Pisa, 1974), 4143 and fig. 48.
[4] Cf. the retable of Bernat de Puig in the Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya,
Barcelona, repro. in Josep Gudiol and Santiago Alcolea i Blanch, Pintura
gotica catalana (Barcelona, 1986), fig. 57.
[5] As in the polyptych commissioned from Bartolo di Fredi for the church of
San Francesco at Montalcino; cf. Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein
Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Disentis, 1994),
188221.
[6] The Annunciation is placed at the center of an illuminated page with scenes
from the childhood of Mary, executed by the Bedford Master, in a Book of
Hours in the Oesterreichisches Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, cod. 1855;
Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols. (Gtersloh,
19661990), 4, pt. 2: pl. 467. The scene of Pentecost occupies a central
position in the cycle of frescoes by the young Bartolo di Fredi in the church
of SantAgostino at San Gimignano. See Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi
Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Disentis,
1994), 3245.
[7] On the structural characteristics of the predella in late medieval altarpieces

in Tuscany, see Monika Cmmerer-George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen
Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966), 9394; Christoph Merzenich, Vom
Schreinerwerk zum Gemlde: Florentiner Altarwerke der ersten Hlfte des
Quattrocento (Berlin, 2001), 55.
[8] Cesare Brandi formulated this hypothesis, and various scholars accepted it,
in Cesare Brandi, Quattrocentisti senesi (Milan, 1949), 243.
[9] Joanna Dunn of the National Gallery of Art conservation department tells
me that, judging from the cracks lining up, it seems a strong possibility that
The Nativity of the Virgin was placed above The Presentation of the Virgin
in the Temple. However, the x-radiographs do not show the wood grain
clearly enough to prove this.
[10] On the typology of vita-icon in Tuscany, see Victor M. Schmidt, Tipologie e

funzioni della pittura senese su tavola, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione
bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo,

Milan, 2003), 541544; Rita Sauer, ... so be ye holy in all manner of

conversation: The Vita Retable, in Kult Bild: Das Altar- und Andachtsbild
von Duccio bis Perugino (Petersberg, 2006), 131176. For vita-icons with
horizontally arranged scenes, see Taddeo di Bartolos panel San
Geminianus Enthroned and Eight Stories of His Legend, or Andrea di
Bartolos panel with the Crucifixion at the center and eight scenes from the
life of Christ and of saints to the sides, formerly in the Stoclet collection in
Brussels. Cf. Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of
Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924),
fig. 354; Pierre Bautier, I primitivi italiani della collezione Stoclet a
Bruxelles, Cronache darte 4 (1927): 315 and fig. 6.
[11] Taddeo di Bartolos San Geminianus dossal (see note 10 above) has been
transferred to a modern panel support with a vertical wood grain and so
cannot be adduced for comparison.
[12] The narrative of the Pseudo-Matthew was supplemented with other

episodes by a German priest named Wernher in the mid-twelfth century. His
Driv liet von der maget (Three Books on the Virgin) is the first source to
mention the story of the division of Joachims worldly goods for charitable
purposes; see Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 4, pt. 2: 5455; W.J. Hoffman, Wernher, in
Marienlexikon, ed. Remigius Bumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St.
Ottilien, 1994), 6:716717.
[13] The scene frescoed by Bartolo in SantAgostino at San Gimignano was

repeated with small variations by the same painter in the predella fragment,
part of the altarpiece commissioned from Bartolo for the church of San
Francesco at Montalcino and now in the local Museo Civico. See Gaudenz
Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei des 14.
Jahrhunderts (Disentis, 1994), figs. 34, 37. The young Andrea probably
collaborated in the execution of this part of the Montalcino altarpiece.
[14] Reproduced in Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur
sienesischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Disentis, 1994), fig. 27.
[15] This lost cycle on the faade of the Ospedale della Scala is now known only
from descriptions in the sources. Various scholars have proposed the
involvement in it not only of the Lorenzetti brothers but also of Simone
Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344); cf. Daniela Gallavotti
Cavallero, Pietro, Ambrogio e Simone, 1335, e una questione di affreschi
perduti, Prospettiva 48 (1987): 6974, and for a recent summary of the
status questionis, see Wolfgang Loseries, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel
LindenauMuseum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps
(Siena, 2008), 130 n. 17.

[16] In manuscript expertises (some of them dated 1934), Giuseppe Fiocco,

Raimond van Marle, Osvald Sirn, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi all
proposed an attribution of the three panels to Bartolo di Fredi. According to
the manuscript opinion of F. Mason Perkins, however, the panels were
attributable not to Bartolo himself but to an exceptionally close and as yet
unidentified pupil. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:4, and copies of the expertises in
NGA curatorial files.
[17] Roberto Longhi made the attribution to Andrea di Bartolo in an undated

expertise most likely written in 1934, like the others cited in the previous
note; see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:4. Bernard Berenson endorsed this proposal (in an
autograph annotation written on the back of a photograph of The Nativity),
though with the specification in great part. Copies in NGA curatorial files.
[18] The dating c. 1400 already appeared in the entry relating to the three
panels in the National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and
Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 3, and was confirmed in the various
successive catalogs of the Gallery, as well as by Fern Rusk Shapley,
Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, xiiixv
Century (London, 1966), 6566; Enzo Carli, I pittori senesi (Siena, 1971), 138;
Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 238; Giulietta
Chelazzi Dini, in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte
(Florence, 1982), 317; Valentina Maderna, ed., Il polittico di Andrea di Bartolo
a Brera restaurato (Florence, 1986), 17; and Philippe Lorentz, De Sienne a
Strasbourg: Posterit dune composition dAmbrogio Lorenzetti, la Nativit
de la Vierge de lHpital Santa Maria della Scala Sienne, in Hommage
Michel Laclotte: Etudes sur la peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance
(Paris, 1994), 125 repro., 126, 127, 130131 n. 45. Mikls Boskovits, Early
Italian Panel Paintings (Budapest, 1966), 40; Andrs Mucsi, Katalog der
Alten Gemaldegalerie des Christlichen Museums zu Esztergom (Budapest,
1975), 42; Eberhard Kasten, Andrea di Bartolo, in Allgemeines
Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter
Meiner (Munich, 1992), 3:512, 514, proposed, instead, a less specific date
for the three panels in the first decade of the fifteenth century.
[19] Laurence B. Kanter, Giorgio di Andrea di Bartolo, Arte cristiana 74 (1986):

22. Corrado Fratini rejected this rather audacious attribution in Pinacoteca
comunale di Citt di Castello, vol. 1, Dipinti, Catalogo regionale dei beni
culturali dellUmbria, ed. Francesco Federico Mancini (Perugia, 1987), 143
144; see also Elisabetta Avanzati, in La Sede storica del Monte dei Paschi di
Siena: Vicende costruttive e opere darte, ed. Francesco Gurrieri and
Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 276280; Michel Laclotte and Esther

Moench, Peinture italienne: Muse du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005),

56; and Andrea De Marchi, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo
generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini,
Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 183
184.
[20] According to G. Fattorini, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie

dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009),
1:238, the painting was possibly decorated with the very same punches as
the Washington stories of the Virgin.
[21] Enzo Carli, Il Museo di Pisa (Pisa, 1974), 6162. Suggested dating: probably
before 1400.
[22] Francesca Pasut, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel LindenauMuseum di

Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008),
104106, with dating c. 13951400.
[23] No. JC Cat. 99; see Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 12501450, in
the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art
(Philadelphia, 2004), 3741. Suggested dating: c. 1394.
[24] Nn. O11.919O11.921. See Olga Pujmanov, Italienische Tafelbilder des

Trecento in der Nationalgalerie Prag (Berlin, 1984), no. 20. Suggested
dating: c. 1400.
[25] No. 133; see Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti
dal xii al xv secolo (Genoa, 1977), 203, with dating to the early years of the
fifteenth century.
[26] Alessandro Cecchi, in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti

darte (Florence, 1982), 328331, with dating to c. 14001410.
[27] See Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of
576, and Antonio Vannini, LOsservanza di Siena: Guida artistica della
chiesa e del convento di San Bernardino allOsservanza (Siena, 2004),
4041.
[28] Hendrik W. van Os, Andrea di Bartolos Assumption of the Virgin, Arts in
Virginia 2 (1971): 5, dated the painting now in Richmond (no. 54.11.3; 230.2
85 cm) in the seventies of the fourteenth century. Gaudenz Freuler,
Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso dAntonio Cafarini, and Sienese
Dominicans in Venice, The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 584, pushed its date
forward to the latter years of the century, given that Ser Palamedes, in
whose memory the painting was commissioned, was still alive in 1394. Art
historians in general, however, have continued to regard the panel as a
youthful work of the artist. See Elisabetta Avanzati, in La Sede storica del
Monte dei Paschi di Siena: Vicende costruttive e opere darte, ed.
Francesco Gurrieri and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 282; Carl Brandon

Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 12501450, in the John G. Johnson Collection

and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 27. The present
writer has long maintained (and still believes) that Andrea di Bartolos stories
of Christ, divided between the museums of Toledo in Ohio, Bologna, and
private collections, probably belong to the Richmond Assumption. It is
generally recognized as a work of the artists full maturity; cf. Andrea De
Marchi, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo generale, vol. 1, Dal
Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero
Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 183184, with a
suggested dating of c. 1420. The common origin of the dispersed predella
and the Richmond panel is suggested both by their stylistic character and
their size. The width of the panel with the Assumption (measuring 230.2
85 cm) matches that of the Toledo Crucifixion (50 84.3 cm) that would in
origin have been placed below it, at the center of the predella. See Mikls
Boskovits and Serena Padovani, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Early
Italian Painting 12901470 (London, 1990), 21.
[29] The miniatures of antiphonary H.1.7 now in the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena
are dated c. 1400; cf. Giulietta Chelazzi Dini, in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature,
pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte (Florence, 1952), 320321; Gaudenz
Freuler, La miniatura senese degli anni 13701420, in La miniatura senese
12701420, ed. Cristina De Benedictis (Milan, 2002), 182186. The
illuminations of a missal, G.III.7 in the same library, are at least in part
probably attributable to Andrea in a slightly earlier phase, as Chelazzi Dini
proposed in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte
(Florence, 1982), 317318.
[30] On the Tuscania polyptych, cf. Luisa Mortari, in La pittura viterbese dal xiv al
xvi secolo: Catalogo delle opere, ed. Italo Faldi and Luisa Mortari (Viterbo,
1954), 2930, and Laurence B. Kanter, Giorgio di Andrea di Bartolo, Arte
cristiana 74 (1986): 1724. Kanters proposed reconstruction of the
altarpiece, and his addition to it of components now situated elsewhere,
seems correct, but it is difficult to share his attribution of it to Giorgio
dAndrea or his dating to the 1420s. This date, formerly accepted also by the
present writer, now seems to me too late and should, I believe, be modified
to 14051410; cf. Mikls Boskovits and Serena Padovani, The Thyssen-
Bornemisza Collection: Early Italian Painting 12901470 (London, 1990), 21.
Gabriele Fattorini came to similar conclusions concerning the date of the
Tuscania polyptych in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:242
249.
[31] Apart from polyptych no. 220 of the Pinacoteca in Siena, generally
considered a late work of Andrea, I refer to the polyptych in SantAngelo in
Vado, now divided between the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and the
Galleria Nazionale in Urbino, and the dispersed predella reconstructed

around the Crucifixion no. 12.6 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York. For these paintings, see Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di
Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 207; Valentina
Maderna, Il polittico di Andrea di Bartolo a Brera, in Il polittico di Andrea di
Bartolo a Brera restaurato, ed. Valentina Maderna (Florence, 1986), 915;
Federico Zeri, in Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings:
Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 12; and Mikls Boskovits
and Serena Padovani, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Early Italian
Painting 12901470 (London, 1990), 1621. In my discussion of this predella
in 1990, I wrongly connected it with two lateral panels of paired saints from
a dispersed triptych, now in a private collection. These panels, Saints Louis
of Toulouse and John the Baptist and John the Evangelist and Francis, now
seem to me relatively early works of the artist, probably datable to the first
decade of the fifteenth century, whereas the predella I had placed in the
period c. 14151420 ought to be closer in date to the latter end of this
spectrum.

2224. The Minneapolis fragment was deaccessioned, and its present
whereabouts are unknown to me. For the fragment no. 63 in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena, cf. Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1,
I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 205.
[33] The somewhat naive compositional device proposed by the painter in the
Nativity of the central panel of the triptych in Siena, namely that of
displacing sharply to the left the little tree in the background to avoid its
branches being concealed by the cusped border of the frame, recalls the
improbable displacementfor the same reasonof the dome to the left
margin of the temple in Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and
Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple in
the National Gallery of Art.
[34] We may further recall as works exemplifying Andreas phase at the turn of
the century a portable triptych in the Brooklyn Museum in New York, no. 34.
839; see Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 12501450, in the John G.
Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia,
2004), 41, and the little panels with saints, formerly belonging to the
museums in Altenburg, Oslo, Oxford, and in private collections; see
Francesca Pasut, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel LindenauMuseum di
Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 107111.
[35] Gold Backs: 12501480 (Turin, 1996), 122, 124; Gabriele Fattorini, in La
collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV,
ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:236249. The painting, cut on
all sides, measures 25.5 21 cm. The fragment at first sight might also seem

the companion panel of these in the Gallery, but its original size must have
been slightly smaller than that of the Washington panels.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting, along with its companions The Nativity of the Virgin and The
Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, was executed on a single-member poplar
panel with vertical grain.[1] The edges of the three panels probably were cropped
slightly. Wooden strips measuring 0.60.8 cm wide have been attached to the
edges along all four sides of each painting. The x-radiographs show three round
marks along the bottom of The Presentation and The Nativity, which may be the
sites of old holes from nails that attached a horizontal batten.
The paintings most likely were executed on a gesso ground. The x-radiographs of
The Presentation suggest the presence of a fabric interlayer beneath the ground,
but such a layer is not evident in the x-radiographs of the other two paintings.
Infrared reflectography (Vidicon)[2] proves the presence of extensive
underdrawing, particularly in the draperies of the figures and the placement of the
architectural forms. Incised lines were used, on the other hand, to delineate the
main contours of the figures, of architectural details, and of the original frame, now
lost, against the gold.
Stephen Pichetto thinned and cradled the panels shortly after their acquisition by
Samuel H. Kress in 1930.[3] X-radiographs made prior to the attachment of the
cradles show extensive worm damage, as well as structural damage in the form of
a large crack in the central area of each panel. A large knot may have caused the
vertical split in The Presentation. The cracks of The Presentation and The Nativity
line up, if the latter is positioned above the former. However, this could be purely
coincidental and may not relate to the original positions of the panels. The painted
surface contains only very small losses, but all panels have been generously
retouched and partially regilded. The inpainting is disturbing, especially in the
faces of the three figures at the center of The Nativity. The frames are modern.
Photographs made at the time of the paintings donation to the National Gallery of
Art show the panels unframed. A note in the Gallerys curatorial files mentions their
reframing in 1944. Before this intervention the spandrels originally covered by the
frame had been regilded and appear as such in the photos published in the 1941
catalog of the Gallery.[4] The cusped inner molding of the present frames follows

approximately the incised lines for the original framing. Pichetto removed
discolored varnish and inpaint during his 1930 treatment of the paintings. In 1955
Mario Modestini again treated The Nativity and Joachim and Anna.[5]
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department identified the wood using optical
microscopy (see report dated September 15, 1988, in NGA conservation
files).

Vidicon camera.
DC, 1979), 1:4.
[4] Reproduced still unframed in Cesare Brandi, Quattrocentisti senesi (Milan,

1949), pl. 9; National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel
H. Kress Collection (Washington, DC, 1959), 36. However, The Presentation
and The Nativity are reproduced with their modern frame in George
Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, 2nd ed. (New York, 1955),
pl. 21.
DC, 1979), 1:4. Kress Foundation records (copies in NGA curatorial files)
mention only that Modestini revived color under white stains...and applied
protective coat.
PROVENANCE
This panel, along with NGA 1939.1.41 and 1939.1.42, are stated to have come from
the collection of a contessa Giustiniani, Genoa;[1] (Count Alessandro Contini-
Bonacossi, Rome); sold July 1930 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2]
gift 1939 to NGA. [1] See the bill of sale described in note 2. No documented
collection of the conti Giustiniani at Genoa seems to have existed, at least in the
early years of the twentieth century. The works that Elisabeth Gardner ( A
Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private Collections, ed. Chiara Ceschi and
Katharine Baetjer, 4 vols., Vicenza, 1998-2011: 2(2002):183) cites as formerly the
property of the contessa Giustiniani almost all seem to have been purchased on

the art market shortly before 1930, when Contini Bonacossi sold them to Samuel H.
Kress. The contessa is thus more likely to have been a dealer, or agent, than a
collector. See also Mikls Boskovits and David Alan Brown, Italian Paintings of the
Fifteenth Century, National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue, Washington and
New York, 2003: 616 n. 3. [2] The painting is included on a bill of sale dated 15 July
1930 that included eight paintings from the Giustiniani collection (copy in NGA
curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1941 National Gallery of Art. Book of Illustrations. Washington, 1941: 51

(repro.), 236.
Art, Washington, 1941: 3, no. 154.
1942 Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 242,
repro. 53.
1949 Brandi, Cesare. Quattrocentisti senesi. Milan, 1949: 243.
1959 Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 36, repro.
1964 Mojzer, Mikls. "Vier sienesische Quattrocento-Tafeln des Christlichen
Museums zu Esztergom." Pantheon 22 (1964): 2, repro.
1965 Boskovits, Mikls, Mikls Mojzer, and Andrs Mucsi. Das Christliche
Museum von Esztergom (Gran). Budapest, 1965: 44.
1965 Boskovits, Mikls, Mikls Mojzer, Andrs Mucsi, Alfrd Schiller, Elizabeth
Hoch, and Susanna Horn. Christian Art in Hungary: Collections from the
Esztergom Christian Museum. Budapest, 1965: 52.
1965 Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 7.
1966 Boskovits, Mikls. Early Italian Panel Paintings. Budapest, 1966: 40.
1968 European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art,
Washington, 1968: 1, repro.
1971 Carli, Enzo. I pittori senesi. Siena, 1971: 138.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 7, 645.

1975 European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery

of Art, Washington, 1975: 12, repro.
1975 Mucsi, Andrs. Katalog der Alten Gemaldegalerie des Christlichen
Museums zu Esztergom. Budapest, 1975: 42.
of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:4-5; 2:pl. 2.
1981 Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese del Trecento. 1st ed. Milan, 1981: 238.
Meissner. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1983-1990: 2(1986):974, 976.
1984 Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York,
1984: 82, no. 37, color repro.
1985 European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art,
1986 Kanter, Laurence B. "Giorgio di Andrea di Bartolo." Arte cristiana 74
(1986): 21-22, 24, repro. 26.
Restaurato. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Florence, 1986: 17.
1988 Gurrieri, Francesco, and Luciano Bellosi, eds. La Sede storica del Monte
dei Paschi di Siena: vicende costruttive e opere darte. Florence, 1988:
276.
1991 Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta. "Andrea di Bartolo." In Enciclopedia dellarte
medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome,
1991-2002: 1(1991):595.
Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 3(1992):512, 514.
1994 Lorentz, Philippe. "De Sienne a Strasbourg: posterit dune composition
dAmbrogio Lorenzetti, la Nativit de la Vierge de lHpital Santa Maria
della Scala Sienne." In Hommage Michel Laclotte: Etudes sur la
peinture du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance. Edited by Luciano Bellosi,
Pierre Rosenberg, Cecile Scaillirz, and Dominique Thibault. Milan and
Paris, 1994: 130-131 n. 45.
1997 Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina Sani.
Sienese Painting From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque. New York,
1997: 200-201.
1997 Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta. "La cosidetta crisi della met del Trecento (1348-
1390)." In Pittura senese. Edited by Giulietta Chelazzi Dini, Alessandro
Angelini and Bernardina Sani. 1st ed. Milan, 1997: 200.

Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 69.

secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 2 vols. Florence, 2009: 1:238.

Andrea di Bartolo
Madonna of Humility, The

Blessing Christ, Two
Angels, and a Donor
[obverse]
c. 1380/1390
tempera on panel
painted surface: 28.4 17 cm (11 3/16 6 11/16 in.)
overall: 30 18.6 0.8 cm (11 13/16 7 5/16 5/16 in.)
framed: 52.1 x 34.3 x 7.6 cm (20 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 3 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.20.a
ENTRY
The painting belongs to an uncommon genre of Byzantine origin of devotional

icons painted on both sides.[1] It is a simplified version of the portable diptych in
which, as in the example discussed here, the Madonna and Child was usually
represented on the obverse, and Christ on the Cross on the reverse.[2] The
peculiarity here, however, is the presentation of the Virgin according to the
iconographic type of the Madonna of Humility: Mary is humbly seated on the
ground instead of on a throne. Yet at the same time she is venerated as Queen of
Heaven by two angels who flank her in flight, and blessed from above by the half-
length figure of Christ, who appears in a trefoil, surrounded by seraphim.[3] On the
reverse of the panel is an isolated image of Christ on the Cross, unattended by the
usual figures of mourners, soldiers, or onlookers who allude to the event of the
Crucifixion. That the image was intended as a panel for private devotion is
underlined by the presence of the minuscule figure of the female donor kneeling in
front of the Madonna to the right; some scholars have identified her as a nun.[4]
At the time of the panels first emergence in Florence in the 1920s, art historians
expressed rather disparate views about it. Roberto Longhi, in a manuscript
expertise probably dating to the years 19251930,[5] considered the image of the
Madonna of Humility, The Blessing Christ, Two Angels, and a Donor [obverse] 60

Madonna likely a work of a close follower of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from
1315; died 1344), identifiable with Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) or with
Simones brother Donato, whereas that of Christ on the Cross on the reverse
seemed to him a later addition by a painter close to Paolo di Giovanni Fei (Sienese,
c. 1335/1345 - 1411) dating to the final years of the Trecento.[6] In 1934, similar
expertises were sought from other leading art historians of the time. F. Mason
Perkins, followed by Giuseppe Fiocco and Wilhelm Suida, attributed it to Andrea di
Bartolo; Bernard Berenson also accepted this attribution. For his part Adolfo
Venturi came to the conclusion that it was an autograph work of Simone Martini,
while Raimond van Marle spoke of a close follower of Simone, probably
identifiable with his brother Donato.[7] The catalogs of the National Gallery of Art
(1941, 1959) accepted Longhis proposal.[8] In a polemical article (unpublished),
Richard Offner contradicted this, preferring to leave the panel in anonymity.[9]
George Martin Richter (1941) also rejected Lippo Memmis hand, arguing for an
attribution to Andrea di Vanni (Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413) in a youthful phase, when he
was still working in Lippos shop.[10] Charles Seymour and Hanns Swarzenski
(1946) also placed the attribution to Lippo in doubt.[11] Nonetheless, Andrea di
Bartolos responsibility for the execution of both sides of the painting was gradually
recognized, beginning with Millard Meiss (1936, 1951), followed by the catalogs of
the Gallery (1965, 1985) and Fern Rusk Shapley (1966).[12] All the more recent
contributions to the literature accepted this attribution, with the exception of
Gaudenz Freuler (2009), who considered the image of the Madonna of Humility as
executed by Bartolo di Fredi, possibly assisted by his son Andrea di Bartolo.[13]
The date of the painting, however, has given rise to considerable divergence of
opinion. It was thought to have been executed by Memmi as early as c. 13301340
in the first catalog of the Gallery (1941).[14] But in the later catalogs of 1965 and 1975
and in Shapley 1966 it was dated to c. 1415.[15] In the meantime Meiss (1951)
supported a dating to c. 1400, while Hendrik W. van Os (1969, 1974) offered the
view that it must have been painted before the end of the fourteenth century.[16]
Shapley (1979), returning to the question, concluded that the date may be in the
1380s.[17] For his part Creighton E. Gilbert (1984) seems to have favored a later
dating: around 1394.[18] Freuler (1987), van Os (1989, 1990), and Daniele Benati
(1999) accepted this hypothesis, as well as Gilberts suggestion that the painting
was commissioned by the Dominicans of the monastery of Corpus Domini in
Venice, consecrated in 1394, and connected its execution to that year.[19] In 1994,
however, van Os seemed to have abandoned this position, preferring a dating to
c. 1415.[20] Bearing in mind that the connection of the panel with the Dominican

nuns of Venice is purely conjectural and seems contradicted by the fact that the
donor in our panel is not dressed in the habit of that order,[21] the terminus a quo
of 1394 should now be excluded from discussion of our panel.
Some help in establishing the panels date can, however, be derived from an
analysis of its punched decoration, undertaken by Mojmir S. Frinta (1998).[22] This
scholar identified the presence in our panel of some punches already used in
paintings produced in the shop of Bartolo di Fredi, as well as in youthful paintings
by Andrea: I refer in particular to the polyptych in the museum at Buonconvento,
probably dating to 1397,[23] and various paintings that art historians have
unanimously assigned to Andreas initial phase.[24] But especially significant to me
are the stylistic affinities with works by Bartolo dating to the mid-1380s or shortly
after, in which signs of Andreas assistance can, I believe, be glimpsed: Adoration
of the Magi, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, to which the Adoration of
the Cross now divided between the museums of Altenburg and Charlottesville
formerly belonged,[25] and Massacre of the Innocents in the Walters Art Museum
in Baltimore, probably part of the polyptych executed by Bartolos shop for the
church of SantAgostino at San Gimignano in 1388.[26] In these paintings the
harsher features of Bartolos style are softened, the swirling calligraphy is
attenuated, and the emotional tensions give way to a rather somnolent tranquility
whichin conjunction with the close morphological affinitiessuggests Andreas
participation. The Christ on the Cross of the reverse, though more hasty in
execution, recalls the similar passage in the Adoration of the Cross, no. 50 in the
Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg, of which it seems indeed a simplified version. The
Madonna of Humility of the obverse, on the other hand, with its minute, exquisitely
chased detailing, reveals close affinities especially with the figures of the mothers
in the Massacre in Baltimore,[27] suggesting it was a work realized by Andrea,
when he was still working in his fathers shop.
It may be added that the composition of the Madonna of Humility evidently

enjoyed considerable success. The artist replicated it many times.[28] The example
in the Gallery is likely to be one of the earliest, together with the signed version
published by Berenson, its whereabouts now unknown.[29] In the later versions
the figure of Mary seems to expand to fill the painted surface, which is enclosed
within an arch decorated on the inside with cusping and sometimes with figures of
the Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate placed in medallions in
the two upper corners.[30] At the same time, the gold-tooled carpet that covers the
floor is replaced by a flowering meadow; the design becomes more simplified,

while the line of the hem of the Virgins cloak is wavier; and an increased number
of angels surround the protagonists.[31] Such late Gothic developments, however,
are characteristic of far later phases in the artists career. Here he is still strongly
influenced by the figurative formulae of his father. This is evident both in the
paintings ornamental decoration and in its stylistic features, both indebted to
Trecento models.
NOTES
[1] See Annemarie Weyl Carr, Bilateral Icons, in The Oxford Dictionary of
Byzantium, ed. Aleksandr Petrovich Kazhdan (New York, 1980), 2:980.
[2] This type of panel, painted on both sides, is exemplified by no. 1062B in the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin, a work by Francesco di Vannuccio, though there
the two sides are reversed: Christ on the Cross Flanked by Mourners and
Devotees is painted on what can be considered the obverse, while
Madonna and Child with Saints, painted on glass, is on the reverse; Mikls
Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog
der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 3537. According to
Laurence Kanters plausible hypothesis (written communication), the
Washington panel was originally a reliquary, accompanied on the obverse
by roundels containing relics.
[3] While the presence of angels in adoration alludes to the theme of the regina
coeli, the image of the Christus Logos probably refers to that of the
Incarnation; cf. Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death (Princeton, 1951), 153154; Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und
120121.
[4] Creighton Gilbert (1984) identified the donor as a Dominican nun. From this
he inferred that the painting was commissioned by a monastery of this
order; various scholars accepted his argument, but Victor Schmidt (2005)
refuted it, rightly pointing out the impossibility of recognizing a member of
the Dominican order in a lady wearing a long, white headdress which also
functions as a cloak. The figure can more plausibly be identified as a
matron or widow. See Creighton E. Gilbert, Tuscan Observants and
Painters in Venice, ca. 1400, in Interpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia
dellarte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice, 1984),
109120; Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal
Devotion in Tuscany, 12501400 (Florence, 2005), 265 n. 82.
[5] Roberto Longhi, who had been a consultant of Contini at least since the
early 1920s, presumably wrote his expertise, in Italian, immediately after

Continis purchase of the panel c. 1925.
[6] Longhi, in his letter to Contini, declared that the Madonna of Humility
senza dubbio una vera e propria gemma della pittura senese della prima
met del Trecento al seguito immediato di Simone Martini (is without a
doubt a true and proper gem of Sienese painting of the first half of the
thirteenth century in the immediate following of Simone Martini). The
painting, in his view, had been painted by the same hand as the panel with a
similar Madonna of Humility in the Gemldegalerie, Staatliche Muzeen zu
Berlin (no. 1072), then attributed to Lippo Memmi, or to Simones little-known
brother, Donato Martini. According to Longhi, the image of Christ on the
Cross on the back of the panel was painted by an entirely different hand,
some forty years after the Madonna.
[7] See copies of the expertises in the NGA curatorial files. Only Wilhelm
Suidas is dated, to August 1935.
[8] National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture

(Washington, DC, 1941), 133134; National Gallery of Art, Paintings and
Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (Washington, DC, 1959), 34
repro.
[9] Richard Offners long article, written on the occasion of the opening of the
National Gallery of Art, only got as far as galley proofs (in August 1941) but
was never in fact published. Copies of the proofs are kept in the archive of
the Corpus of Florentine Painting, Florence. Commenting on cat. 1, Offner
wrote, The attribution to Lippo can only be accounted a piece of ingenuous
wishfulness. The panel is not by Lippo simply because it shares none of his
essential artistic characteristics.... It lacks...any suggestion of Lippos facade-
like, immobilized composition.... How vague...are the bases of attribution
may be judged from the wide discrepancy of opinion on the authorship...
between Lippo and Donato (the latter being as shadowy a figure as is
known to art history)...and Andrea di Bartolo. I should incline to agree with
the tendency of the latter opinion, if it implied a later dating than Lippos, but
one must stand resolutely against the attribution.
[11] Charles Seymour and Hanns Swarzenski, A Madonna of Humility and

Quercias Early Style, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, no. 30 (1946): 139.
[12] Millard Meiss, The Madonna of Humility, The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 437,
n. 8; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death
(Princeton, 1951), 2223, n. 34; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue
of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 7; National
Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington,
DC, 1985), 18; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 66, 67.

[13] After the delivery of the present text to the Gallery, I realized with pleasure
that Gaudenz Freuler, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:252,
also considered Madonna of Humility, The Blessing Christ, Two Angels, and
a Donor [obverse] a painting executed not later than the 1390s. On the
other hand, I am unable to see in it any trace of Bartolos hand, even if the
young Andrea was evidently influenced by his fathers style.

(Washington, DC, 1941), 133134.
[15] National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and

Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1975), 10;
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 67.
[16] Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death
(Princeton, 1951), 2223, n. 34; Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und
18, 120, 187; Hendrik W. van Os, Andrea di Bartolos Madonna of Humility,
M: A Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 6, no. 3 (1974):
21, 25.
DC, 1979), 1:3.
[18] Gilbert believed that the woman represented as donor was a Dominican
nun, who appeared in an undress costume, without the outer elements
worn in public, that is, the black mantle. Hence it is very attractive to
suggest [he continued] that the Washington panels [the images painted on
obverse and reverse] are the survivors of the very set blessed by Cardinal
Dominici in 1394, at the [consecration of the] new observant convent in
Venice. Creighton E. Gilbert, Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice,
ca. 1400, in Interpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia dellarte in onore di
Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice, 1984), 114116. Some later
authors considered this hypothesis, advanced by the scholar with caution,
almost a demonstrable fact.
Sienese Dominicans in Venice, The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 577; Hendrik W.
van Os et al., eds., The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland, trans. Michael
Hoyle (Florence, 1989), 29, 32; Hendrik W. van Os, Sienese Altarpieces
12151460: Form, Content, Function, vol. 2, 13441460 (Groningen, 1990),
76; Daniele Benati, in Da Bernardo Daddi a Giorgio Vasari, ed. Maria Pia
Mannini (Florence, 1999), 56.
[20] Hendrik W. van Os et al., The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in
Europe, 13001500, trans. Michael Hoyle (London, 1994), 74.

[22] Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and
Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 44, 48, 224, 230, 351, 479.
[23] Sources mention the fragmentary polyptych now in the Museo darte sacra
della Val dArbia at Buonconvento as an altarpiece signed by Andrea di
Bartolo and also furnished with a fragmentary date that could still be
deciphered in the second half of the nineteenth century as 1397; Serena
Padovani, in Serena Padovani and Bruno Santi, Buonconvento, museo
darte sacra della Val dArbia (Genoa, 1981), 2325. There is now no trace
of the inscription, but the proposed reading of the date is quite compatible
with the stylistic features of the work.
[24] We may cite as paintings belonging to Andreas debut the Stories of Saint
Galgano now divided between the Museo Nazionale in Pisa and the
National Gallery in Dublin; the altarpiece in Buonconvento (see above note
23); and the portable triptychs in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena and the
National Gallery in Prague. See, respectively, Enzo Carli, Il Museo di Pisa
(Pisa, 1974), 6162; Homan Potterton, Illustrated Summary Catalogue of
Paintings (Dublin, 1981), 6; Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena,
vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 203; Olga Pujmanov,
Italienische Tafelbilder des Trecento in der Nationalgalerie Prag (Berlin,
1984), pl. 20.
[25] Wolfgang Loseries, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel LindenauMuseum di

Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and JohannesTripps (Siena, 2008), 6672.
[26] Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei
[27] Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, no. 37.1018; Federico Zeri, Italian Paintings
in the Walters Art Gallery, ed. Ursula E.M. Cracken, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1976),
1:4850.
Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), 187188, figs. 6274, cited and
reproduced several versions of the composition. One of them, however,
formerly belonging to the Stoclet collection in Brussels (fig. 66), is of
dubious authenticity.
[29] Bernard Berenson, Lost Sienese Trecento Paintings, 4, International

Studio 98, no. 404 (1931): 3031.
[30] As in the panel signed by Andrea, formerly in the Ehrich Gallery in New
York. See Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der
sienesischen Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), fig. 67.
Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), figs. 62, 63, as well as the panel

formerly with Moretti in Florence: Daniele Benati, in Da Bernardo Daddi a

TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support (contrary to Shapley 1966, 1979) is a single piece of wood, with a
vertical grain and about 1 cm thick, painted on both sides.[1] The panel has a slight
convex warp relative to the obverse. It has been cut down along its upper edge.
The top of the original gable is truncated, and in order to make the outer shape
rectangular, triangular insets were added on both sides (approximately 1.5 cm on
the top and 3 cm on the vertical edge on the left, and 1 cm along the top and 2 cm
on the vertical edge on the right, as seen from the front). The original engaged
frame has been lost and replaced by a modern one.
The painting was executed on the usual gesso ground, over which a thin red bole
was applied in the gilded areas of the obverse. The reverse was silver gilt.[2] An
old photograph [fig. 1] [3] shows that the painted surface on the obverse ended
approximately 1 cm from the lateral and lower edges and that the unpainted area at
the sides of the gable was at that time gessoed. A later photo, probably from
c. 1940/1941, proves that in the meantime the upper corners had been
regilded.[4] On the reverse the painted area extends to the edges of the panel.
The x-radiograph [fig. 2] shows impressions of three roundels on each side of the
gable, the upper pair cropped in half at the top of the panel. This is evidence that
the panel functioned as a reliquary, containing in its now lost engaged frame seven
circular cavities (allowing for one cut off at the top of the gable) to receive relics.
No underdrawing was found during an infrared examination (Vidicon),[5] but
incised lines mark the placement of the principal figures. A green undermodeling is
visible beneath the flesh of the figures on both the obverse and the reverse. The
painted surface of the obverse is fairly well preserved, with some inpainting in the
donors robe; some small, scattered paint losses; and some abrasion in the
Madonnas robe. On the reverse the silver gilded area is heavily rubbed and the
image itself is damaged by scratches, paint losses, and wormholes.

fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 1927, Andrea di Bartolo,

Madonna of Humility, the Blessing Christ, Two Angels,
and a Donor, c. 1380/1390, tempera on panel, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection.
fig. 2 X-radiograph, Andrea di Bartolo, Madonna and
Image: Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence
Child, c. 1415, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art,
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Stephen Pichetto examined this picture in 1940 in response to a request

made to him by the Gallerys then chief curator, John Walker. Pichetto was
the restorer for the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and he was specifically
asked to clear up whether the Madonna of Humility and the Christ on the
Cross were painted on the same panel. Pichettos notes indicate that he
determined that the support was one piece of wood, painted on both sides.
(Walkers letter of October 1940 and Pichettos documentation are in NGA

curatorial files.) It is unclear why Fern Rusk Shapley stated that the paintings
were executed on separate panels. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from
1966), 66, 67; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:34. The painting was examined again in 1988,
2008, and 2011, and it was consistently determined to be one panel; see
report dated August 31, 1988, in NGA conservation files.
[2] Using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), the NGA scientific research
department analyzed the gilding, and it was found to be silver (see
forthcoming report in NGA conservation files).
[3] This photo, probably taken sometime before the acquisition of the painting
by Samuel H. Kress in 1927 (see Provenance), belonged to Roberto Longhi
and is now in the archive of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi in Florence.
[4] During his 1940 examination of the painting, Pichetto removed the modern
engaged frame and made sketches of the placement of the image on its
wooden support, indicating also the pieces of new wood added to the panel
in the upper corners (see NGA curatorial files).

Vidicon camera.
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Italy, c. 1920.[1] (Alessandro Contini, Rome [from 1930, Count
Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi]); sold October 1927 to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955],
New York;[2] transferred 1929 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift
1939 to NGA. [1] In his expertise dated 8 August 1934, commissioned from him by
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (copy in the NGA curatorial files), F. Mason Perkins
states that he had seen the painting for the first time in an Italian private collection
fifteen years earlier. [2] The bill of sale for sculpture, maiolica, furniture, antique
velvet, and several paintings, including a "Madonna and Child by Lippo
Memmi...given to Donato Martini by some experts," is dated 5 October 1927 (copy
in NGA curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
n. 8.


Art, Washington, 1941: 133-134, no. 131, as by Lippo Memmi (?).
repro. 153, as by Lippo Memmi (?).
1946 Meiss, Millard. "Italian Primitives at Konopit." The Art Bulletin 28 (1946):
6, fig. 4.
1946 Seymour, Charles, and Hanns Swarzenski. "A Madonna of Humility and
Quercias Early Style." Gazette des Beaux-Arts Ser. 6, vol. 30 (1946): 139,
fig. 9.
Princeton, 1951: 22-23, n. 34, 134, fig. 131.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 34, repro., as by Lippo Memmi (?).
sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 18, 120, 187, pl. 10a,
fig. 64.
in Virginia 2 (1971): 4 (repro.), 5.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 6, 228, 346, 645.
1974 Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolos Madonna of Humility." M: A
Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 6, no. 3 (1974):
21, 24 (repro.), 25
of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: I:3-4, II:pl. 1.

Meissner. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1983-1990: 2(1986):976.

1984 Gilbert, Creighton E. "Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice, ca.
1400." in Interpretazioni Veneziane: studi di storia dellarte in onore di
Michelangelo Muraro. Edited by David Rosand. Venice, 1984: 111 (repro.),
114-116.
1984 Os, Hendrik W. van. Sienese Altarpieces 1215-1460. Form, Content,
Function. 2 vols. Groningen, 1984-1990: 2(1990):repro. 76.
Restaurato. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Florence, 1986: 10-11, 17.
1987 Freuler, Gaudenz. "Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso dAntonio Cafarini,
and Sienese Dominicans in Venice." The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 577.
1989 Os, Hendrik W. van, J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, C. E. de Jong-Janssen,
and Charlotte Wiefhoff, eds. The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland.
Translated by Michael Hoyle. Florence, 1989: 29, 32.
1994 Os, Hendrik W. van, Eugne Hone, Hans M. J. Nieuwdorp, and
Bernhard Ridderbos. The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in
Europe, 1300-1500. Translated by Michael Hoyle. London, 1994: 74,
repro.
1999 Holmes, Megan. Fra Filippo Lippi, The Carmelite Painter. New Haven
and London, 1999: repro. 209.
1999 Mannini, Maria Pia, ed. Da Bernardo Daddi a Giorgio Vasari. Exh. cat.
Galleria Moretti, 26 September 1999. Florence, 1999: 56.
2003 Hyman, Timothy. Sienese Painting: The Art of a City-Republic (1278-
1477). London, 2003: 124, fig. 97.
in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 222-223, 265 n. 82.
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 2 vols. Florence, 2009: 1:250, 252, repro. 253.
2015 Bowron, Edgar Peters. Samuel H. Kress and His Collection of Italian
Renaissance Paintings. In A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting
Italian Renaissance Paintings in America ed. Inge Reist. (The Frick
Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America, 2)
University Park, Pennsylvania, 2015: 110, color fig. 47.

Andrea di Bartolo
The Nativity of the Virgin

c. 1400/1405
overall: 46.7 33.9 0.6 cm (18 3/8 13 3/8 1/4 in.)
framed: 48.3 x 36.8 x 4.1 cm (19 x 14 1/2 x 1 5/8 in.)
ENTRY
The three panels in the National Gallery of Art collection (this work, Joachim and
Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple, and The Presentation
of the Virgin in the Temple) form part of a larger series of scenes from the
childhood of Mary, of which a fourth component is also known: Joachim Leaving
Jerusalem now in the Keresztny Mzeum at Esztergom in Hungary [fig. 1].[1] Since
two of the episodes, Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to
the Temple and Joachim Leaving Jerusalem, are seldom found represented in art,
there are good reasons to assume that the sequence would have originally
comprised at least four other, more commonly illustrated scenes, namely, the
Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, the Annunciation to Joachim (and/or to
Anna), the Meeting at the Golden Gate, and the Betrothal of the Virgin.[2] These
(and possibly other) scenes would have accompanied a central image of the
Madonna and Child,[3] or of Saint Anne with the Madonna and Child,[4] a
Coronation of the Virgin,[5] or a theme such as the Annunciation or Pentecost.[6] It
is difficult, therefore, to reconstruct the dismembered and dispersed altarpiece of
which our three panels would have formed part, also because we do not know
exactly how the surviving scenes from the life of the Virgin were related to the
main image of the altarpiece. The fact that the grain of the wooden support is
vertical would seem to exclude the proposition that they are fragments of a
predella,[7] and the hypothesis advanced in the past, that our panels could be
fragments of a reliquary cupboard, seems to have no foundation.[8] They could
have been fragments of a vita-icon type panel, with a whole-length figure of the
Madonna and Child flanked by a vertically arranged series of scenes of her life.[9]
The Nativity of the Virgin 72


Such an image, however, would appear decidedly old-fashioned in Siena after the
mid-fourteenth century. A more likely alternative format is suggested by the cases
in which Sienese painters of the late fourteenth century, such as Taddeo di Bartolo
or Andrea di Bartolo himself,[10] produced paintings in a form similar to thirteenth-
century dossals, with a large-scale representation at the center, flanked by
narrative scenes in two superimposed orders [fig. 2] (see also Reconstruction). A
round-arched termination, enriched on the inside with cusped moldings, would be
very appropriate for this kind of altarpiece. In Siena in this period, and in Tuscany in
general, the wood grain of the support in a vertical panel is invariably aligned
vertically, and in a horizontal panel horizontally. It cannot be excluded, of course,
that the painting was realized during the artists stay in Venice or in the Marche
and not in Siena, as Laurence Kanter, in correspondence, suggests. He points out
that carpentry practice in the Venetian territories frequently aligned panels parallel
to the shorter axis, so in the case of a horizontal altarpiece the wood grain would
run vertically.[11] He further notes that the incised profiles of the original frame
moldings on our panels argue for a Venetian provenance. In Tuscany, engaged
frames were applied before the panels were gessoed or gilt. In Venice, they were
added afterward, and their profiles are often found inscribed on the picture surface
as a guide to the painter.


Esztergom.




to the Temple. Another comparable work [34] is the Adoration of the Magi now in


COMPARATIVE FIGURES


Esztergom, Hungary


RECONSTRUCTION

c. Joachim Leaving Jerusalem (Entry fig. 1)
e. Lost
NOTES


restoration.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 4, pt. 2: 3854.
188221.
1994), 3245.






Ottilien, 1994), 6:716717.

involvement in it not only of the Lorenzetti brothers but also of Simone
Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344); cf. Daniela Gallavotti
Cavallero, Pietro, Ambrogio e Simone, 1335, e una questione di affreschi
perduti, Prospettiva 48 (1987): 6974, and for a recent summary of the
status questionis, see Wolfgang Loseries, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel
(Siena, 2008), 130 n. 17.








184.

before 1400.

104106, with dating c. 13951400.

dating: c. 1400.
fifteenth century.

4041.



(Florence, 1982), 317318.
249.


spectrum.



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting, along with its companions The Presentation of the Virgin in the
Temple and Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the
Temple, was executed on a single-member poplar panel with vertical grain.[1] The
edges of the three panels probably were cropped slightly. Wooden strips
measuring 0.60.8 cm wide have been attached to the edges along all four sides
of each painting. The x-radiographs show three round marks along the bottom of
The Presentation and The Nativity, which may be the sites of old holes from nails
that attached a horizontal batten.


TECHNICAL NOTES
files).

Vidicon camera.
DC, 1979), 1:4.

pl. 21.
protective coat.
PROVENANCE


curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(repro.), 236.
repro. 53.
1949 Brandi, Cesare. Quattrocentisti senesi. Milan, 1949: 243, pl. 9.
1955 Ferguson, George. Signs and Symbols in Christian Art. 2nd ed. New
York, 1955: pl. 21.
Museums zu Esztergom." Pantheon 22 (1964): 1, 2 (repro.), 6 n. 5.
1966 Schiller, Gertrud. Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst. 6 vols. Gtersloh,
1966-1990: 4, pt. 2:64, 65, 71, 246, 316, fig. 520.
1971 Carli, Enzo. I pittori senesi. Siena, 1971: 138, fig. 123.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 7, 300, 645.
1981 Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese del Trecento. 1st ed. Milan, 1981: 238, fig.
279.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 313, 317.
cat. Musee du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 280, 284.
(1986): 21-22, 24, repro. 26.
1988 Gurrieri, Francesco, and Luciano Bellosi, eds. La Sede storica del Monte
dei Paschi di Siena: vicende costruttive e opere darte. Florence, 1988:
276.
1991-2002: 1(1991):595.
Paris, 1994: 125 (repro.), 126, 127, 130-131 n. 45.


1997: 200-201.


Andrea di Bartolo
The Presentation of the

Virgin in the Temple
c. 1400/1405
overall: 45.7 33.8 0.6 cm (18 13 5/16 1/4 in.)
framed: 48.2 x 36.8 x 4.1 cm (19 x 14 1/2 x 1 5/8 in.)
ENTRY
The three panels in the National Gallery of Art collection (this work, Joachim and
Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple, and The Nativity of the
Virgin) form part of a larger series of scenes from the childhood of Mary, of which a
fourth component is also known: Joachim Leaving Jerusalem now in the
Keresztny Mzeum at Esztergom in Hungary [fig. 1].[1] Since two of the episodes,
Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple and
Joachim Leaving Jerusalem, are seldom found represented in art, there are good
reasons to assume that the sequence would have originally comprised at least four
other, more commonly illustrated scenes, namely, the Expulsion of Joachim from
the Temple, the Annunciation to Joachim (and/or to Anna), the Meeting at the
Golden Gate, and the Betrothal of the Virgin.[2] These (and possibly other) scenes
would have accompanied a central image of the Madonna and Child,[3] or of Saint
Anne with the Madonna and Child,[4] a Coronation of the Virgin,[5] or a theme such
as the Annunciation or Pentecost.[6] It is difficult, therefore, to reconstruct the
dismembered and dispersed altarpiece of which our three panels would have
formed part, also because we do not know exactly how the surviving scenes from
the life of the Virgin were related to the main image of the altarpiece. The fact that
the grain of the wooden support is vertical would seem to exclude the proposition
that they are fragments of a predella,[7] and the hypothesis advanced in the past,
that our panels could be fragments of a reliquary cupboard, seems to have no
foundation.[8] They could have been fragments of a vita-icon type panel, with a
The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple 90


whole-length figure of the Madonna and Child flanked by a vertically arranged

series of scenes of her life.[9] Such an image, however, would appear decidedly
old-fashioned in Siena after the mid-fourteenth century. A more likely alternative
format is suggested by the cases in which Sienese painters of the late fourteenth
century, such as Taddeo di Bartolo or Andrea di Bartolo himself,[10] produced
paintings in a form similar to thirteenth-century dossals, with a large-scale
representation at the center, flanked by narrative scenes in two superimposed
orders [fig. 2] (see also Reconstruction). A round-arched termination, enriched on
the inside with cusped moldings, would be very appropriate for this kind of
altarpiece. In Siena in this period, and in Tuscany in general, the wood grain of the
support in a vertical panel is invariably aligned vertically, and in a horizontal panel
horizontally. It cannot be excluded, of course, that the painting was realized during
the artists stay in Venice or in the Marche and not in Siena, as Laurence Kanter, in
correspondence, suggests. He points out that carpentry practice in the Venetian
territories frequently aligned panels parallel to the shorter axis, so in the case of a
horizontal altarpiece the wood grain would run vertically.[11] He further notes that
the incised profiles of the original frame moldings on our panels argue for a
Venetian provenance. In Tuscany, engaged frames were applied before the panels
were gessoed or gilt. In Venice, they were added afterward, and their profiles are
often found inscribed on the picture surface as a guide to the painter.



Esztergom.




to the Temple. Another comparable work[34] is the Adoration of the Magi now in


COMPARATIVE FIGURES


Esztergom, Hungary


RECONSTRUCTION

c. Joachim Leaving Jerusalem (fig. 1)
e. Lost
NOTES


restoration.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 4, pt. 2: 3854.
188221.
1994), 3245.






Ottilien, 1994), 6:716717.

involvement in it not only of the Lorenzetti brothers but also of ; cf. Daniela
Gallavotti Cavallero, Pietro, Ambrogio e Simone, 1335, e una questione di
affreschi perduti, Prospettiva 48 (1987): 6974, and for a recent summary of
the status questionis, see Wolfgang Loseries, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel
(Siena, 2008), 130 n. 17.







184.

before 1400.

104106, with dating c. 13951400.

dating: c. 1400.
fifteenth century.

4041.


(Florence, 1982), 317318.
249.



spectrum.



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting, along with its companions The Nativity of the Virgin and Joachim
and Anna Giving Food to the Poor and Offerings to the Temple, was executed on a
single-member poplar panel with vertical grain.[1] The edges of the three panels
probably were cropped slightly. Wooden strips measuring 0.60.8 cm wide have
been attached to the edges along all four sides of each painting. The x-
radiographs show three round marks along the bottom of The Presentation and
The Nativity, which may be the sites of old holes from nails that attached a
horizontal batten.


TECHNICAL NOTES
files).

Vidicon camera.
DC, 1979), 1:4.

pl. 21.
protective coat.
PROVENANCE


curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(repro.), 236.
Art, Washington, 1941: 3, no. 152, as The Presentation in the Temple.
repro. 53, as The Presentation in the Temple.
1944 Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New
York, 1944: 23, repro., as The Presentation in the Temple.
1949 Brandi, Cesare. Quattrocentisti senesi. Milan, 1949: 243.
York, 1955: pl. 22.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 36, repro., as The Presentation in the
Temple.
Museums zu Esztergom." Pantheon 22 (1964): 2 (repro.), 6 n. 5.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 6, 300, 645.
(1986): 21-22, 24, repro. 28.
1991-2002: 1(1991):595.
Paris, 1994: 130-131 n. 45.
1997: 200-201.



2008 Entre tradition et modernit: peinture italienne des XIVe et XVe sicles.
Exh. cat. Galerie G. Sarti, Paris; Frstlich Liechtensteinsche
Gemldegalerie, Vienna. Paris, 2008: 117.


Bulgarini, Bartolomeo
Also known as
Bulgarino, Bartolomeo di
Italian, c. 1300 - 1378
BIOGRAPHY
Bartolomeo Bulgarini was one of the most renowned Sienese painters in the
decades spanning the mid-fourteenth century. According to Giorgio Vasari
(Florentine, 1511 - 1574) (though he wrongly transcribed his name), he was a disciple
of Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345), who wrought many panels in
Siena and other places in Italy.[1] Documents mentioning Bartolomeo appear no
earlier than 1338 when, as in various succeeding years, he received payments for
having painted the wooden covers of the account books of the office of the
Biccherna, or Treasury, in Siena (so-called tavolette di Biccherna). A Pistoian
document of c. 13481349 cites him among the best Tuscan painters of the
period.[2] Various commissions (pictura unius tovaglie) for the Palazzo Pubblico,
seat of communal power in Siena, in 1345, the painting of a Madonna for a city
gate, the Porta Camollia, in the same city in 1349, and appointment to official posts
(including an advisory role, in 1362, together with two other painters, in supervising
the moving of Duccios Maest to another site within the cathedral) confirm the
prestige he must have enjoyed in Siena. In 1370, Bartolomeo became an oblate (lay
member) of the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala, for which he executed and
signed an altarpiece in 1373. Another altarpiece, which had remained unfinished at
the time of the artists death, was delivered to another painter to complete in 1379.
Since none of his documented works have survived, the identification and
reconstruction of Bartolomeos oeuvre has posed particular difficulty. The first
attempts to do so, in the early twentieth century, identified him with the
Bartolomeus de Senis who signed a modest triptych dated 1373 in the church of
San Francesco at Tivoli, but the proposal was soon shown to be untenable.[3] Only
in 1917 did the essential features of his profile as an artist begin to emerge. Bernard
Berenson assembled a group of paintings characterized by a peculiar amalgam of
influences of Ugolino di Nerio and Pietro Lorenzetti, and baptized the artist to
whom he attributed them with the invented name of Ugolino Lorenzetti.[4] Some
years later Ernest De Wald (1923) regrouped other paintings, later recognized to be
Bulgarini, Bartolomeo 108


by Bartolomeo, around a Madonna in the church of San Pietro Ovile (now in the
Museo Diocesano, Siena) under the name Ovile Master.[5] Millard Meiss (1931)
showed that the two groups document various aspects of the art of the same
painter; Meiss later (1936) identified the hand of Ugolino Lorenzetti in a tavoletta
di Biccherna for which Bartolomeo was paid in 1353, and proposed his
identification with the master of the two anonymous groups.[6] In fact, various
important works of this master, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (nos. 61,
76, and 80), come from the Ospedale della Scala, with which we know that
Bartolomeo had close relations. We also know that the painter resided in the parish
of San Pietro Ovile. Several art historians, however, were reluctant to accept the
proposed identification, until documentary proof was adduced in 1986 that the
central panel of the San Vittore altarpiece in Siena Cathedral (of which the Nativity
now in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a fragment), long
attributed to the Ovile Master, was in fact painted by Bartolomeo Bulgarini.[7]
An artist of great accomplishment though of archaizing tendency, Bartolomeo

revealed deep nostalgia for the figurative tradition stemming from Duccio di
Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319), which had now been rendered
obsolete by the innovations in Sienese painting contributed by Simone Martini
(Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) and the Lorenzetti brothers. It is possible,
therefore, that Bartolomeo may have begun his career as a painter by an
apprenticeship in Duccios atelier. To his earliest phase we can ascribe such works
as the tavoletta di Biccherna dated 1329 (Gemldegalerie, Berlin); the polyptych in
the Gallerie Fiorentine, Florence, formerly in the Museo di Santa Croce, Florence;
and the triptych from Fogliano, now divided between the Pinacoteca Nazionale
and the Museo dellOpera del Duomo, both in Siena. In these works Duccios
stylistic formulae are restated with a nervously accentuated linearism. A more
massive and voluminous figural style, now firmly Lorenzettian in character, and also
a greater rhythmic complexity can be recognized in such works as the triptych
from Sestano now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena and the polyptych divided
among the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi in Lucca, the Pinoteca Capitolina in
Rome, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. A more decorative style,
greater softness in modeling, and closer affinity with the figurative ideal pursued by
the disciples of Simone Martini thus can be distinguished in such works as the
Nativity from Siena Cathedral now in the Fogg Museum in Cambridge,
Massachusetts (c. 1350). Similar tendencies also distinguish the artists later works,
including the polyptych now in the Salini collection in Siena (formerly in
SantAgostino at San Gimignano); a further polyptych, now dismantled and divided


between Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa (Four Saints) and Yale University
Art Gallery in New Haven (Madonna and Child, no. 1943.244); and some panels
now in the Pinacoteca in Siena (nos. 61 and 80).
[1] Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle

redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols.
(Florence, 19661987), 2(1967):147: Fu discepolo di Pietro Bartolomeo Bologhini
sanese . . . in Fiorenza di sua mano quella che in sullaltare della capella di San
Salvestro in Santa Croce (A disciple of Pietro was Bartolomeo Bologhini of Siena .
. . in Florence there is by his hand that [a panel] which is on the altar of the chapel
of San Silvestro in Santa Croce). This quotation is taken from the second edition of
Vasaris Vite (1568); in the first, he had indicated the name of the artist as
Bartolomeo Bolghini. In both cases, evidently, the cognomen was an erroneous
reading of a signature, perhaps that of the Santa Croce polyptych that Vasari cited.
Art historians, beginning with Berenson, have generally recognized that the
polyptych displayed in the Museo di Santa Croce, Florence, until 1966 and now in
the storerooms of the Gallerie Fiorentine can be given to the master whom
Berenson named Ugolino Lorenzetti, that is, the painter whose oeuvre is now
incorporated in the catalog of Bartolomeo. However, as Daniela Parenti of the Uffizi
in Florence has kindly explained to me, the painting in question apparently did not
belong to this church originally. See Bernard Berenson, Essays in the Study of
Sienese Painting (New York, 1918), 1518.
[2] The document, undated, is from the archive of the Pistoian church of San
Giovanni Fuor Civitas (Archivio di Stato, Pistoia, Patrimonio Ecclesiastico C 449). It
lists the best painters available in Florence, Siena, and Lucca, potential candidates
for the execution of the polyptych that Alesso dAndrea had begun to paint in 1348
but had then abandoned, probably as a result of his premature death in the great
plague epidemic in that year. So the list of painters was probably drawn up in 1349
or shortly thereafter. For the relevant documentation, cf. Andrew Ladis, Taddeo
Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonn (Columbia, MO, 1982), 255
258.
[3] The triptych, signed and dated, was published by Attilio Rossi (1905), who
identified the artist as Bartolomeo Bulgarini: the hypothesis, accepted by various
scholars in the following years, was rejected by Millard Meiss (1936) and then
definitively abandoned. See Attilio Rossi, Santa Maria in Vulturella (Tivoli): Ricerche
di storia e darte (Rome, 1905), 19, 22; and Millard Meiss, Bartolommeo Bulgarini
altrimenti detto Ugolino Lorenzetti? Rivista darte 18 (1936): 124125.


[4] Bernard Berenson, Ugolino Lorenzetti, Art in America 5 (19161917): 259275;

Bernard Berenson, Ugolino Lorenzetti, Art in America 6 (19171918): 2552.
[5] Ernest T. DeWald, The Master of the Ovile Madonna, Art Studies 1 (1923): 45
54.
[6] Millard Meiss, Ugolino Lorenzetti, The Art Bulletin 13 (1931): 376397; Millard
Meiss, Bartolommeo Bulgarini altrimenti detto Ugolino Lorenzetti? Rivista darte
18 (1936): 113136.
[7] No. 1917.89, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA. Hendrik W. van Os, Sienese
Altarpieces 12151460: Form, Content, Function, vol. 1, 12151344 (Groningen,
1984), 8587, recognized the painting as the central panel of the San Vittore
altarpiece in Siena Cathedral. Van Os identified its laterals in two panels, one
representing Saint Victor and the other a young female saint, in the Royal Museum
of Fine Art in Copenhagen. Shortly thereafter, definitive confirmation of Meisss
attribution to Bartolomeo was published by the discovery in the inventory of the
cathedral dated 1594 of the description of an altarpiece that was explicitly cited as
tavola della Nativit dipinta da Bartolomeo Bulgarini da Siena. See Elisabeth H.
Beatson, Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff, The St. Victor Altarpiece in
Siena Cathedral: A Reconstruction, The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 610631.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1916 Berenson, Bernard. Ugolino Lorenzetti.

Art in America 5 (19161917): 259-275.
1917 Berenson, Bernard. "Ugolino Lorenzetti.

Art in America 6 (19171918): 25-52.
1918 Berenson, Bernard.

Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting. New York, 1918: 15-18.
1923 DeWald, Ernest T. The Master of the Ovile Madonna.

Art Studies 1 (1923): 45-54.


1931 Meiss, Millard. Ugolino Lorenzetti.

The Art Bulletin 13 (1931): 376-397.
1936 Meiss, Millard. Bartolommeo Bulgarini altrimenti detto Ugolino

Lorenzetti?
Rivista darte 18 (1936): 113-136.
1966 Vasari, Giorgio.

Le vite de pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del
1550 e 1568. Edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi. 8 vols.
Florence, 1966-1987: 2(1967):147.
1982 Ladis, Andrew.

Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonn. Columbia,
1982: 255-258.
1984 Os, Hendrik W. van.

Sienese Altarpieces 12151460. Form, Content, Function. 2 vols.
Groningen, 1984: 85-87.
1986 Beatson, Elisabeth H., Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff. The St.
Victor Altarpiece in Siena Cathedral: A Reconstruction.
The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 610-631.
1991 Steinhoff, Judith B.

Bartolomeo Bulgarini and Sienese Painting of the MidFourteenth
Century. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1990. Ann Arbor, 1991.
1992 Labriola, Ada. "Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In

1983+: 15(1997):109-110.


Bartolomeo Bulgarini
Italian, c. 1300 - 1378
Saint Catherine of
Alexandria
c. 1335/1340
tempera on panel
painted surface (edge of gilding to edge of gilding): 73.5 40.5 cm (28 15/16 15
15/16 in.)
painted surface (edge of paint to edge of paint): 73.5 41 cm (28 15/16 16 1/8 in.)
overall: 73.5 42 1 cm (28 15/16 16 9/16 3/8 in.)
framed: 95.3 x 47.3 x 6 cm (37 1/2 x 18 5/8 x 2 3/8 in.)
Inscription: on the gilded brooch of the saint's mantle: S.K.A.T.E.R.I.N.A
ENTRY
The painting represents the martyr saint of Alexandria according to the usual
iconographic canons of the early fourteenth century in Tuscany: with a crown
placed on her blond hair, which is parted over the top of her head and gathered
over the nape of her neck, the palm of martyrdom in her left hand and a book that
she supports with both hands against the wheel, her instrument of martyrdom, with
sharp, denticulated metal spikes along its rim.[1] The image is not self-sufficient. It
belonged to a polyptych, more particularly a five-part altarpiece, known as the San
Cerbone altarpiece [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction), of which the other
components are the Madonna and Child [fig. 2] and the Saint John the Evangelist
[fig. 3] now in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi in Lucca (nos. 160 and 162),[2]
and the panels of Saint Bartholomew [fig. 4] and Mary Magdalene [fig. 5], nos. 345
and 346 in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome.[3] In 1706 Antonio de Brandeglio
described the paintings in question, together with the panel now in the National
Gallery of Art, as extant in the chapel of the Madonna in the church of San Cerbone
in Lucca. But when Michele Ridolfi visited the church in 1845, he found only the
central image of the Madonna in the chapel and that of Saint John in the sacristy,
while all trace of the other panels had already been lost. They had perhaps been
separated and dispersed presumably after 1806, following the Napoleonic
suppression of the religious orders.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria 113


The five-part San Cerbone polyptych had a rather archaic structure, formed of five
rectangular panels [fig. 1]. The painted surface of each of these panels terminated
in an ogival arch, apparently without any figurative decoration in the spandrels to
the side of the arch. This type of altarpiece makes it probable that the surviving
panels were surmounted by another series of images: perhaps with two above
each panel, as in some polyptychs produced in the shops of Pietro Lorenzetti
(Sienese, active 1306 - 1345)[4] and of Ugolino di Nerio[5] in the late 1320s and
during the following decade, or more probably with a single image above each
panel, as in some works of the earliest phase in the career of Bulgarini himself.[6]
As for the attribution of the panel now in the Gallery, it was formerly considered a
work by Deodato Orlandi, a leading painter of Lucca in the later thirteenth century,
who is known to have painted a Crucifixion dated 1288, formerly in the same
church of San Cerbone from which our Saint Catherine came.[7] Adolfo Venturi
(1905, 1906, 1907) discarded this attribution and instead gave it, together with the
other two components from the same complex with a provenance from the Sterbini
collection, to Pietro.[8] The proposal met acceptance from F. Mason Perkins (1905
and 1931), Raimond van Marle (1924), Emilio Cecchi (1930), and George Harold
Edgell (1932), and in the volume Duveen Pictures (1941) and various catalogs of the
Gallery (NGA 1941, Shoolman and Slatkin 1942, Kress 1945).[9] Emil Jacobsen (1907)
and Edward Hutton (1909) reported, but without expressing their own opinion
about, the attribution to Pietro, while Ernest DeWald (1929) gave the three former
Sterbini panels to a follower of Segna di Bonaventura.[10] In 1931, Andrea Pter
and Millard Meiss independently recognized the common origin of these paintings
with the other two now in the Museo Nazionale in Lucca.[11] Pter, however,
detected the collaboration of two different hands in the polyptych; he assigned the
two panels now in Lucca to Ugolino Lorenzetti (the master to whom he attributed
works now generally recognized as belonging to Bulgarinis initial phase), whereas
he saw the intervention of the Ovile Master in the former Sterbini collection panels.
For his part Meiss attributed the whole polyptych to Ugolino Lorenzetti, into
whose catalog he incorporated the works that other art historians label with the
conventional name of the Ovile Master. Meiss thought that the altarpiece belonged
to a relatively early phase in the masters output, dating it to c. 13301340. Van
Marle (1934) accepted his proposal, calling the San Cerbone polyptych an example
of an intermediate phase between the artists early period influenced by Duccios
art and his later phase, reflecting the influence of Pietro Lorenzetti.[12] Yet Meisss
subsequent (1936) identification of the anonymous master, Ugolino Lorenzetti, with


Bulgarini initially encountered resistance; only after the further clarification of the
question, accompanied by the publication of new documentary evidence by
Elisabeth H. Beatson, Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff (1986), did the
attribution to Bulgarini gain general acceptance.[13]
What still remains problematic is the chronological sequence of Bulgarinis oeuvre,

which is devoid of dated works, apart from the tavole di biccherna.[14] The
biccherna panels are difficult to compare with the static figures of far larger
dimensions in the polyptychs, and among these the only secure point of reference
is the dating to c. 1350 of the San Vittore altarpiece formerly in Siena Cathedral.[15]
It may be asserted with some confidence that the San Cerbone polyptych should
date to an earlier phase than this, on grounds of style, panel type, decoration, and
iconography. It still lacks the softness of modeling and delicate chiaroscuro
passages that distinguish the masters later altarpieces. It also lacks the trefoil-
arched moldings of the upper arch and the pastiglia ornament that characterize
Bulgarinis polyptychs around or after the midcentury. The particular motif of the
child and the Madonna now in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Giunigi in Lucca, who
devotes his undivided attention to his mother, twisting towards her with his whole
body, is probably a Lorenzettian invention of the 1330s;[16] it also appears in
Bulgarinis Madonna now in the Museo Diocesano in Pienza.[17] Other paintings
associated with this stylistic phase, as already observed in the past, include the
fragment of a polyptych with a provenance from Radicondoli (no. 54 in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena), where we also find iconographic formulae that are
closely related to the figures of Saint Catherine and Mary Magdalene.[18] A similar
image of the latter saint is also found in the polyptych of the Berenson Library at
the Villa I Tatti near Florence,[19] while a variant of the figure of Saint John in the
museum in Lucca recurs in the left lateral of the triptych from San Bartolomeo at
Sestano, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena.[20]
This group of works can be safely assumed to have been executed in the same
span of years, presumably still in the course of the first half of the century, but after
an initial phase in which Bulgarini had produced the nervous, tormented figures of
the polyptych formerly in the Museo di Santa Croce in Florence,[21] the triptych
from the church of San Giovanni Battista in Fogliano near Siena,[22] or the two
apostles of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne,[23] just to cite components of
altarpieces. In the works of his intermediate period, those to which our Saint
Catherine belongs, by contrast, Bulgarini based himself on models developed by
Sienese artists in the wake of Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 -


1318/1319), and adopted the type of polyptych that had emerged in the third and
fourth decade of the fourteenth century.[24] These are all features that differentiate
our polyptych both from the artists initial phase and from his works dating to the
years around and after the midcentury. Consequently a dating to c. 1340 would
seem to me most likely for the Saint Catherine in the Gallery and for its companion
panels.[25] What these panels have in common is a quest for grandeur,
simplification of form, and the expression of powerful emotion, in the spirit of works
painted by Pietro Lorenzetti in his early maturity.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of the San Cerbone Altarpiece by

Bartolomeo Bulgarini (color images are NGA objects): a.
Saint Catherine of Alexandria; b. Saint Bartholomew (fig.
4); c. Madonna and Child (fig. 2); d. Saint John the
Evangelist (fig. 3); e. Saint Mary Magdalene (fig. 5)
fig. 2 Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Madonna and Child, c.

1335/1340, tempera on panel, Museo Nazionale di Villa
Guinigi, Lucca. Image: Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Luca
Carr/Bridgeman Images


fig. 4 Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Saint Bartholomew, c.

1335/1340, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca Capitolina,
fig. 3 Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Saint John the Evangelist, c. Rome. Image: Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Art Resource,
1335/1340, tempera on panel, Museo Nazionale di Villa NY
Guinigi, Lucca


fig. 5 Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Saint Mary Magdalene, c.

1335/1340, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca Capitolina,
Rome. Image: Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Art Resource,
NY


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of the San Cerbone Altarpiece by Bartolomeo Bulgarini:

a. Saint Catherine of Alexandria
b. Saint Bartholomew (Entry fig. 4)
c. Madonna and Child (Entry fig. 2)
d. Saint John the Evangelist (Entry fig. 3)
e. Saint Mary Magdalene (Entry fig. 5)
NOTES
[1] George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in
Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 225234.
[2] Licia Bertolini Campetti and Silvia Meloni Trkulja, eds., Museo di Villa
Guinigi, Lucca: La villa e le collezioni (Lucca, 1968), 141142. The Madonna
measures 91 56 cm and the panel of Saint John the Evangelist 72.5 42.2
cm. According to Placido Campetti (1932), the monastery sold the two
panels in the early years of the twentieth century. Placido Campetti,
Annuari, Bollettino storico lucchese 4 (1932): 159.
[3] Raffaele Bruno, Roma: Pinacoteca capitolina (Bologna, 1978), 3. The panel
of Saint Bartholomew (inv. no. 345) measures 75 x 42 cm, and that of Mary
Magdalene (inv. no. 346) 73 x 41 cm. The two paintings entered the
Capitoline collection, Rome, in 1936.
[4] I refer to such panels as the dispersed polyptych from the church of the


Carmine in Siena, dated 1329, in which the laterals (representing full-length

figures of saints) were each surmounted by an image of a pair of saints, or
polyptych no. 50 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, probably dating to
c. 13351340, in which the saints of the main register are represented half-
length, though again with paired saints in the upper tier. Cf. Piero Torriti, La
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa,
1977), 9799, 105106. In contrast to the Carmine polyptych, the spandrels
in polyptych no. 50 are decorated not with figures of angels but with
ornamental motifs.
[5] One may recall the polyptych formerly in the church of Santa Croce in
Florence, probably executed in c. 1330 and now divided among various
museums in the world. Here the saints in the main register, portrayed just
over half-length (and the angels filling the spandrels), are surmounted by a
frieze of medallions with images of the ancestors of Christ and above that
by paired saints; cf. Stefan Weppelmann, Geschichten auf Gold in neuem
Licht: Das Hochaltarretabel aus der Franziskanerkirche Santa Croce, in
Geschichten auf Gold: Bilderzhlungen in der frhen italienischen Malerei,
ed. Stefan Weppelmann (Berlin, 2005), 2650.
[6] Bulgarini, in his triptych representing the Crucifixion at the center and half-
length figures of female saints in the laterals (no. 54 in the Pinacoteca of
Siena), surmounted the panels of the main register (with a pointed arch
defining the painted area and ornamental decoration in the spandrels) with
triangular-shaped gable panels filled with half-length figures of saints. Cf.
Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV
secolo (Genoa, 1977), 136. It should be said, however, that, as may be
observed from the pose of the saints in the lateral panels, this complex must
originally have been a five-part altarpiece. Since it has been truncated
below, the main register likely consisted of full-length figures. A complex
very similar to the San Cerbone polyptych, apart from that now in the
Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian
Renaissance Studies, Florence, must have been that of which only the
centerpiece now survives, namely the Madonna and Child in the Museo
Diocesano at Pienza. See Franco Russoli and Nicky Mariano, The Berenson
Collection, trans. Frances Alexander and Sidney Alexander, Edizioni
Beatrice dEste (Milan, 1964), xvii; and Laura Martini, ed., Museo diocesano
di Pienza, Musei senesi (Siena, 1998), 2931. Only in his late phase, it
seems, did Bartolomeo adopt the solution of paired saints in the upper
register of altarpieces: an example of this type is the fragment now in the
Lehman collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Cf. John
Pope-Hennessy and Laurence B. Kanter, The Robert Lehman Collection,
vol. 1, Italian Paintings (New York, 1987), 1617.
[7] Now in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi in Lucca; cf. Licia Bertolini
Campetti and Silvia Meloni Trkulja, eds., Museo di Villa Guinigi, Lucca: La


villa e le collezioni (Lucca, 1968), 139140.
[8] Adolfo Venturi, La quadreria Sterbini in Roma, LArte 8 (1905): 427, 428 fig.
5; Adolfo Venturi, La Galleria Sterbini in Roma: Saggio illustrativo (Rome,
1906), 3335; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dellarte italiana, vol. 5, La pittura del
Trecento e le sue origini (Milan, 1907), 696 n. 1.
[9] F. Mason Perkins, Arte senese nella Quadreria Sterbini a Roma, Rassegna
darte senese 1, no. 4 (1905): 148149; F. Mason Perkins, Pitture senesi
poco conosciute, La Diana 6 (1931): 28; Raimond van Marle, The
Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School
of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 326; Emilio Cecchi, Pietro Lorenzetti
(Milan, 1930), 7, pl. 8; George Harold Edgell, A History of Sienese Painting
(New York, 1932), 114; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public
Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 14; National Gallery of Art,
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941),
111; Regina Shoolman and Charles E. Slatkin, The Enjoyment of Art in
America (Philadelphia, 1942), 284, pl. 253; National Gallery of Art, Paintings
and Sculpture from the Kress Collection (Washington, DC, 1945), 20.
[10] Emil Jacobsen, Sienesische Meister des Trecento in der Gemldegalerie zu

Siena (Strasbourg, 1907), 41 n . 7; Edward Hutton, in Joseph Archer Crowe
and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the
Second to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 2, Sienese School of the Fourteenth
Century; Florentine School of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Edward Hutton
(London and New York, 1909), 90 n. 7; Ernest T. DeWald, Pietro Lorenzetti,
Art Studies 7 (1929): 160 n. 2.
[11] Andrea Pter, Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro di Ovile, Rivista darte 13

(1931): 2233; Millard Meiss, Ugolino Lorenzetti, The Art Bulletin 13 (1931):
380384, 393, 397.
[12] Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 2, La scuola senese
del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 155, 160.
[13] See Millard Meiss, Bartolommeo Bulgarini altrimenti detto Ugolino

Lorenzetti?, Rivista darte 18 (1936): 113136; and Elisabeth H. Beatson,
Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff, The St. Victor Altarpiece in Siena
Cathedral: A Reconstruction, The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 610631, where for
the first time a painting attributed to both Ugolini Lorenzetti and to the
Ovile Masterthe Nativity in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge,
Massachusettswas identified as a documented work by Bartolomeo
Bulgarini.
[14] The following biccherna panels can be attributed to Bulgarini: that in the
Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin (K. 9222), dated 13291330; those in the
Bibliothque Nationale in Paris (nos. 16691670), dated respectively 1339
1340 and 13451346; that in a private collection in Geneva, dated 1349
1350; and that in the Archivio di Stato in Siena (no. Bicch. 28), dated 1352


1353. See, respectively, Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei:

Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin,
1988), 180181; LArt gothique siennois: Enluminure, peinture, orfvrerie,
sculpture (Florence, 1983), 198200; Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture,
oreficerie, oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 251252.
[15] On the altarpiece, apart from the publication cited in note 12 above, cf. also
Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, Italienische Gemlde im Stdel 13001550:
Toskana und Umbrien, Kataloge der Gemlde im Stdelschen Kunstinstitut
Frankfurt am Main (Mainz, 2004), 8296. Since in May 1351 a carpenter
received payments for fattura civori e cercini e colonine di legname per la
tavola di Santo Vittorio (making awnings, curtains, and wooden columns for
the altarpiece of San Vittorio), that is, for the embellishments to the
polyptychs wooden frame, it may be assumed that the work had already
been completed by this date.
[16] Ever since his earliest works, such as the Madonna of Montichiello and the
great Marian polyptych in the Pieve di Santa Maria at Arezzo (1320), Pietro
Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345) had proposed a more intimate and
self-absorbed version of the group of the Madonna and Child, caught in
affectionate rapport, turned towards each other and largely ignoring the
spectator. Subsequently, Pietro took this tendency one step further in such
works as the Madonna formerly in the Serristori collection in Florence or
that in the Museo darte sacra in Buonconvento where the child, in
embracing his mother, even turns his back on the spectator. See Anna
Maria Guiducci, Museo darte sacra della Val dArbia, Buonconvento (Siena,
1998), 2829. Neither these paintings nor comparable examples by
Ambrogio Lorenzetti (e.g., the Madonna no. 39.546 in the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston or that in San Pietro di Castelvecchio in Siena), are securely
datable, but their execution would seem to fall within the period c. 1335
1345; cf. Luciano Cateni, Un polittico too remote from Ambrogio firmato da
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Prospettiva 40 (1985): 6267. Although no exact
Lorenzettian prototype is known for the composition proposed by Bulgarini
in his altarpiece now in Lucca, the circumstance that Lippo Vanni (Sienese,
active 1344 - 1376) adopted a very similar version of it in one of his youthful
works (no. 1470, Stdelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt) probably implies the
dependence of both paintings on a lost model of Pietro; cf. Rudolf Hiller von
Gaertringen, Italienische Gemlde im Stdel 13001550: Toskana und
Umbrien, Kataloge der Gemlde im Stdelschen Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am
Main (Mainz, 2004), 98106.
[17] Cf. Laura Martini, ed., Museo diocesano di Pienza, Musei senesi (Siena,
1998), 2331.
[18] Andrea Pter, Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro di Ovile, Rivista darte 13

(1931): 32; and Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti


dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 136137 had already noted these
similarities in pose and physiognomic types.
[19] Cf. note 6 above. The greater linearity and expansive volume of the figure in
the panel now in the Pinacoteca Capitolina suggest an earlier date for the
Berenson Magdalene.
[20] Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV
secolo (Genoa, 1977), 134135 (without inventory number).
[21] Millard Meiss, Ugolino Lorenzetti, The Art Bulletin 13 (1931): figs. 18, 19;
Andrea Pter, Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro di Ovile, Rivista darte 13
(1931): fig. 1.
[22] Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal xii al xv
secolo (Genoa, 1977), 134135. This is the painting that is likely closest
stylistically to the San Cerbone polyptych. However, the daring invention in
the latter, of presenting Saint John immersed in reading and with his face
slightly foreshortened, though anticipated in the polyptych by Lippo Memmi
(Sienese, active 1317/1347) at Casciana Alta near Pisa, should probably be
considered an indication of a slightly later date for the Lucca panel. See
Antonino Caleca, Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 1, Critica darte 41 (1976): 4950.
[23] Brigitte Klesse, Katalog der italienischen, franzsischen und spanischen

Gemlde bis 1800 im Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (Cologne, 1973), 6566 (nos.
610611).
[24] I refer to panels with trapezoidal termination and inner pointed arch with
trefoil moldings, such as the Madonna by Simone Martini (Sienese, active
from 1315; died 1344) at the center of the Orvieto polyptych (Museo Civico)
or the panels of the dispersed polyptych by Lippo Memmi (on which cf. Saint
John the Baptist). The panel by Niccol di Segna dated 1336 formerly in the
Pieve of Montesiepi must have been of similar type. See James H.
Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton,
1979), 2: fig. 477.
[25] In his first attempt to reconstruct the chronology of the artists catalog,
Millard Meiss (1931) placed the San Cerbone polyptych among the masters
earliest works, close to 1330. Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, 1979) proposed a
slightly later date of c. 1335, a dating that Antonio Caleca accepted (1981,
1986). Judith De Botton (1983) proposed 13401350, Mikls Boskovits (1990)
c. 1340, Judith Steinhoff-Morrison (1990, 1993, 1996) the mid-1340s, Erling
Skaug (1994) c. 13391348, and Angelo Tartuferi (1998) c. 1340. See Millard
Meiss, Ugolino Lorenzetti, The Art Bulletin 13 (1931): 376397; Fern Rusk
Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools,
XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 54; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the
Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:270271; Antonio Caleca,
in Il secolo di Castruccio: Fonti e documenti di storia lucchese, ed. Clara


Baracchini (Lucca, 1983), 199; Antonio Caleca, Pittura del Duecento e del
Trecento a Pisa e a Lucca, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento,
ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:254; Judith De Botton, in LArt
gothique siennois: Enluminure, peinture, orfvrerie, sculpture (Florence,
1983), 242; Mikls Boskovits and Serena Padovani, The Thyssen-
Bornemisza Collection: Early Italian Painting 12901470 (London, 1990), 36,
37 n.13; Judith Steinhoff-Morrison, Bartolomeo Bulgarini and Sienese
Painting of the Mid-Fourteenth Century, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Princeton
University, 1990), 1:192; Judith Steinhoff, A Trecento Altarpiece
Rediscovered: Bartolommeo Bulgarinis Polyptych for San Gimignano,
Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 56 (1993): 107; Judith Steinhoff-Morrison,
Bulgarini, Bartolomeo, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols.
(New York, 1996), 5:164; Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra
Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan
Panel Painting with Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2
vols. (Oslo, 1994) 1:250; and Angelo Tartuferi, in Sumptuosa tabula picta:
Pittori a Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento, ed. Maria Teresa Filieri (Livorno,
1998), 45. The most elaborate motivation for the dating is undoubtedly the
one Steinhoff-Morrison (1990) proposed, though her reasoning was based
(in my view) on partially mistaken premises. We may agree with her when
she declared that the San Cerbone polyptych was later than that formerly in
the Museo di Santa Croce in Florence and the triptych from Fogliano now in
the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. But her proposal to link this latter
altarpiece with a payment made in 1339 for a painting of similar subject
executed for the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena was mere conjecture, nor does it
seem to me that there are sufficient grounds to affirm, as did Steinhoff-
Morrison, that the biccherna panel of 1339 now in the Bibliothque
Nationale in Paris is earlier in date than the Fogliano triptych. Moreover, her
observation, however subtle, that Bulgarini in the San Cerbone polyptych
(and more precisely in the figures of Saint John and Saint Catherine)
adopted attributes [of the saints] as podia for their books (Steinhoff-
Morrison, Bulgarini, Bartolomeo, 192) cannot lead to the conclusion that
the motif derived from Pietro Lorenzetti. In particular, her claim that the
earliest known instance of this device is in the altarpiece of the Beata Umilt
in the Uffizi, which was executed by a pupil of Pietro Lorenzetti...probably..
.ca. 1340 (both, 192), is open to question. Apart from the fact that various
reputable scholars recognize this important though unfortunately
dismembered altarpiece (nos. 61206126, 61296131, and 8437 of the Uffizi
in Florence, and nos. 1077 and 1077A of the Gemldegalerie in Berlin) as a
fully autograph work by Pietro Lorenzetti, Boskovitss argument (1988)
placing its date c. 13301335 has not so far been repudiated. See Mikls
der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 8789. It also should not
be forgotten that Simone Martini, in his figure of Saint Mark in the Pisa


polyptych (1319), had already used the motif in question by letting the lion
support the Evangelists book. For a reproduction, see Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), fig. on 176. So there is no terminus
post quem of 1340 for the saints of the San Cerbone polyptych.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The painting is on a single-plank wooden support with the grain running vertically.
In 19401941, Stephen Pichetto cradled and probably thinned it (the present
thickness is 1.2 cm). In addition, the top corners of the panel were cut during this
treatment to form the arched shape the panel bears today. However, the top edge
of the panel had already been cut down prior to Pichettos treatment, truncating
the arch of the design.[1] A vertical split runs through the entire painting, passing
through the saints left eye. The panel was prepared with a layer of gesso, in which
the larger outlines of the figure were incised; the gilding, as usual, has a red bole
layer underneath. The green underpainting is visible in the shadows of the flesh
tones. The paint was thinly applied, with long strokes that follow the contours of
the form.
There are a number of paint losses, especially along the abovementioned split.
Apparently, the hooked spikes embedded in the rim of the wheel also were
damaged: they were probably covered by silver leaf originally;[2] this was later lost
or removed, making inpainting necessary in this area. The painting was cropped
along its upper edge and taken out of its original frame probably in the
seventeenth century.[3] Photographs made before 1905 [fig. 1] show it with the
vertical split clearly visible and some small paint losses along the edges.[4] Another
photo, made around 1930 [fig. 2], illustrates the painting already cleaned and
restored and in a state apparently not very dissimilar to the one following
Pichettos treatment, during which the painting was cleaned again and
varnished.[5]


fig. 2 Archival photograph, c. 1930, Bartolomeo Bulgarini,

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1335/1340, tempera on
panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 1905, before restoration,
Kress Collection. Image: Kunsthistorisches Institut,
Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c.
Florence
1335/1340, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Image: Adolfo
Venturi, La Galleria Sterbini in Roma: Saggio illustrativo
(Rome, 1906), 35
TECHNICAL NOTES


[1] Photographs made during Pichettos treatment (in NGA conservation files)
show the painting still in its rectangular shape, but with the top edge cut
down.
[2] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the spokes using x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). Traces of silver were found in all but one
spectra (analysis completed March 3, 2014, report forthcoming).
[3] Antonio di Brandeglio, Vita di S. Cerbone vescovo di Popolonia e

confessore (Lucca, 1706), 221222, 300, reported a renovation of the
chapel of the Virgin in the church of San Cerbone in 1669, during which the
Washington panel and its companions (see below) were given a more
decent framing. Evidently the reframing entailed the truncation of the upper
part of the arched termination in all panels.
[4] Venturi published a photograph by the Danesi studio (Rome) in 1905 and
1906; here the panel is shown virtually in the same state as in photo no. E
3562 of the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione in Rome.
This latter was probably made in the same year. See Adolfo Venturi, La
quadreria Sterbini in Roma, LArte 8 (1905): 427, 428 fig. 5; Adolfo Venturi,
La Galleria Sterbini in Roma: Saggio illustrativo (Rome, 1906) 3334, 35
repro.
[5] The photograph in question, of which a copy is preserved in the

photographic archive of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, was taken
(according to a handwritten annotation) when the painting was with the
dealer Julius Bhler in Munich.
PROVENANCE
Monastery of San Cerbone, near Lucca, by 1706 until no later than 1845;[1] possibly
Carlo Lasinio [17591838] or his son, Giovanni Paolo Lasinio [c. 1796-1855], Pisa;
probably Monsignor Gabriele Laureani [d. 1849], Rome;[2] Giulio Sterbini [d. 1911],
Rome, by 1905; (Pasini, Rome).[3] (Godfroy [sometimes spelled Godefroy] Brauer,
Paris and Nice), by 1921;[4] his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 5
July 1929, no. 29); half shares purchased by (Kunsthandel A.G., Lucerne) and
(antique dealer, Amsterdam); sold 18 October 1932 to (Julius Bhler, Munich);[5]
sold 4 September 1937 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[6]
sold 1940 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1943 to NGA. [1] The
church of San Cerbone near Lucca is mentioned for the first time in a document of
1059. Another document, of 1140, also records the Benedictine monastery annexed
to the church. In 1234 the community of nuns assumed the Cistercian rule. They


abandoned the monastery in 1442, when a community of Franciscan Observants

was established in its place. See Enrico Lombardi, San Cerbone nella leggenda,
nel culto e nellarte, Massa Marittima, n.d. [c. 1970-1975]: 34-35. Antonio da
Brandeglio (Vita di S. Cerbone Vescovo di Populonia e confessore, Lucca, 1706:
214-218) described the painting as extant in the chapel of the Madonna. Michele
Ridolfi (Sopra i tre pi antichi dipintori lucchesi dei quali si conoscono le opere:
cenni storici e critici, Atti dell'Accademia lucchese di scienze, lettere ed arti 13
[1845]: 349-393) does not find the NGA painting; it was probably dispersed after
the 1806 Napleonic suppression of religious orders. [2] David Farabulini (La pittura
antica e moderna e la Galleria del cav. Giulio Sterbini, Rome, 1874), who does not
cite the painting now in Washington, states that the central nucleus of the Sterbini
collection was formed of paintings collected by Monsignor Gabriele Laureani,
custodian of the Biblioteca Vaticana from 1838 to 1849. Laureani is known for
having acquired a large number of primitives for what is now the Pinacoteca
Vaticana. Probably this prelate also collected paintings for himself and, following
his death, his collection passed into that of Sterbini. It is also known that Laureani
purchased Tuscan paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from Carlo
Lasinio, keeper/curator of the Camposanto in Pisa from 1807, whose collection was
swollen in large part by paintings amassed at the time of the suppression of the
convents in the early nineteenth century. It seems plausible to assume, therefore,
that the panel now in the National Gallery of Art reached Rome through the
intermediary of Carlo Lasinio (who in addition to being an engraver, is known to
have been an art dealer as well as a collector) or his son Giovanni Paolo Lasinio
(see Christopher Lloyd, A note on Carlo Lasinio and Giovanni Paolo Lasinio, The
Bodleian Library Record 10 [1978-1982]: 51-57; Donata Levi, "Carlo Lasinio, curator,
collector and dealer," The Burlington Magazine 135 [1993]: 133-148). For the
paintings in the Biblioteca Vaticana with a provenance from the collection of
Lasinio or his son through that of Laureani, see Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Catalogo
della Pinacoteca Vaticana. Vol. 2. Il Trecento. Firenze e Siena, Vatican City, 1987:
23, 24, 40; Francesco Rossi, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana. Vol. 3. Il
Trecento. Umbria, Marche, Italia del Nord, Vatican City, 1994: 139, 142. [3] Adolfo
Venturi (La quadreria Sterbini, LArte 8 (1905): 422-440; La Galleria Sterbini in
Roma, Rome, 1906: no. 6) first mentions the panel, together with two companion
pieces now in the collection of the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome, as belonging to
the Sterbini collection, but it had probably been there for several decades by then.
After the collectors death, at least part of the works formerly belonging to him
passed to the Pasini collection in Rome (Raimond van Marle, The Development of


the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols., The Hague, 1923-1938: 4[1924]:288, 378;
13[1931]:454 n. 1) and, possibly, to other collectors as well. Federico Zeri wrote to
Robert O. Parks that Pasini was the dealer who sold the entire Sterbini collection;
Parks in turn passed this information on to John Walker (letter, Parks to Walker, 27
December 1949, in NGA curatorial files). [4] The painting was in Brauers collection
at least by 20 May 1921, when the Paris office of Duveen Brothers describes it in a
letter to their New York office: A picture of Saint Catherine, about 18 inches by 14,
which he attributes to Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The dimensions are more accurate in
their description two years later (31 March 1923): 1 picture St-Catherine of
Alexandria. Pointed top. Gold background. Red cloak. Large gold plaque on
breast. School of LORENZETTI. About 28 inches high. Brauer died in December
1923, and Duveen Brothers remained in contact with his widow, Lina Haas Brauer
(1868-1936), although they made no purchases from her. Duveen Brothers Records,
accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles: reel 82, box 227, folders 2628, and reel 115, box 260, folder 24 (copies
in NGA curatorial files). [5] Newspaper coverage of the 1929 sale, as well as an
annotated copy of the sale catalogue (copies in NGA curatorial files), record Bhler
as purchaser of the painting. Inventory card no. 164-32, in the Records of Julius
Bhler Munich, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (copy in
NGA curatorial files), documents instead the 1932 purchase by Bhler and the half
shares owned by the other dealers. The Lucerne and Munich firms, however, were
intimately connected, as the Lucerne firm had been founded in 1920 by a son of
the founder of the Munich firm. In 1930, Emilio Cecchi (Pietro Lorenzetti, Milan,
1930: 7) stated that the panel of Saint Catherine ora passata alla raccolta
Ringling in Monaco. Fern Rusk Shapley (Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.,
Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:271), as well as the prospectus assembled by Duveen
Brothers (in NGA curatorial files), also speak of an otherwise unspecified Ringling
collection in Munich. However, in view of the fact that the painting had been
publicized as having been purchased by Bhlers in Munich, the possible new
owner was presumably the circus tycoon John Ringling (1866-1936), who is known
to have used Bhlers services in building up his art collection (now the Ringling
Museum) in Sarasota, Florida, since the late 1920s. By 1930-1931, however,
Ringlings collecting had come to a rather abrupt halt as a consequence of the
economic crisis (Peter Tomory, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings before 1800. The
John Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 1976: ixxiii). Possibly for this reason the
painting never in fact joined the rest of the Ringling collection. Instead, it must have
remained in Europe, and Andrea Pter (Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro d'Ovile,


Rivista d'Arte 13 (1931): 2-44) also cites it as being with Bhlers, whereas its two
companion pieces were still in a private collection, presumably one of Sterbinis
heirs. It is noted in the 1929 newspaper coverage that Ringling was a purchaser at
the sale, and perhaps because of this his name was linked with the painting by
mistake. [6] See the Bhler inventory card cited in note 5. The card also notes that
the painting was first sold to Carl Hamilton in May 1937, but was then returned.
Hamilton (1886-1967) was a client of Duveen Brothers; the dealer had offered him a
large collection of Italian paintings on approval by 1920, but Hamilton did not
purchase them and returned the paintings to Duveen the following year. .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1845 Ridolfi, Michele. "Sopra i tre pi antichi dipintori lucchesi dei quali si
conoscono le opere: cenni storici e critici." Atti dellAccademia lucchese
di scienze, lettere ed arti 13 (1845): 374.
1905 Perkins, F. Mason. "Arte senese nella Quadreria Sterbini a Roma."
Rassegna darte senese 1, no. 4 (1905): 148-149, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1905 Venturi, Adolfo. "La quadreria Sterbini in Roma." LArte 8 (1905): 427,
428 fig. 5.
1906 Venturi, Adolfo. La Galleria Sterbini in Roma: saggio illustrativo. Rome,
1906: 33-34, repro. 35.
1907 Jacobsen, Emil. Sienesische Meister des Trecento in der
Gemldegalerie zu Siena. Strasbourg, 1907: 41 n. 1.
1907 Venturi, Adolfo. Storia dellarte italiana. Vol. 5, La pittura del Trecento e
le sue origini. Milan, 1907: 696 n. 1.
1907 Vollmer, Hans. "Meister der Ovile - Madonna." In Allgemeines Lexikon
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Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950:
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1908 Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A New
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Century; Florentine School of the Fifteenth Century. London and New
York, 1908-1909: 2(1909):90 n. 7.
1923 Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):326.
1929 DeWald, Ernest T. "Pietro Lorenzetti." Art Studies 7 (1929): 160 n. 2.
1930 Cecchi, Emilio. Pietro Lorenzetti. Milan, 1930: 7, pl. 8.
1931 Meiss, Millard. "Ugolino Lorenzetti." The Art Bulletin 13 (1931): 378


(repro.), 380-384, 393, 397 n.

1931 Perkins, F. Mason. "Pitture senesi poco conosciute." La Diana 6 (1931):
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(1931): 22-33, figs. 13-14.
1932 Campetti, Placido. "Annuari." Bollettino storico lucchese 4 (1932): 159.
1932 Edgell, George Harold. A History of Sienese Painting. New York, 1932:
114.
1932 Marle, Raimond van. Le scuole della pittura italiana. 2 vols. The Hague
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):155, 160.
1941 Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America.
New York, 1941: no. 14, repro., as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
(repro.), 244.
Art, Washington, 1941: 111, no. 521, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
repro. 135, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1942 Shoolman, Regina, and Charles E. Slatkin. Enjoyment of Art in America:
A Survey of the Permanent Collections of Paintings, Sculpture, Ceramics
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Times. Philadelphia and New York, 1942: 284, pl. 253.
1945 Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of
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Lorenzetti.
1945 "The New Kress Gift to the National Gallery, Washington." The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86, no. 504 (1945): 56.
1951 Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art.
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1951 Galetti, Ugo, and Ettore Camesasca. Enciclopedia della pittura italiana.
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:2482.
1951 Toesca, Pietro. Il Trecento. Storia dellarte italiana, 2. Turin, 1951: 572 n.
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1953 Belli, Isa. Guida di Lucca. Lucca, 1953: 123-124.
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Guinigi, Lucca: la villa e le collezioni. Lucca, 1968: 142.

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1977 Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. I Dipinti dal XII al XV
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1978 Bruno, Raffaele. Roma: Pinacoteca Capitolina. Bologna, 1978: 3.
1979 De Benedictis, Cristina. La pittura senese 1330-1370. Florence, 1979: 85,
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1981 Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese del Trecento. 1st ed. Milan, 1981: 221
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1983 Baracchini, Clara, ed. Il secolo di Castruccio: Fonti e documenti di storia
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1983 Skaug, Erling S. "Punch Marks. What Are They Worth? Problems of
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Boer. Bologna, 1983: 263.
1986 Beatson, Elisabeth H., Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff. "The St.
Victor Altarpiece in Siena Cathedral: A Reconstruction." The Art Bulletin
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1986 Castelnuovo, Enrico, ed. La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. 2
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1989 Neri, Enrica. "Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In Dizionario della pittura e dei
pittori. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin,
1989-1994: 1(1989):475.
1990 Boskovits, Mikls, and Serena Padovani. The Thyssen-Bornemisza
Collection: Early Italian Painting 1290-1470. London, 1990: 36, 37 n.13.
1990 Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: i dipinti. 3rd ed. Genoa,
1990: 90.
1991 Baracchini, Clara. "Lucca. Scultura, Pittura e Miniatura." In Enciclopedia


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1991 Steinhoff, Judith B. Bartolomeo Bulgarini and Sienese Painting of the
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1992 Labriola, Ada. "Bulgarini Bartolomeo." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon:
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1993 Tazartes, Maurizia. "Profilo della pittura lucchese del Trecento." Ricerche
di storia dellarte 50 (1993): 90-91.
1994 Skaug, Erling S. Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution,
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1:250; 2:punch chart 7.12.
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1998 Filieri, Maria Teresa, ed. Sumptuosa tabula picta: pittori a Lucca tra
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2003 "Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In Dictionnaire de la peinture. Edited by Michel
Laclotte and Jean Pierre Cuzin. Paris, 2003: 122.
2004 Strehlke, Carl Brandon. Italian Paintings, 1250-1450, in the John G.
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2005 Mori, Francesco. Un polittico di Bartolomeo Bulgarini per la chiesa
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2007 De Floriani, Anna. "Pittura del Trecento fra Genova e Avignone:
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2007 Steinhoff, Judith. Sienese Painting after the Black Death: Artistic
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2009 Boskovits, Mikls, ed. The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA.
Vol. 1 (of 2), Italian Paintings from the 13th to 15th Century. Florence,
2009: 1:43, 46, 47 n. 13.


Byzantine 13th Century

Also known as
Anonymous Byzantine 13th Century
BIOGRAPHY
Unsigned works of art, especially those which are hundreds of years old, are
difficult to assign to a particular artist. Works attributed to Byzantine 13th Century
are characterized by Byzantine stylistic elements, such as an emphasis on
mysticism and decoration rather than on naturalistic representation. The Byzantine
Empire dates from the founding of Constantinople in AD 330 to its conquest by the
Turks in AD 1453.
Byzantine 13th Century 135


Enthroned Madonna and

Child
c. 1250/1275
painted surface: 124.8 x 70.8 cm (49 1/8 x 27 7/8 in.)
overall: 130.7 x 77.1 cm (51 7/16 x 30 3/8 in.)
framed: 130.5 x 77 x 6 cm (51 3/8 x 30 5/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
Gift of Mrs. Otto H. Kahn 1949.7.1
ENTRY
The painting shows the Virgin seated on an elaborate wooden throne with
openwork decoration. She supports the blessing Christ child on her left arm,
according to the iconographic tradition of the Hodegetria.[1] Mary [fig. 1] is wearing
a purple dress and a deep blue mantle highlighted with brilliant chrysography.
Bearing a scroll in his left hand, the child [fig. 2] is wearing a red tunic fastened
around his waist with a blue fabric belt supported by straps that encircle his
shoulders. This motif perhaps alludes to his sacerdotal dignity.[2] In the upper
corners of the panel, at the level of the Virgins head, are two circular medallions
containing busts of archangels [fig. 3], each wearing a garment decorated with a
loros and with scepter and sphere in hand.[3]
Art historians have held sharply different views on not only the attribution of the
painting but also its origin and even its function. Apart from Osvald Sirns
attribution to Pietro Cavallini (1918),[4] the critical debate that developed after its
first appearance at a sale in New York in 1915 (where it was cataloged under the
name of Cimabue) almost always considered the painting together with Madonna
and Child on a Curved Throne. For a discussion of the problems surrounding both
panels and some further proposals, see the catalog entry for the latter painting.
Enthroned Madonna and Child 136


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Detail of Christ, Byzantine thirteenth century

fig. 1 Detail of Madonna, Byzantine thirteenth century
(possibly from Constantinople), Enthroned Madonna and
Child, c. 1250/1275, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, Gift of Mrs. Otto H. Kahn


fig. 3 Detail of archangel, Byzantine thirteenth century

NOTES
[1] On the iconography of the Hodegetria, cf. Gregor Martin Lechner, Maria, in
Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wesse, 7 vols. (Stuttgart,
2005), 6:5971. On the cult of the image, see also Christine Angelidi and
Titos Papamastorakis, The Veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria and the
Hodegon Monastery, in The Mother of God: The Representation of the
Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 373
387.
[2] While the motif of the scroll alluding to Christ as the Word of God (Jn 1:1)
appears frequently, that of the Christ child with a belted waist is less
common; cf. Klaus Wessel, Buchrolle, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen
Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966), 1:784795. The belt could
possibly allude to the liturgical dress of the oriental church; cf. Athanasios
Papas, Liturgische Gewnder, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed.
Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1995), 5:750752. Hans Belting, The
Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some


Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 10,

interpreted the motif more functionally as the belt for carrying the Child.
[3] These are among the symbols of the power of the Byzantine emperor,
which subsequently became attributes in the representation of angels; cf. D.
I. Pallas, Himmelsmchte, Erzengel und Engel, in Reallexikon zur
byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1978), 3:2632, 35
40.
[4] Osvald Sirn, A Picture by Pietro Cavallini, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 32 (1918): 4447.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a three-member poplar panel [1] with the grain running vertically.
Thinned and cradled during an undocumented treatment,[2] the panel is still set in
part of its original engaged frame, which has probably been reduced from its
original width. The studs decorating the frame molding are original, although they
have been overpainted. The white gesso ground [3] is applied over a fabric that
covers not only the painted surface but also the engaged frame.[4] The gold leaf
was laid over an orange bole. Incised lines were used to outline the figures, and a
green underpainting is visible in the flesh tones. The incised decoration of the
halos apparently was executed freehand, and the additional decoration of the
halos was created by dripping a resinous material onto the gold, as opposed to
punchwork. The panel has a convex warp. A vertical crack runs from the top of the
painting to the Virgins nose. Two additional cracks appear on the left side of the
panel, running through the bust of the angel on the left. The join of the two boards
on the right side, passing through the face of the angel, has opened from the top
to the bottom. Worm tunneling is evident both on the surface of the panel and in
the x-radiographs. The painting is in a generally fair state, although there is
inpainting in the various small losses in the gilding overlaying the damages of the
wooden support, as well as some lacunae in the Virgins cloak. The head and dress
of the angel to the right and the area of gold ground above the Virgins head are
also inpainted. In addition, the inpainting extends to the cloak covering the
Madonnas head.


TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed a cross-section of the

wood from the panel and found it to be poplar (report in NGA conservation
files dated December 24, 1985).
[2] The state of the painting in 1915 is illustrated in the sale catalog published in
that year, which shows it unrestored, except for the loss in the gold ground
above the Virgins head. Sometime between 1915 and 1917, before it was
sold to Otto Kahn, New York, the work evidently was restored. The various
reproductions published from 1917 on show it much darkened by dust and
opacified varnishes but without paint color losses and presumably already
cradled. Judging from the reproduction given by Walter Felicetti-Liebenfels
in 1956, the picture may have been cleaned again sometime later; Walter
Felicetti-Liebenfels, Geschichte der byzantinischen Ikonenmalerei (Olten,
Lausanne, 1956), 61 , pl. 64. Unfortunately, no documentation of these
operations is available.
[3] The NGA painting and scientific research departments analyzed the ground
using polarized light microscopy (PLM) and found it to be calcium sulfate. At
the same time, the pigments were also analyzed using PLM, x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), and microchemical tests. The results of
this analysis were published in Ann Hoenigswald, The Byzantine
Madonnas: Technical Investigation, Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982):
2531.
[4] The NGA scientific research department analyzed a cross-section of the

wood from the frame and found it to be fir (report in NGA conservation files
dated December 24, 1985).
PROVENANCE
Said to have come from a church, or convent, in Calahorra (province of La Rioja,

Spain);[1] (art market, Madrid), in 1912. (Herbert P. Weissberger, Madrid).[2] (Emile
Pares, Madrid, Paris, and New York); (his sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, 18-19
February 1915, 2nd day, no. 306, as by Giovanni Cimabue); (Emile Pares, Madrid,
Paris, and New York);[3] sold 26 November 1915 to (F. Kleinberger & Co., New
York).[4] Otto Kahn [1867-1934], New York, by 1917;[5] by inheritance to his widow,
Addie Wolff Kahn [d. 1949], New York;[6] gift 1949 to NGA. [1] The provenance was
first published as from the Cathedral of Calahara, Spain in the 1915 sale catalog of
the Emile Pares collection, and it is repeated with various modifications in the
subsequent literature. Although the Spanish provenance has sometimes been


doubted, NGA Systematic Catalogue author, the late Mikls Boskovits, did not see
any firm basis for such an allegation. He asked why should such an apparently
unlikely provenance be fabricated for a painting considered to be, as was the Kahn
Madonna, the work of an Italian artist, Cimabue or Cavallini. Boskovits considered
speculations like those put forward by August Mayer (Correspondence, Art in
America 12 [1924]: 234-235) and James Stubblebine (Two Byzantine Madonnas
form Calahorra Spain, The Art Bulletin 48 [1966]: 379-381), linking the arrival of
NGA 1949.7.1 and its companion-piece (NGA 1937.1.1) to Spain with the story of
Anna Constance, widow of the emperor John III Ducas Vatatzes (who lived in
Valencia since 1269 and died there in 1313), to be, for the time being, idle. There
could be various other ways to explain the presence of the two paintings at
Calahorra (see Otto Demus, Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13.
Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7
[1958]: 93-94); the provenance should, according to Boskovits, be considered valid
until demonstrated otherwise. As Rolf Bagemihl wrote to David Alan Brown (letter
of July 1992, in NGA curatorial files): There has been a confusion and deprecation
of the Calahorra provenance, but Pars[sic] was a serious collector and it might be
profitable to have some research done on his collection, and right in Calahorra. [2]
In 1949 Edward B. Garrison (Italian Romanesque Panel Painting, Florence, 1949:
44, no. 23) included Madrid and Weissberger (Garrison spelled the name
Weissburger) in his provenance of the painting, without including any dates. In
1982 Hans Belting (The Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about their Italian
Origins and Some Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982):
7, 21 n. 2) wrote that the painting had come on the art market in Madrid in 1912, and
that it was Weissberger who claimed the painting had come from Calahorra.
However, according to Belting, Robin Cormack found in Edward B. Garrisons
papers (at the Courtauld Institute, London) the information that Weissberger had
fabricated the Calahorra provenance, information that Cormack referred to in a
lecture given at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in 1979. [3] The purchaser at the
Pares sale is recorded as G.W. Arnold in an annotated copy of the sale catalogue
in the NGA Library, as well as in a report on the sale in American Art News (27
February 1915): 7. Arnold is also given as the purchaser of other lots. However,
there is a Pares invoice for the sale of the painting to Kleinberger later in the year
(see note 4), so perhaps Arnold was buying for Pares, and the painting was actually
bought in. Indeed, Osvald Sirn writes about the sale: Somehow none of the New
York collectors or dealers at that time seems to have grasped the artistic and
historical importance of the work; the bidding was very slow, and the original


purchaser retained his treasure. When I came to New York about a year later [early
1916] the picture was in the hands of a well known dealer (A Picture by Pietro
Cavallini, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 32, no. 179 [February 1918]:
45). [4] The Pares invoice for the sale to Kleinberger describes the painting as
"Vierge[sic] sur pauneau garant du 13th siecle. provenant de la Cathdrale de
Calahorra" (Kleinberger files in the Duveen Brothers Records, accession number
960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 251, box 396,
folder 5; copy in NGA curatorial files). [5] Kahn owned the painting by the time he
lent it to an exhibition at Kleinberger Galleries that was on view in November 1917.
It has not yet been determined when and from whom Kahn purchased the painting,
although it was possibly from Kleinberger. [6] Although Duveen Brothers asked at
least in 1941 what price Mrs. Kahn would accept for the painting, she specifically
told them it was not for sale and that it was not to be shown to anyone (the dealer
was storing the painting for her); Duveen Brothers Records, accession number
960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 328, box
473, folder 2; copies in NGA curatorial files.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1917 Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitives, F. Kleinberger Galleries, New York, 1917,
no. 69, repro., as The Madonna and Child by Pietro Cavallini.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1917 Sirn, Osvald, and Maurice W. Brockwell. Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition

of Italian Primitives. Exh. cat. F. Kleinberger Galleries. New York, 1917:
178, repro. 179.
1918 Sirn, Osvald. "A Picture by Pietro Cavallini." The Burlington Magazine
for Connoisseurs 32 (1918): 44-47, pl. 1.
1921 Berenson, Bernard. "Due dipinti del decimosecondo secolo venuti da
Costantinopoli." Dedalo 2 (1921): 284 (repro.), 285286, 289, 292304,
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1921 Marle, Raimond van. La peinture Romaine au Moyen-Age. Strasbourg,
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19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 1(1923):502, 503, 505, fig. 291.
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1924 Mayer, August L. "Correspondence." Art in America 12 (1924): 234-235.
1925 Busuioceanu, Alexandru. "Pietro Cavallini e la pittura romana del
Duecento e del Trecento." Ephemeris Dacoromana 3 (1925): 394.
1927 Toesca, Pietro. Il Medioevo. 2 vols. Storia dellarte italiana, 1. Turin, 1927:
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1928 Cecchi, Emilio. Trecentisti senesi. Rome, 1928: 12, 125.
1930 Berenson, Bernard. Studies in Medieval Painting. New Haven, 1930: 4-
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1930 Schweinfurth, Philipp. Geschichte der russischen Malerei im Mittelalter.
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1931 Fry, Roger. "Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting." The Burlington
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1933 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Early Italo-Byzantine Painting in Sicily." The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 283-284.
1934 Sandberg-Vaval, Evelyn. Liconografia della Madonna col Bambino
nella pittura italiana del Dugento. Siena, 1934: 44 no. 120, pl. 27a.
1935 DAncona, Paolo. Les primitifs italiens du XIe au XIIIe sicle. Paris, 1935:
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1935 Muratov, Pavel P., and Jean Chuzeville. La peinture byzantine. Paris,
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1936 Comstock, Helen. "A Dugento Panel at the Toledo Museum."
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1936 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "New Light on the Problem of the Pisan School."
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1937 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. Istorija vizantijskoj ivopisi: v druch tomach.
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1940 Rice, David Talbot. "Italian and Byzantine Painting in the Thirteenth
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1949 Garrison, Edward B. Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated
Index. Florence, 1949: repro. 44.
1950 Comstock, Helen. "The Connoisseur in America." Connoisseur 126, no.
517 (1950): 52, repro. 53.
Washington, 1951: 12-15, repro., as Enthroned Madonna and Child.
1954 Bettini, Sergio. "I mosaici dellatrio di San Marco e il loro seguito." Arte
veneta 8 (1954): 32, n. 6.
1956 Felicetti-Liebenfels, Walter. Geschichte der byzantinischen
Ikonenmalerei. Olten, 1956: 61, pl. 64.
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16, 54-55.
1958 Demus, Otto. "Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13.
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Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 87-104, figs. 1, 4.
1959 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Constantinopoli e le scuole nazionali alla luce di
nuove scoperte." Arte veneta 13-14 (1959-1960): 11-13, figs. 4, 5.
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1962 Bologna, Ferdinando. La pittura italiana delle origini. Rome, 1962: 80-81.
1963 Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963
(reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 64, repro.
1964 Pallucchini, Rodolfo, ed. La pittura veneziana del Trecento. Venice,
1964: 71-72.
1965 Cal, Maria. "Larte in Puglia." Arte antica e moderna 15 (1965): 389.
1966 Stubblebine, James H. "Two Byzantine Madonnas from Calahorra,
Spain." The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 379-381, figs. 1, 4, 8, 9.
1967 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. Storia della pittura bizantina. Turin, 1967: 318-319,
347 n. 177.
1968 Rice, David Talbot. Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase. London, 1968:
55, pl. 67.
1969 Bologna, Ferdinando. I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 1266-1414, e
un riesame dellarte nellet fridericiana. Rome, 1969: 22, 354.
1970 Beckwith, John. Early Christian and Byzantine Art. The Pelican History of
Art. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1970: 140.
1970 Demus, Otto. Byzantine Art and the West. New York, 1970: 216-218, 251
n. 147, fig. 237.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 230, 311, 647.
1976 Stoichita, Victor Ieronim. Ucenicia lui Duccio di Buoninsegna. Bucharest,
1976: 30-34, 149-150.
1982 Belting, Hans. "Introduzione." In Il medio oriente e loccidente nellarte


del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dellarte,
September 10-18, 1979. Edited by Hans Belting. Bologna, 1982: 4-5, 9 n.
19, pl. 9.
1982 Belting, Hans. "The 'Byzantine' Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian
Origin and Some Observations on Duccio." Studies in the History of Art
12 (1982): 8ff, repro.
1982 Hoenigswald, Ann. "The 'Byzantine' Madonnas: Technical Investigation."
Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 25-31, figs. 3 (X-radiograph), 4
(detail), 5 (photomicrograph detail),
Function. 2 vols. Groningen, 1984-1990: 1(1984):23, 26, fig. 22.
1985 Corrie, Rebecca W. "Tuscan Madonnas and Byzantine Masters." In
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Third Annual Meeting, College Art Association of America, February 14-
16, 1985. Los Angeles, 1985: 46.
1986 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. "Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento a
Napoli e nel Meridione." In La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento.
Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:463.
1987 Folda, Jaroslav. "The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icons or Altarpieces?"
In Research Reports and Record of Activities, National Gallery of Art,
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, 7 (1987): 57+.
1990 Belting, Hans. Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem
Zeitalter der Kunst. Munich, 1990: 33, 415 pl. 8, 417, 419 fig. 225, 420.
1991 Campagna Cicala, Francesca. "Messina. Scultura, pittura, miniatura e arti
suntuarie." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale. Edited by Istituto della
Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 8(1997):353.
1991 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. Sicilia: Pittura e miniatura. In Enciclopedia
Rome, 1991-2002: 10(1999):616-623.
1991 Pace, Valentino. "Dieci secoli di affreschi e mosaici romani: osservazioni
sulla mostra Fragmenta picta." Bollettino darte 76 (1991): 204-205, fig.
9.
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1992: 10, repro.
1993 Di Dario Guida, Maria Pia. Icone di Calabria e altre icone meridionali.
2nd ed. Messina, 1993: 111 (repro.), 119, 121.
1995 Folda, Jaroslav. "The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece?" In
Byzantine East, Latin West. Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt
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1995 Weyl Carr, Annemarie. "Byzantines and Italians on Cyprus: Images of


Art." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 352 n. 71.

1996 Gordon, Dillian. Duccio (di Buoninsegna). In The Dictionary of Art.
1996 Schmidt, Victor M. "Die Funktionen der Tafelbilder mit der thronenden
Madonna in der Malerei des Duecento." Mededelingen van het
Nederlands Instituut te Rome 55 (1996): 60-63, fig. 15.
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1997: 26, 177 n. 16.
1997 Cracraft, James. The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery, Chicago
and London, 1997: no. 1, repro.
1997 Evans, Helen C., and William D. Wixom, eds. The Glory of Byzantium: Art
and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 843-1261. Exh. cat.
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1997 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical
Reevaluation. University Park, PA, 1997: 77, fig. 5.
1997 Martin, Frank, and Gerhard Ruf. Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco
in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien.
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1998 Bellosi, Luciano. Cimabue. Edited by Giovanna Ragionieri. 1st ed. Milan,
1998: 58-59 (repro.), 62 n. 19, 63 n. 22.
1999 Lauria, Antonietta. "Una Madonna tardoduecentesca tra Roma e Assisi."
in Arte dOccidente: temi e metodi. Studi in onore di Angiola Maria
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1999 Polzer, Joseph. "Some Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted
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2000 Kirsh, Andrea, and Levenson, Rustin S. Seeing Through Paintings:
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2000 Labriola, Ada. "Lo stato degli studi su Cimabue e un libro recente." Arte
cristiana 88 (2000): 343, 350 n. 18-19, 351 n. 33.
2002 Folda, Jaroslav. "Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the
Virgin and Child Enthroned." In Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento
and Trecento. Edited by Victor M. Schmidt. Studies in the History of Art
61 (2002): 127-129, 131-133, 139, fig. 4.
2002 Polzer, Joseph. "The Byzantine Kahn and Mellon Madonnas:
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2003 Pasut, Francesca. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting.
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2005 Corrie, Rebecca W. "The Khan and Mellon Madonnas and their Place in
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2006: 11, fig. 6.
2013 Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art,
and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London,
2013: 246, 250.


Madonna and Child on a

Curved Throne
c. 1260/1280
tempera on linden panel
overall: 84 x 53.5 cm (33 1/16 x 21 1/16 in.)
framed: 90.8 x 58.3 x 7.6 cm (35 3/4 x 22 15/16 x 3 in.)
Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1937.1.1
ENTRY
The painting shows the Madonna seated frontally on an elaborate, curved, two-tier,
wooden throne of circular plan.[1] She is supporting the blessing Christ child on her
left arm according to the iconographic tradition of the Hodegetria.[2] Mary is
wearing a red mantle over an azure dress. The child is dressed in a salmon-colored
tunic and blue mantle; he holds a red scroll in his left hand, supporting it on his
lap.[3] In the upper corners of the panel, at the height of the Virgins head, two
medallions contain busts of two archangels [fig. 1] [fig. 2], with their garments
surmounted by loroi and with scepters and spheres in their hands.[4]
It was Bernard Berenson (1921) who recognized the common authorship of this
work and Enthroned Madonna and Child and who concludedthough admitting he
had no specialized knowledge of art of this cultural areathat they were probably
works executed in Constantinople around 1200.[5] These conclusions retain their
authority and continue to stir debate. Of the various alternative proposals
expressed thus far, only those that have considered them the products of a
thirteenth-century Roman or Venetian painter have been definitively abandoned.[6]
Berensons opinion of the purely Byzantine figurative culture of the two panels still
commands wide support,[7] even though the dating of the paintings is in general
placed slightly later, c. 1250 or within the second half of the thirteenth century.[8]
George Martin Richters view that the master who painted them was a Greek active
at the time of the Norman kings in Sicily remains isolated.[9] But a Sicilian origin is
Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne 148


still supported by those scholars who follow the opinion of Viktor Lazarev that the
Kahn and Mellon Madonnas were painted in Sicily during the last quarter of the
thirteenth century, by artists who had come from Byzantium or by their local
disciples.[10] Some authorities on Byzantine art doubt, however, that the two
Madonnas in the National Gallery of Art could have been executed by masters of
Byzantine origin.[11] In their view, also endorsed by some experts of Italian
medieval painting, the characteristics of the two panels presuppose patrons with
liturgical needs, iconographic precedents, and cultural traditions consistent with
those of the Latin West. Further, they have asserted that the two paintings
probably were executed in Tuscany.[12] Other scholars have supported the thesis
that the two panels were painted in Cyprus or in Thessaloniki.[13]
Opinions thus vary widely regarding the cultural origin of this painting and the
Enthroned Madonna and Child, but significant convergences can be ascertained
on some points. It seems generally recognized, for example, that the Kahn
Madonna is the earlier of the two images and that it was painted by an artist
trained in Byzantium, although possibly at work far from his homeland, and for
patrons of Western culture. The close stylistic affinities between the two panels are
also commonly recognized, even if the Mellon Madonna is often indicated as the
work of a different hand. In more recent years, however, various scholars have
again proposed their common authorship.[14]
The sudden appearance of the two panels in tandem and their common
provenance from a small Spanish town have been considered strange;[15] indeed,
their alleged provenance from a church in Calahorra is authenticated, as far as I
know, by no document. On the other hand, the fact that at least in 1912 the two
paintings were reported together on the Madrid art market supports a Spanish
provenance or at least makes it probable that they were purchased in Spain,
perhaps even from the same owner. It would seem strange, in any case, to invent a
provenance from Calahorra for paintings allegedly executed by Cimabue or by
Cavallini. Various reasons have been adduced to cast doubt on whether both
panels could have been executed by the same artist. Roger Fry was the first to
emphasize the different structure and pictorial treatment of the two thrones.[16]
Many years later, Hans Belting cited the results of technical examinations by Ann
Hoenigswald in support of his thesis that most of the analogies which link the
Mellon Madonna to the Kahn Madonna must...be interpreted as a deliberate
attempt by the artist of the former to imitate the latter or a similar work.[17] Several
scholars have accepted Beltings conclusions, although it is fair to say that, in order


to exclude the use of different technical procedures by the same painter, one
would first need the evidence of systematic analyseshitherto unavailableof the
pictorial technique of a particular painter in various phases of his career. How can
we exclude a priori the possibility of an artist having developed, or having
experimented with, new solutions, or different technical procedures, in the course
of his career?[18] While we may freely admit that there are some technical
differences in the execution of the two Madonnas in the Gallery, we cannot infer
from this that they are the work of different hands. Still less can any such conviction
dispense us from a careful stylistic analysis of the two images.
The claim is made occasionally that modern restoration drastically altered the
Mellon Madonna. A comparison of photographs taken c. 1920 with those taken in
more recent times proves indeed that modern conservation measures have been
extensive. Yet many parts of the painting that are still clearly legible disclose close
resemblances with Enthroned Madonna and Child. The affinities concern not only
the formal treatment of such details as the faces of the two images of Mary [fig.
3] [fig. 4] or the delicately poetic interpretation of the main personages, but also the
high, sustained qualitative level of the execution of both panels, the skilful use of
chrysography to articulate and give relief to the bodies,[19] and some peculiar
incongruities in the perspective of the thrones. In the Kahn Madonna the artist
proposes a rectangular wooden throne with a very elaborate structure and tries to
make it illusionistically credible, not only by the three-dimensional modeling of the
individual components but also by making the right rear leg visible through the
perforations. But he fails to remove incongruities in perspective: while the throne
itself is seen from the left, the four legs are represented as if seen from the other
side. In the Mellon Madonna, apart from the painters difficulty in convincingly
rendering the foreshortening of the circular seat, it may be noted once again that
the two front legs are seen from opposite directions: one from the left, the other
from the right. It is difficult to think that all this is merely the consequence of the
painters effort to follow his model, not least because the Mellon Madonna is
decidedly not a copy of the other. The two images are in fact different in type and
perhaps also in function. Their common provenance seems to suggest that they
were executed for the same patron but belong to two different phases of the
artists career and were intended to satisfy different needs.[20]
Of the comparisons hitherto proposed, the one indicated by Otto Demus, of the
Madonna of the Deesis in the southern gallery of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul [fig. 5], a
mosaic probably executed immediately after the Byzantine reconquest of


Constantinople in 1261,[21] seems particularly significant in support of the

Constantinopolitan culture of the artist of the two paintings. However, other images
too, whether in the form of frescoes, panels, or miniatures,[22] seem to suggest a
similar origin of the two Madonnas, the execution of which is unlikely to have been
much later than the Deesis in Hagia Sophia. None of the works hitherto compared
with the Byzantine panels in the Gallery in fact seems so close to them as this
mosaic in Hagia Sophia, both in facial type and in the extreme delicacy of the
modeling; this close kinship represents, in my view, the confirmationdespite
frequent denialsof the common authorship of the two paintings.[23]
It is understandable that some decorative forms used in the panelsfor example,

the elaborate incised decoration of the halos of the Kahn Madonna and the type of
throneshould have suggested the artists contact with Tuscan figurative culture.
But closer analysis will show that the decorative motifs of the halos,[24] as well as
the wooden thrones of the Washington paintings, are well known in Byzantine art.
The genre of the Madonna and Child Enthroned on a monumental scale,
particularly popular in thirteenth-century Tuscany, was also well known in
contemporary central and southern Italian painting and in that of the Venetian and
Adriatic area.[25] Influenced, in its realistic elements, by icons imported from the
various centers of Byzantine art and by products of so-called Crusader art,[26]
these large images were at times commissioned from artists of Byzantine origin
and training: this seems to me the case of the Madonna in the Basilica of San
Nicola at Bari.[27] It seems plausible to suggest a similar origin for the Kahn and
Mellon Madonnas, though these are distinguished from the icon in Bari by the
particular accomplishment of their execution and by their stylistic kinship with
works having at least a probable Constantinopolitan origin. In conclusion,
therefore, while admitting that the origin of these paintings will probably long
remain a bone of contention, the present state of our knowledge suggests that
they were produced in a workshop culturally bound to Constantinople in years not
long before or not long after 1261, the presumed date of the image they most
closely resemble, the mosaic in Hagia Sophia.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Detail of right medallion with archangel, Byzantine

thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople),
fig. 1 Detail of left medallion with archangel, Byzantine
Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280,
thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople),
tempera on linden, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280,
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
tempera on linden, National Gallery of Art, Washington,


fig. 4 Detail of Madonna's face, Byzantine thirteenth

fig. 3 Detail of Madonna's face, Byzantine thirteenth century (possibly from Constantinople), Enthroned
century (possibly from Constantinople), Madonna and Madonna and Child, c. 1250/1275, tempera on poplar,
Child on a Curved Throne, c. 1260/1280, tempera on National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mrs. Otto H.
linden, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Kahn
Mellon Collection


fig. 5 Detail of Madonna's face, Byzantine second half of

the thirteenth century, Deesis Mosaic of the South Gallery,
c. 1260/1280, gold and glass mosaic, Hagia Sophia
Museum, Istanbul. Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY
NOTES
[1] This type of throne, familiar since late antiquity, had a particular diffusion in
Byzantine representations of the thirteenth century, and Rebecca Corrie
(2000) conjectured that the motif might have had imperial associations,
with reference to Solomons throne, whose top is described as round
behind (1 Kings 10:19). Rebecca Corrie, in The Mother of God:
Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan
and London, 2000), 438439. The throne could also allude to the role of
Mary herself as sedes sapientiae, seat of wisdom, since she supports the
Son of God on her lap. See Jaroslav Folda, Icon to Altarpiece in the
Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned, in Italian Panel
Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the
History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 133134. On the
throne in general, see Ilene H. Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood
Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, 1972), 134
203.


[2] On the iconography of the Hodegetria, cf. Gregor Martin Lechner, Maria, in
Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart,
2005), 6:5971. On the cult of the image, see also Christine Angelidi and
Titos Papamastorakis, The Veneration of the Virgin Hodegetria and the
Hodegon Monastery, in The Mother of God: The Representation of the
Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 373
387.
[3] Rebecca Corrie, in The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in

Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 438,
emphasized the rarity of the motif of the brilliant red mantle in Marian
representations in Italian medieval art. For the motif of the Christ Child
holding a scroll, see Klaus Wessel, Buchrolle, in Reallexikon zur
byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966), 1:784795.
[4] Cf. D.I. Pallas, Himmelsmchte, Erzengel und Engel, in Reallexikon zur
byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1978), 3:2632,
3540.
[5] Bernard Berenson, Due dipinti del decimosecondo secolo venuti da

Costantinopoli, Dedalo 2 (1921): 284304.
[6] Osvald Sirn, A Picture by Pietro Cavallini, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 32 (1918): 4447, attributed the Kahn Madonna alone to Pietro
Cavallini. But since then only Raimond van Marle (1921, 1923, 1932)
continued to support the hypothesis that the artist of the two paintings was
Roman and associated with a cosmatesque workshop, though Walter
Felicetti-Liebenfels (1956) also admitted the possibility that the two panels
might have been produced auf rmischen Boden. Edward Garrison (1949),
on the other hand, did not exclude the possibility that the paintings could
have been Venetian in origin. See Raimond van Marle, La peinture romaine
au Moyen-Age (Strasbourg, 1921), 227228; Raimond van Marle, The
Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 1, From the 6th until the
End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 503505; Raimond van Marle,
Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 1, Dal vi alla fine del XIII secolo (The
Hague, 1932), 519523; Walter Felicetti-Liebenfels, Geschichte der
byzantinischen Ikonenmalerei (Olten, Lausanne, 1956), 61; Edward B.
Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence,
1949), 44, 48.
[7] The Byzantine figurative culture of the two Madonnas is supported by Pietro
Toesca, Il medioevo, 2 vols., Storia dellarte italiana 1 (Turin, 1927), 2:1035
n. 39; Emilio Cecchi, Trecentisti senesi (Rome, 1928), 12, 125; Roger Fry, Mr
Berenson on Medieval Painting, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
58, no. 338 (1931): 245; Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, Liconografia della
Madonna col bambino nella pittura italiana del Dugento (Siena, 1934), 43


44; Helen Comstock, A Dugento Panel at the Toledo Museum,

Connoisseur 98 (1936): 231; Helen Comstock, The Connoisseur in
America, Connoisseur 126, no. 517 (1950): 5253; Otto Demus, Zwei
Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch der
sterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 87104; Otto Demus,
Byzantine Art and the West (New York, 1970), 216218, 251 n. 147; Karl Maria
Swoboda, In den Jahren 1950 bis 1961 erschienene Werke zur
byzantinischen und weiteren ostchristlichen Kunst, Kunstgeschichtliche
Anzeigen 5 (19611962): 148; Irmgard Hutter, Early Christian and Byzantine
Art (New York, 1971), 156; Horst Waldemar Janson, History of Art, 2nd ed.
(New York, 1977), 214; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings,
2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:9699; Jaroslav Folda, The Kahn and
Mellon Madonnas: Icons or Altarpieces? Center/National Gallery of Art,
Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 5758; Annemarie
Weyl Carr, Byzantines and Italians on Cyprus: Images of Art, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 352 n. 71.
[8] Subsequent to van Marle 1921, the great majority of art historians accepted
this time span for the execution of the two paintings; only Duveen Pictures
1941 and NGA 1941 gave the date as early thirteenth century or, as in Demus
1958, as the first half of the century. John Walker (1963) reaffirmed the
Berensonian date of c. 1200. See Raimond van Marle, La peinture romaine
au Moyen-Age (Strasbourg, 1921), 227228; Duveen Brothers, Duveen
Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 1; National
Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture
(Washington, DC, 1941), 31; Otto Demus, Zwei Konstantinopler
Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch der sterreichischen
Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 87104; John Walker, National Gallery
of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1963), 64, 65, 297.
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177, proposed the paternity
of a Byzantine master at the court of Norman Kings in Sicily in the twelfth
century for the Mellon Madonna.
[10] Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Early Italo-Byzantine Painting in Sicily, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 283284; Viktor Nikiti Lazarev,
Istorija vizantijskoj ivopisi: V druch tomach (Moscow, 19471948), 192, 351
n. 116; Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Constantinopoli e le scuole nazionali alla luce di
nuove scoperte, Arte veneta 1314 (19591960): 1113; Viktor Nikiti Lazarev,
Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967), 318319, 347 n. 177. The scholars
proposal was accepted by Paolo DAncona, Les primitifs italiens du XIe au
XIIIe sicle (Paris, 1935), 4647; David Talbot Rice, Italian and Byzantine
Painting in the Thirteenth Century, Apollo 31 (1940): 8990; David Talbot
Rice, Byzantine Painting: The Last Phase (London, 1968), 55; Ferdinando
Bologna, La pittura italiana delle origini (Rome, 1962), 8081; Ferdinando


Bologna, I pittori alla corte angioina di Napoli, 12661414, e un riesame

dellarte nellet fridericiana (Rome, 1969), 22, 247, 354; Rodolfo Pallucchini,
ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 7173; Maria Cal,
Larte in Puglia, Arte antica e moderna 15 (1965): 389; Pina DElia and
Michele DElia, eds., Icone di Puglia: Catalogo della Mostra (Bari, 1969),
no. 33; Victor Ieronim Stoichita, Ucenicia lui Duccio di Buoninsegna
(Bucharest, 1976), 3034, 149150; Anna Tambini, Pittura dallAlto Medioevo
al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forl (Faenza, 1982), 3233;
Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento a Napoli e
nel Meridione, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:463; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Sicilia:
Pittura e miniatura, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome,
1999), 10:619620; Maria Pia Di Dario Guida, Icone di Calabria e altre icone
meridionali, 2nd ed. (Messina, 1993), 119, 121; Francesca Campagna Cicala,
Messina: Scultura, pittura, miniatura e arti suntuarie, in Enciclopedia
dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:353; Tania Velmans, Vojislav
Kora, and Marica uput, Bisanzio: Lo splendore dellarte monumentale
(Milan, 1999), 202.
[11] Only for the Mellon Madonna did Robert Byron and David Talbot Rice (1930)
exclude the possibility that it might have been the work of a Byzantine artist,
while Philip Schweinfurth (1930) and Hans Belting (1982 and 1990) rejected
the hypothesis of Byzantine authorship for both paintings. See Robert Byron
and David Talbot Rice, The Birth of Western Painting (London, 1930), 101 n. 1;
Philipp Schweinfurth, Geschichte der russischen Malerei im Mittelalter (The
Hague, 1930), 377379; Hans Belting, Introduzione, in Il medio oriente e
loccidente nellarte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale
di storia dellarte, September 1018, 1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982),
45; Hans Belting, The Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about Their
Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of
Art 12 (1982): 722; Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes
vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 33, 417, 420.
[12] Sergio Bettini (1954) proposed that the artist of both panels was a Florentine
mosaicist who had been trained in a Byzantine milieu. Though he
considered both panels to have been produced in Constantinople, James H.
Stubblebine (1966) detected in them the influence of Duccio. Belting
(Introduzione, 1982) first proposed that the two paintings were executed in
Italy, under the influence of Cimabue and Duccio; later that year (The
Byzantine Madonnas) he conjectured that the Kahn Madonna probably
had been executed in the area of Pisa, whereas the Mellon Madonna was
the work of a local imitator. Hendrik W. van Os, Dillian Gordon, and Hayden
B.J. Maginnis accepted this opinion. Joseph Polzer (1999 and 2002), on the
basis of the incised decoration of the halos of the Kahn Madonna, which he
thought was derived from the halo ornament of Tuscan paintings of the final


decades of the thirteenth century, asserted that the two panels in the
National Gallery of Art and some others stylistically akin to them were
produced in Tuscany, probably in Siena, in the years 12801320. The
decorative repertoire published by Pasut 2003 identified the presence of
the ornamental motif that Polzer had studied in various paintings executed
in Tuscany, and also in other regions of Italy, in the third quarter of the
thirteenth century, while Rebecca Corrie (2005) went further and identified
its diffusion from Russia to Bulgaria and from Cyprus to Sicily, from the early
years of the thirteenth century onwards. Sergio Bettini, I mosaici dellatrio di
San Marco e il loro seguito, Arte veneta 8 (1954): 32, n. 6; James H.
Stubblebine, Two Byzantine Madonnas from Calahorra, Spain, The Art
Bulletin 48 (1966): 379381; Hans Belting, Introduzione, in Il medio oriente
e loccidente nellarte del XIII secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale
di storia dellarte, September 1018, 1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982),
45; Hans Belting, The Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about Their
Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of
Art 12 (1982): 722; Hendrik W. van Os, Sienese Altarpieces 12151460:
Form, Content, Function, vol. 1, 12151344 (Groningen, 1984), 23, 26; Dillian
Gordon, Duccio di Buoninsegna, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner,
34 vols. (New York, 1996), 9:341; Hayden B.J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age
of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University Park, PA, 1997), 77; Joseph
Polzer, Some Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the
Later Middle Ages, 1, Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 85; Joseph Polzer, Some
Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle
Ages, 2, Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 167182; Joseph Polzer, The Byzantine
Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Concerning Their Chronology, Place of Origin,
and Method of Analysis, Arte cristiana 90 (2002): 401410; Francesca
Pasut, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting:
Supplementary Volume, vol. 2, Ornamental Painting in Italy (12501310): An
Illustrated Index, ed. Mikls Boskovits, new ed. (Florence, 2003), 125 n. 20;
Rebecca W. Corrie, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the
History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned, in Images of the Mother of God:
Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot
and Burlington, VT, 2005), 296.
[13] Aligning himself with those who considered the Mellon and Kahn Madonnas
as the works of two different hands (see also notes 16, 17, and 24), Jaroslav
Folda (1995) argued that the Kahn Madonna was painted by a Greek painter
of Constantinople, whereas its companion panel dated, in his view,
somewhat later and was executed in an as yet undetermined Levantine
location. See Jaroslav Folda, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or
Altarpiece? in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of
Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 501506. Returning to
the question later (1997, 2001, 2002, 2005), Folda specified Cyprus as the
most probable location for the execution of the Mellon Madonna, though


not excluding other possible candidates (Frankish Greece, Crusader states).

For her part Rebecca Corrie, having pointed out the Byzantine origin of the
types of throne present in the two versions of the Madonna in the National
Gallery of Art (1985), later came to the conclusion (1996, 2000, 2005) that
the two Washington panels fit well into Byzantine paintings and that they
were probably the work of artists trained at Constantinople or
Thessaloniki. Jaroslav Folda, in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of
the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 8431261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D.
Wixom (New York, 1997), 391, 396397; Jaroslav Folda, Reflections on the
Mellon Madonna as a Work of Crusader Art, in Dei gesta per Francos:
tudes sur les croisades ddies Jean Richard/Crusade Studies in
Honour of Jean Richard, ed. Michel Balad, Benjamin Kedar, and Jonathan
Riley-Smith (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2001), 361371; Jaroslav Folda,
Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child
Enthroned, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed.
Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New
Haven, 2002), 127129, 131135, 139; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the
Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 11871291
(Cambridge, 2005), 457458, 557; Rebecca W. Corrie, Tuscan Madonnas
and Byzantine Masters, in Abstracts and Program Statements for Art
History Sessions: Seventy-Third Annual Meeting, College Art Association of
America, February 1416, 1985, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, 1985), 46;
Rebecca W. Corrie, The Perugia Triptych and the Transmission of
Byzantine Maniera Greca, in Acts: XVIIIth International Congress of
Byzantine Studies, vol. 3, Art History, Architecture, Music, ed. Ihor evenko,
Gennady G. Litavrin, and Walter K. Hanak (Moscow, 1996), 41; Rebecca
Corrie, in The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art,
ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 438439; Rebecca W. Corrie,
The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin
and Child Enthroned, in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the
Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT,
2005), 293300.
[14] Cf. Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 5859,
and Rebecca W. Corrie, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in
the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned, in Images of the Mother of
God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki
(Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 299, who considered the two
paintings as having come from the same workshop and realized at about
the same time, but not by the same artist.
[15] Hans Belting, The Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian
Origin and Some Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of Art 12
(1982): 7, 21 n. 3, was the first to insinuate doubts about the provenance
from Calahorra, indicating manuscript notes of E.B. Garrison, not otherwise


specified, as his source for these doubts. Robin Cormack mentioned these
notes, presumably found in the Garrison archive, now in the Courtauld
Institute in London, during an apparently unpublished lecture given at
Dumbarton Oaks in 1979. In essence, Belting claimed, the dealer
Weissberger had fabricated this provenance, i.e., from Calahorra. What
Belting asserted as a certainty is, however, it seems to me, no more than a
suspicion, although often accepted by other scholars, e.g., Jaroslav Folda,
The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece? in Byzantine East,
Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula
Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 503; Rebecca W. Corrie, The Kahn and Mellon
Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,
in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium,
ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 293.
[16] Roger Fry, Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting, The Burlington Magazine

for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245: The Carl Hamilton picture
[Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, in comparison with the Kahn
Madonna] seems to be more Byzantine...particularly in the purely linear
treatment of the throne."
[17] Beltings later scholarship was published alongside a paper by Ann

Hoenigswald (1982), who listed various disparities she observed in the
respective techniques of the two paintings. In the Kahn Madonna, the flesh
tones seem to have been built upon an underlying green tone which
provides the deepest shadows. This is not apparent...in the Mellon panel,
where the shadow was mixed into the flesh tone. Moreover, the shadow
formed by the folds of the blue robe on the Kahn Madonna is implied by the
chrysography.... In the Mellon panel, however, there is a two-toned system
of a lighter and darker blue juxtaposed with gold outline. According to
Hoenigswald, therefore, the comparisons of technique...are strong
indications that the panels were not the work of the same artist. Hans
Belting, Introduzione, in Il medio oriente e loccidente nellarte del XIII
secolo, Atti del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dellarte, September
1018, 1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), 45; Hans Belting, The
Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some
Observations on Duccio, Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 722; Ann
Hoenigswald, The Byzantine Madonnas: Technical Investigation, Studies
in the History of Art 12 (1982): 27, 28, 29.
[18] We do not have at our disposal sufficient data to determine whether, and to
what degree, the technique of a painter of this period could alter in the
course of years or decades.
[19] Though observing differences between the chrysography of the Kahn

Madonna and the Mellon Madonna (in which he detected an etwas khlen
Klassizismus [a somewhat cool classicism], 91), Otto Demus justly
emphasized that both were characterized by a Formverstndnis


(understanding of form, 93) absent from contemporary Italian paintings. Otto

Demus, Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,
Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 9091,
9394.
[20] Reflecting on the different functions of the two Madonnas in the National
Gallery of Art, Jaroslav Folda (1995) conjectured that the Kahn Madonna was
intended as a large processional icon, whereas the other panel might have
been one wing of a large diptych for private or public use. Folda also
confirmed these hypotheses in later contributions, specifying (2002) that the
Kahn Madonna can be easily understood as a large processional icon that
could have been placed on a proskynetarion or positioned behind an altar
in a Latin church. Victor M. Schmidt (1996) accepted this proposal, though
he did not exclude that the Mellon Madonna might originally have been a
self-standing icon. According to Rebecca Corrie (2005), a panel such as the
Mellon Madonna might have been made for private devotion, or even as
part of an iconostasis perhaps, while the Kahn Madonna, in view of its
considerable size, could have functioned in a pair of despotic icons.
Jaroslav Folda, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece? in
Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt
Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 505506; Jaroslav Folda,
Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of the Virgin and Child
Enthroned, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed.
Haven, 2002), 127128; Victor M. Schmidt, Die Funktionen der Tafelbilder
mit der thronenden Madonna in der Malerei des Duecento, Mededelingen
van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 55 (1996): 6063; Rebecca W. Corrie,
The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin
and Child Enthroned, in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the
2005), 295.
[21] See Otto Demus, Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13.

Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft
7 (1958): 9597. Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin,
1967), 198, and others suggested a date in the twelfth century, but a dating
shortly after 1261 is now more prevalent, e.g., Robin Cormack, The Mother
of God in the Mosaics of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople, in The Mother of
God: The Representation of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki
(Milan and London, 2000), 118119; Tania Velmans, La pittura bizantina:
Mosaici, affreschi, icone, miniature, in Bisanzio, Costantinopoli, Istanbul, ed.
Tania Velmans (Milan, 2008), 182.
[22] Selbst wenn die Deesis der Hagia Sophia das einzige erhaltene
Konstantinopler Werk dieser Epoche wrerightly observed Demus
msste die Konfrontation mit ihr gengen, um den hauptstdtischen


Ursprung der Kahn- wie der Mellon-Madonna zweifelsfrei darzutun (Even if

the Deesis of Hagia Sophia were the only surviving Constantinopolitan work
of the period, a comparison with the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas would be
enough to unequivocally confirm their origins in the capital). Otto Demus,
Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts, Jahrbuch der
sterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 97. However, the
same scholar listed some other similar works, including the frescoes in the
Saint Demetrios Cathedral in Vladimir, Russia (11941199), in which he saw
the work of both Constantinopolitan masters and their Russian disciples as a
kind of anticipation of some aspects of the art developed in the first
decades of the thirteenth century. For his part, Hans Belting (1982) cited the
Madonna of the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos and some other later
icons dating to the fourteenth century, though it is fair to say that these
reveal a stylistic phase a good deal more advanced than the panels in the
National Gallery of Art; Hans Belting, The Byzantine Madonnas: New Facts
about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on Duccio, Studies in the
History of Art 12 (1982): 1011. Jaroslav Folda (1995) proposed that the
Mellon Madonna master must have seen a Byzantine example such as that
in Paris, Bibl. Nat. ms. gr. 54 and thus used as his model the miniatures of
an evangelistary; Jaroslav Folda, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or
Altarpiece? in Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of
Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 504. But, in his view,
the image in the Gallery especially had close affinities with some Crusader
panel paintings in Cyprus (Madonna and Child and Saint Nicholas with
some scenes from his life, both in the Byzantine Museum at Nicosia). For
other analogous paintings and miniatures, see Rebecca W. Corrie, The
Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and
Child Enthroned, in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the
2005), 293303. The present writer finds significant affinities between the
two Washington panels and some icons preserved in the monastery of Saint
Catherine on Mount Sinai. These paintings are of uncertain provenance, but
they can be assumed to have been executed in the second half of the
thirteenth century and in Constantinople, to judge from their very sustained
quality of execution and accomplished pictorial technique: I refer in
particular to the Archangel Michael, the Archangel Gabriel, and a half-length
Madonna in Prayer. See, respectively, Konstantinos A. Manafis, ed., Sinai:
Treasures of the Monastery of Saint Catherine (Athens, 1990), 170, pl. 41;
Helen C. Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (12611557) (New Haven,
2004), 384385, no. 240; Jaroslav Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land:
From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 11871291 (Cambridge, 2005),
222, fig. 126.
[23] Following Fry 1931 and DAncona 1935, the proposition that the two
Madonnas might have been produced in the same workshop was explicitly


denied by Belting 1982, 1990; Hoenigswald 1982; Folda 1987, 1995, 1997,
2002, 2005; Polzer 1999, 2002; and Kirsch and Levenson 2000. See Roger
Fry, Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245; Paolo DAncona, Les primitifs italiens
du XIe au XIIIe sicle (Paris, 1935), 4647; Hans Belting, The Byzantine
Madonnas: New Facts about Their Italian Origin and Some Observations on
Duccio, Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 722; Hans Belting, Bild und
Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990),
33, 417, 420; Ann Hoenigswald, The Byzantine Madonnas: Technical
Investigation, Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 2531; Jaroslav Folda,
The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icons or Altarpieces? Center/National
Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 5758;
Jaroslav Folda, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas: Icon or Altarpiece? in
Byzantine East, Latin West: Art-Historical Studies in Honor of Kurt
Weitzmann, ed. Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1995), 501510; Jaroslav Folda, in
The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, A.D.
8431261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D. Wixom (New York, 1997), 391,
396397; Jaroslav Folda, Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East: Images of
the Virgin and Child Enthroned, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento
and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art
(Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 123145; Jaroslav Folda,
Crusader Art in the Holy Land: From the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre,
11871291 (Cambridge, 2005), 457458, 557; Joseph Polzer, Some
Byzantine and Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle
Ages, 1, Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 85; Joseph Polzer, Some Byzantine and
Byzantinising Madonnas Painted during the Later Middle Ages, 2, Arte
cristiana 87 (1999): 167182; Joseph Polzer, The Byzantine Kahn and
Mellon Madonnas: Concerning their Chronology, Place of Origin, and
Method of Analysis, Arte cristiana 90 (2002): 401410; Andrea Kirsh and
Rustin S. Levenson, Seeing through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art
Historical Studies (New Haven and London, 2000), 180. It should further be
recalled that Viktor Lazarev (1933, 1947, 19591960, 1967) consistently
spoke of two masters as the authors of the Kahn and Hamilton (Mellon)
Madonnas, though he recognized that their figurative culture had a common
source. See Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Early Italo-Byzantine Painting in Sicily,
The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 283284; Viktor Nikiti
Lazarev, Istorija vizantijskoj ivopisi: V druch tomach (Moscow, 19471948),
192, 351 n. 116; Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Constantinopoli e le scuole nazionali
alla luce di nuove scoperte, Arte veneta 1314 (19591960): 1113; Viktor
Nikiti Lazarev, Storia della pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967), 318319, 347 n. 117.
[24] See Francesca Pasut, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting:
Supplementary Volume, vol. 2, Ornamental Painting in Italy (12501310): An
Illustrated Index, ed. Mikls Boskovits, new ed. (Florence, 2003), 125 n. 20;
Rebecca W. Corrie, The Kahn and Mellon Madonnas and Their Place in the


History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned, in Images of the Mother of God:
Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot
and Burlington, VT, 2005), 293303.
[25] Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, New Light on the Problem of the Pisan School, The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 68 (1936): 6173, followed by Otto
Demus, Zwei Konstantinopler Marienikonen des 13. Jahrhunderts,
Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 7 (1958): 93,
placed the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas in relation with the Madonna and
Child Enthroned, no. 240 in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, which he
considered the work of a Pisan master. In my view, the painting in Moscow
is a precious and rare example of Venetian painting of the third quarter of
the thirteenth century, which, like the later but still thirteenth-century two-
sided panel in the monastery of Santa Maria at Zadar, exemplifies
knowledge and diffusion of this genre in the Venetian and Adriatic regions.
See Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270
(Florence, 1993), 134 n. 284; Mikls Boskovits, Andrei Bliznukov, and
Rodolfo Maffeis, Studi recenti sulla pittura italiana in Russia: Il nuovo
catalogo del Museo Pukin, Arte cristiana 92 (2004): 113114; and Helen C.
Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (12611557) (New Haven, 2004),
497498. A throne of very effective perspective rendering and of similar
type also appears in the large panel in the basilica of San Nicola at Bari; it,
too, sometimes is compared with the two paintings in the National Gallery of
Art. See Pina DElia and Michele DElia, eds., Icone di Puglia: Catalogo della
Mostra (Bari, 1969), no. 33. The Bari icon, which to judge from its style ought
to be the work of a master of Byzantine formation, again dating to the
thirteenth century, is the forerunner of a type of Marian image that would
become very widespread in southern Italy, as shown for instance by the
Madonna usually attributed to Montano dArezzo in the Sanctuary of
Montevergine near Avellino; Ferdinando Bologna, I pittori alla corte
angioina di Napoli, 12661414, e un riesame dellarte nellet fridericiana
(Rome, 1969), 102107. On the thrones of the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas,
see the analogies quoted by Rebecca W. Corrie, The Kahn and Mellon
Madonnas and Their Place in the History of the Virgin and Child Enthroned,
in Images of the Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium,
ed. Maria Vassilaki (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2005), 296.
[26] On the relations of the two Washington Madonnas with works of Crusader
art, see in particular Jaroslav Folda, Icon to Altarpiece in the Frankish East:
Images of the Virgin and Child Enthroned, in Italian Panel Painting of the
Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art
(Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 129138. To the list of panels by
artists of Byzantine formation that depict, perhaps at the request of Western
donors, the full-length Madonna and Child Enthroned, I would add that in


the Museo Nazionale of Ravenna, cf. Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Storia della
pittura bizantina (Turin, 1967) fig. 428, and that in the Gemldegalerie Alte
Meister, Dresden (no. 23), usually left in anonymity and considered of
fourteenth-century date. However, Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna
Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 116, significantly proposed it as a work of the
school of Giunta Pisano.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden support consists of two linden (tiglio)[1] boards with vertically aligned
grain. The panel has been thinned, and three horizontal battens have been
attached to its back. Wooden margins at the top and two sides show that an
engaged frame may have formed part of its original structure. The gilding is
modern, laid over a red bole with gesso and fabric discontinuous from that beneath
the rest of the painting.[2] Although the technique of execution is essentially similar
in this painting and in the Kahn Madonna, some discrepancies have been
observed in the painting procedure; Ann Hoenigswald (1982) considered this
evidence of a difference in the training or traditions of the artists who painted
them.[3] The painted surface has been extensively damaged along the crackle
lines and is generally worn and considerably inpainted. Inpainting can also be
observed in particular in the faces, in the childs hair, in the acorn-shaped
decorations at the top of the throne, in the chrysography of the draperies, in the
borders and red ground of the medallions, in the green ground plane at the foot of
the throne, and along the join between the two boards forming the support (which
runs vertically between the figure of the Christ child and the face of the angel to
the right). A first treatment of the painting c. 1920, probably including restoration of
the wooden support, must have been followed by a further treatment, shortly
before 1928.[4]
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed a sample of the wood,
using optical microscopy, and found it to be linden (report dated December
26, 1985, NGA conservation files).
[2] Cross-sections of the gilded area and the painted area were analyzed using


light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy to compare the

preparatory layers. A layer of glue was found beneath the gilded areas,
which is unusual and further indicates that the gold has been replaced. The
NGA scientific research department performed the analysis (report dated
January 6, 2006, NGA conservation files).
[3] Ann Hoenigswald, The Byzantine Madonnas: Technical Investigation,

Studies in the History of Art 12 (1982): 28.
[4] The reproductions that Berenson published in 1921 illustrate the painting in
different states. The plate showing the whole image proves its damaged
condition, with numerous small lacunae, especially along the edges. This
was evidently the paintings condition at the time it appeared on the Madrid
art market in 1912. The detail with the bust of the Madonna and Child,
however, documents the result of a subsequent treatment evidently
conducted shortly before the publication. On this occasion the gold ground
was renewed (leaving the halos without decoration), the faces were
retouched, and the decoration on the back of the throne reconstructed.
Possibly this was the restoration mentioned in the Duveen Brothers Records
on January 3, 1920, according to the information collected in 1986 by
Katherine Baetjer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, when the
Duveen papers were held by that institution (cf. her letter to Jaroslav Folda
of September 16, 1985; copy in NGA curatorial files). By the mid-1920s, by
which time Carl Hamilton had returned the painting to Duveen Brothers (see
Provenance, note 4), a decision had been made to subject it to a more
thorough restoration; it was then that the painting acquired the appearance
it still has. The second intervention must have been realized sometime
before 1928, for in that year Emilio Cecchi reproduced it in its newly
restored state.
PROVENANCE
Said to have come from a church or convent in Calahorra (province of La Rioja,

Spain). Gabriel Dereppes, Madrid;[1] purchased 11 September 1919 by (Duveen
Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[2] Carl W. Hamilton [1886-1967], New
York, early 1920s;[3] (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[4] sold
15 December 1936 to The Andrew W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust,
Pittsburgh;[5] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The provenance from Calahorra, reported for the
first time by Bernard Berenson (Due dipinti del decimo secondo secolo venuti da
Costantinopoli, Dedalo 2 (1921): 284-304), and then repeated in the subsequent
literature, has sometimes been doubted, but, according to NGA systematic
catalogue author Mikls Boskovits, not on any good grounds. (See also the


provenance for NGA 1949.7.1.) Writing from Madrid, Dereppes brought the painting
to the attention of Duveen Brothers in a letter of 25 May 1918; he commented that
he believed it to be by Pietro Cavallini and compared it to the Kahn painting (NGA
1949.7.1) that he had seen in New York. He said the painting at that time was
actually with the Goya critic Aureliano de Beruete y Moret; Duveen Brothers
Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute,
Los Angeles: reel 212, box 357, folder 7; copies in NGA curatorial files. [2] Generally
(cf. Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington,
D.C., 1979: 1:96), first Carl Hamilton, and then Duveen Brothers, Inc., are cited as
the owners of the painting, but this order needs to be reversed. It is well known
that the majority of Hamiltons paintings came from Duveen. According to Meryle
Secrest (Duveen. A Life in Art, New York, 2004: 421, though she confuses the Kahn
and Hamilton Madonnas, both with a provenance from Calahorra), Hamilton agreed
to purchase NGA 1937.1.1 from Duveen Brothers (who had evidently offered the
painting to him) in 1919. This is corroborated by the information on the provenance
of the painting collected by Katherine Baetjer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, when the Duveen papers were held by that institution. She reports (in
her letter to Jaroslav Folda of 16 September 1985; copy in the NGA curatorial files)
that the Mellon Madonna was purchased ... for the Paris branch of Duveen ... on 11
September 1919, as a work of Cavallino. Duveen Brothers Records, accession
number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reels
811, boxes 1726 (New York Stock Books); reels 36 and 37, boxes 105109 (Paris
Stock Books); reel 422 (the X-book, 19101927). [3] Berenson (1921) reported that
the panel was in the Hamilton collection; evidently it was one of the paintings from
Duveen Brothers with which Hamilton was furnishing his [New York] city
apartment....on credit (see Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London,
1976: 127-129). Indeed, Hamilton refers to the painting as in his possession when
he writes to Joseph Duveen on 21 December 1921, enclosing Stephen Pichettos
translation of Berenson 1921; Duveen Brothers Records, accession number
960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 161, box 306
(copy in NGA curatorial files). [4] In 1921 Hamilton declared he was unable to pay
for the paintings furnished to him on credit by Duveen Brothers, Inc., and returned
them, at least in large part (Fowles 1976: 127-129). The panel continued to be cited
in the literature for many years as belonging to Hamilton, but it must have been
returned to the dealer at least by 1923, when it re-appeared in Duveens New York
stock books (see the letter of Katherine Baetjer cited in note 2). It was during these
years that the painting must have been subjected to a new restoration, the result of


which is illustrated by the reproduction in Emilio Cecchi, Trecentisti senesi, Rome,

1928: 12. In the English edition of his study (Studies in Medieval Painting, New
Haven, 1930: 4-16), Berenson described the panel as having previously belonged
to the Hamilton collection. [5] The original bill of sale is in Records of The A.W.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Subject Files, Box 2, Gallery Archives,
NGA; copy in NGA curatorial files. The provenance "from a convent in Calahorra,
Spain" (see note 1) is given on the invoice.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1997 The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era A.D.
843-1261, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997, no. 262, repro.
2000 The Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, Benaki
Museum, Athens, 2000-2001, no. 68, repro.
2004 Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, 2004, no. 286, repro.
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Daddi, Bernardo
Also known as
Daddo, Bernardo di
active by 1320, died probably 1348
BIOGRAPHY
Son of Daddo di Simone, Bernardo is recorded for the first time in the registers of
the Arte dei Medici e Speziali when he enrolled in the guild (which also included
artists) between 1312 and 1320.[1] By this date he must have been a firmly
established painter, as the reconstruction of his oeuvre also suggests; presumably,
he had been born by the last decade of the thirteenth century, if not earlier. His
first securely dated work is the signed triptych in the Uffizi, Florence; its inscription
contains not only the artists name but also the year 1328. Recent studies, however,
have assigned various works, also of large dimensions, to previous years, such as
the cycle of frescoes in the chapel of the Pulci and Berardi families in Santa Croce
in Florence; the polyptych of San Martino at Lucarelli (Siena), now in the New
Orleans Museum of Art; and the polyptych divided among the Galleria Nazionale in
Parma, the Museo Lia in La Spezia, and a private collection.[2] Although perhaps
trained in the circle of painters such as Lippo di Benivieni or the Master of San
Martino alla Palma,[3] in the second or the early third decade of the fourteenth
century Bernardo worked in close contact with Giottos shop (executing for the
church of Santa Croce, then the preserve of the pupils and followers of the great
master, not only the abovementioned frescoes but also possibly the ParmaLa
Spezia polyptych).[4] During the fourth and fifth decades of the century, Daddis
shop seems to have produced by preference numerous small but precious panels
destined for private devotion. Among these are the well-preserved and dated
triptychs in the Museo del Bigallo in Florence (1333); the Fogg Art Museum in
Cambridge, Massachusetts (1334); the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (1336); the
National Gallery of Edinburgh (1338); the Courtauld Institute Art Gallery in London
(1338); and the Minneapolis Museum of Art (1339).[5] The artists output of
altarpieces for churches also continued to flourish during this period; these include
the polyptych for the Cappella della Cintola (Chapel of the Holy Girdle) in Prato
Cathedral (of which a fragment of the central panel is now in the Robert Lehman
collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the predella in the Museo
Civico in Prato);[6] the huge multipart altarpiece for the high altar of Florence
Daddi, Bernardo 175


Cathedral (dismantled and in part dispersed: most of its panels are now in the
Uffizi, while the predella is scattered between various collections);[7] the polyptych
from Santa Maria Novella in Florence (1344); the Madonna and Child in the
tabernacle of Orsanmichele (1346/1347), again in Florence; and the polyptych for
San Giorgio at Ruballa (1348), the main panels of which are now in the Courtauld
Institute Art Gallery and the fragments of its predella in private collections.[8]
Although at the start of his career his work was influenced by the Giottesque ideals
of severity and solemnity, Bernardo Daddi soon began to express his preference
for a more gentle and lyrical approach. The sacred figures that fill his paintings are
more graceful in behavior and inconstant in character than those populating the
world of Giottos close followers. His gifts as an accomplished narrative painter are
best exemplified in the small narrative scenes of his predella panels, where the
most complex actions are recounted with perspicuity and great vivacity. After his
earliest Giottesque phase, Daddis works reveal the influence of the former pupil of
Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, with whom he would establish a relation of collaboration,
and of the Sienese artists Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, who were frequently
active in Florence between the third and fourth decades of the fourteenth century,
and sculptors such as Tino di Camaino and Andrea Pisano. Richard Offner, the
scholar who has most contributed to our knowledge of the painter, explained that
Bernardo found small scale suited to his purpose because it includes, within a
limited space, the elements of a happening and can therefore be apprehended in
its interrelations at a single glance.[9] But even the figures of his panels on a more
monumental scale revealalbeit below a veil of modesty and discretionstrong
emotions that, together with the luminous chromatic harmonies of his
compositions, would strongly influence and serve as a model for Florentine
painters of the middle decades of the fourteenth century.
[1] Irene Hueck, Le matricole dei pittori fiorentini prima e dopo il 1320, Bollettino
darte 57 (1972): 115, 119, 120.
[2] Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958),
6566; Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His
Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 180185, 425437. For their dating,
see Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 70.
Daddi, Bernardo 176


[3] On Lippo, see Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency
(Florence, 1984), 2534 , 169182; on the Master of San Martino alla Palma, see
Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls
Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 13
14, 71166.
[4] Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 337
338; Silvia Giorgi, in Galleria Nazionale di Parma, vol. 1, Catalogo delle opere
dallantico al Cinquecento, ed. Lucia Fornari Schianchi (Milan, 1997), 4143.
[5] See, respectively, Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo
Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 216220, 315321, 262
269, 302304; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New
York, 1958), 2021.
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 354
355; Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and
Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3,
The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 212221.
[7] This altarpiece was supposed to have been painted for the church of San
Pancrazio, Florence, where it was seen by Vasari and later sources; Paula Spilner
and Anna Padoa Rizzo discovered its original destination for the Duomo. See
Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of
Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 231307.
Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001),
209220; Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and
Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The
Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 312349.
Daddi, Bernardo 177


[9] Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Vitzthum, Georg Graf. Daddi, Bernardo. In

Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig,
1907-1950: 8:253-254.
1951 Toesca, Pietro.

Il Trecento. Storia dellarte italiana, 2. Turin, 1951: 622-625.
1958 Offner, Richard.

A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth
Century. Sec. III, Vol. VIII: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi. New York, 1958.
1959 Longhi, Roberto. Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi ed altri.

Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 3-12.

Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London,
1963: 5158.
1972 Hueck, Irene. Le matricole dei pittori fiorentini prima e dopo il 1320.
Bollettino darte 57 (1972): 114-121.
1984 Boskovits, Mikls.

Century. Sec. III, Vol. IX: The Miniaturist Tendency. Florence, 1984: 337-
338, 354-355.
1989 Offner, Richard, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna.

Century. Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi. 2nd ed.
Florence, 1989.
Daddi, Bernardo 178


1991 Offner, Richard, and Mikls Boskovits.

Century. Sec. III, Vol. IV: Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following. 2nd
ed. Florence, 1991.
1992 Labriola, Ada. Daddi, Bernardo. In

1983+: 23(1999):355-357.
1997 Fornari Schianchi, Lucia, ed.

Galleria Nazionale di Parma. Vol. 1,
Catalogo delle opere dallantico al Cinquecento. Milan, 1997: 41-43.
2001 Offner, Richard, Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay
Rodio.
Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma; Assistant of
Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. 2nd ed. Florence, 2001.
Daddi, Bernardo 179


Bernardo Daddi
The Crucifixion
c. 1320/1325
painted surface (including gilded frame): 34.9 22.7 cm (13 3/4 8 15/16 in.)
overall: 35.5 23.6 2.7 cm (14 9 5/16 1 1/16 in.)
framed: 40 x 27.9 cm (15 3/4 x 11 in.)
Inscription: upper center on the tablet topping the cross: IC . XC (Jesus Christ) [1]
[1] The Greek letters are the commonly used abbreviations of IHCOYC XRICTOC,
the Greek version of the name Jesus with the title Christ, literally the Anointed
One (the translation of the Hebrew Messiah); Hans Feldbusch,
Christusmonogramm, in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, edited by
Otto Schmitt and Zentralinstitut fr Kunstgeschichte Mnchen, 10 vols., Stuttgart,
1937-2003: 3(1954):707-720.
ENTRY
The panel, which to judge from its proportions and rectangular shape was probably
originally the right shutter of a diptych,[1] shows the Crucifixion, with the kneeling
Mary Magdalene clinging to the cross; to the left, Mary, Mother of Jesus, who
swoons, supported by her arm on the shoulders of one of the holy women on one
side and Saint John on the other;[2] and, to the right, the centurion, a Pharisee, and
a third man, who witness the Crucifixion with arms and eyes raised and seem to
speak to Christ on the cross.[3] To the sides of the cross, against the gold ground,
small angels in flight gather the blood that flows from the Saviors wounds.
Mentioned only perfunctorily by art historians, but in general linked to the name of
Bernardo Daddi, the painting in the National Gallery of Art was first introduced to
the literature by F. Mason Perkins (1911) as a genuine, albeit rather weak little
work of this artist.[4] Later scholars confirmed the attribution until Richard Offner
declassified the painting in 1930, inserting it among those erroneously attributed to
the master.[5] Osvald Sirn (1917) compared the panel to similar versions of the
The Crucifixion 180


Crucifixion painted by the artist, particularly those in the Galleria dellAccademia

and Museo Horne in Florence; he judged it an early work,[6] while Raimond Van
Marle (1924) pointed out its affinity with the portable triptych in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena, dated 1336.[7] Lionello Venturi (1931), however, rejected
Offners doubts about the autograph status of the Washington Crucifixion, and
compared the painting with Bernardos portable triptych dated 1333 in the Museo
del Bigallo in Florence; Venturi (1933) maintained that the work was actually
superior in quality to the triptych in the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg,[8] in which
Offner, by contrast, recognized Bernardos hand. Further, after Offner (1958) noted
for the first time retouches in various parts of the panel and proposed a
classification close to the Master of S. Martino alla Palma, opinions were divided:
Bernard Berenson (1963), followed by Burton Fredericksen and Federico Zeri
(1972), maintained the attribution to Bernardo, while the Gallery (1965, 1968, 1985)
and Fern Rusk Shapley (1966) classified the painting as attributed to Daddi, and
Wolfgang Kermer (1967) and later Shapley herself (1979) spoke of Follower of
Daddi.[9] The present writer, after having cited the panel as a studio work by the
artist (1984), has since 1989 expressed his conviction that it is a fully autograph
work by Bernardo.[10] Ada Labriola (1999) also accepted this proposal, as did
Laurence Kanter (in correspondence), who noted similarities to the so-called
Master of San Martino alla Palma and pointed out the archaism of the frame carved
in one with the panel support.[11]
The affinities noted by Offner between the Washington Crucifixion and the work of
the Master of San Martino alla Palma are worth underlining, since they throw some
light on Daddis beginnings and on the date of this painting. Thought in the past to
be a follower of Bernardo, the Master of San Martino alla Palma is now recognized
to have been at work not after, but at the same time as, Daddis initial phase and
had probably begun his activity even earlier.[12] The very fact that he used
freehand incisions with a graving tool, and not punch marks, to decorate the halos
and ornamental borders of his paintings suggests that the Masters oeuvre did not
extend beyond the third decade of the fourteenth century; it was only after that
date that the use of decorations with punched motifs in the gold ground of panels
began to spread rapidly in Florence.[13] In light of our present knowledge, the very
real similarities to the Master of San Martino alla Palma that Offner observed in our
painting would imply a relatively precocious date for it, which can be extended also
to two other similar compositions from Bernardos early phase, one in the Museum
of Fine Arts in Boston [14] and the other, of which only two fragments are known
today, divided between the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and the Strossmayer Gallery
The Crucifixion 181


in Zagreb [fig. 1].[15] The affinities of all these paintings with those of the Master of
San Martino alla Palma are undeniable, but the figures more elongated
proportions, the more spacious but less rigorously calibrated structure of the
compositions, and the figures restrained gestures and ponderous movements
reveal a phase of particular attention to Giottesque models in the development of
the young Daddi.[16] For his part, the Master of San Martino alla Palma, whom
Offner called a painter of a lyrical sweetness and bird-like volubility,[17] never
shows any signs of particular interest in Giottos figurative world. A motif like the
swooning Madonna, who is supported by one of the holy women and by Saint
John and who seems to be falling forward, as in the panel discussed here and in
the fragment in Zagreb, is absent from numerous other, presumably later versions
of the Crucifixion painted by Bernardo.[18] The passage would seem to suggest
that the panel belongs to a phase of youthful experimentation preceding the dated
examples of 1333. Several stylistic data seem, in my view, to lead to the same
conclusion. Admittedly, in the Washington Crucifixion we no longer find the rigidly
static composition nor the ponderous forms that distinguish the figures in the
phase of Daddis closest allegiance to Giottesque models, datable between 1315
and the early 1320s, such as the frescoes in the Pulci and Berardi chapel in Santa
Croce in Florence.[19] Nor do we find in it the spontaneity and immediacy of
communication that characterize the triptych in the Uffizi, Florence, dated 1328,
and that would become increasingly evident in subsequent works by the artist.[20]
The lack of punched motifs, as well as the use of pseudo-Kufic inscriptions in the
marginal decoration of the painting in the Gallery, similarly suggests a dating prior
to c. 1330,[21] perhaps within the first half of the third decade.
The Crucifixion 182


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Bernardo Daddi, Fragment of a Crucifixion, c.

1325/1330, tempera on panel, Strossmayer Gallery, Zagreb
NOTES
[1] Usually the scene of the Crucifixion is shown in the right shutter of diptychs,
flanked by an image of the Madonna and Child; cf. Wolfgang Kermer,
Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfngen bis zur
Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Eberhardt-Karls-
Universitt, Tbingen, 1967); Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel
Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 12501400 (Florence, 2005), 31
60.
[2] In representations of the Crucifixion, when the cross is not flanked solely by
the figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John, arranged on either side of
Christ, Mary and the holy women are represented (as they are here) to the
left of the crucified Christ. The Gospels tell us that Christ on the cross was
accompanied by Mary Magdalene (Matthew 27:56); by Mary, wife of Clopas
(John 19:25); by Mary, mother of James and Joses (Mark 15:40); and by
Salome (Mark 15:40), sometimes identified as the sister of the mother of
The Crucifixion 183


Jesus (John 19:25).
[3] The centurion who recognizes the dying Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew
27:54; Mark 15:39; Luke 23:47) is a common element in Crucifixion
iconography. But so too are onlookers with long beards and veiled heads,
indicated as Jewish religious leaders, whom the Gospel narratives also
attest to as being present at the Passion of Christ (Matthew 27:4; Mark 15:31;
Luke 23:35).
[4] F. Mason Perkins, Dipinti italiani nella raccolta Platt, Rassegna darte 11
(1911): 1.
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, Works Attributed to Bernardo Daddi (New
York, 1930), 5.
[6] Galleria dellAccademia, no. 8563, and Museo Horne, no. 43, both in
Florence; see Osvald Sirn, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans.
Frederic Schenck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:168, 270; and Richard Offner
and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting:
The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and
Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 250253, 5054.
[7] No. 60; see Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of
Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague,
1924), 378; and Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and
Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3,
vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991),
316321.
[8] Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 35; Lionello
Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1:no. 44. The modern
literature generally recognizes both the dated triptych in the Museo del
Bigallo and the triptych no. 15 in the museum in Altenburg as autograph
works by Daddi; see Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri
Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed.
(Florence, 1989), 170183, 222227.
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York,
1958), 142; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine
School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 1:58; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico
Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American
Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 63, 290, 646, 665; National
Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture
(Washington, DC, 1965), 36; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings and
The Crucifixion 184


Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 29; National Gallery of Art,

European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 111;
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 2627; Wolfgang Kermer, Studien
zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfngen bis zur Mitte des
sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Eberhardt-Karls-Universitt,
Tbingen, 1967), 1:255 n. 48; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:155.
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence 1984),
67 n. 246.
[11] Ada Labriola, Daddi, Bernardo, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die

bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner (Munich,
1999), 23:356357.
[12] Writing about the Master of San Martino alla Palma in 1947, Richard Offner
the scholar who initiated and devoted greatest attention to the study of this
artistplaced his output in the second quarter of the fourteenth century,
considering him in essence a follower of Daddi: Richard Offner, A Critical
and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century,
sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada
Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 7380.
Only later did Luciano Bellosi point out that the art of this anonymous
master must represent a proto-Daddesque episode, to be placed in the
first decades of the century and to be related to the activity of the Master of
the Codex of Saint George. The latter, the most manifestly gothicizing in
style of Florentine artists of the period, is known to have been active in the
years shortly after 1315; cf. Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della
morte (Turin, 1974), 78; Luciano Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: B) per la pittura
di primo Trecento, Prospettiva 11 (1977): 1617; and Chiara Forzini, in
Bonifacio viii e il suo tempo: Anno 1300 il primo Giubileo, ed. Marina Righetti
Tosti-Croce (Milan, 2000), 151152. The present writer has conjectured that
the Master of San Martino alla Palma received his training in the circle of
Lippo di Benivieni around or soon after 1310 and...came into contact with
Daddi only at a later stage; Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The
Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 67.
[13] According to Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico:
Attribution, Chronology, andWorkshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel
Painting with Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols.
(Oslo, 1994), 1:3436, 7880, the use of punch marks in the decoration of
panel paintings in Florence caught on no earlier than the early 1330s, with
few exceptions. This finding, however, should not be understood as a rigid
terminus post quem; Skaug, in fact, established it only by considering
The Crucifixion 185


securely dated paintings and without taking into account works such as
Giottos crucifix in the Church of Ognissanti in Florence or the Piet of Lippo
di Benivieni in the Museo Civico of Pistoia, both undoubtedly earlier in date
than 1330 and yet furnished with some, albeit partial, punched decoration.
Cf. Giorgio Bonsanti, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e
ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 147150; Mikls Boskovits, A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth
Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 174175.
[14] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, no. 23.211. Richard Offner and Mikls
Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following,
new ed. (Florence, 1991), 225227, classified the painting as a product of
the close following of Daddi, but the editors admitted (p. 505) the
authorship of Daddi himself. The painting was later cataloged by Laurence
B. Kanter, Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, vol. 1, 13th
15th Century (Boston, 1994), 5254, as an autograph work by Daddi and
thought to precede the triptych in the Uffizi, Florence, dated 1328.
1958), 137140, classified it as close to the Master of S. Martino alla Palma.
The fragment now in Stuttgart was acquired by the Staatsgalerie in 1969
(inv. no. 3064), and August Bernhard Rave, ed., Frhe italienische
Tafelmalerei: Vollstndiger Katalog der italienischen Gemlde der Gotik
(Stuttgart, 1999), 8487, cataloged it as a work by Daddi himself.
[16] Presumably the Giottesque models that influenced the artist during this
phase were of the type of panels of the Crucifixion now in the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin (no. 1074 A) or that in Strasbourg (no. 167), both of
uncertain date but generally placed in the more recent literature between
the second and third decade. Cf., respectively, Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela
Parenti, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed.
Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 164165, 170173. In these works, Daddi
would have ascertained a tendency to populate the compositions with
slender-proportioned figures that express themselves with expansive
gestures, though not devoid of elegance, and in dress characterized by
delicate, close-set, and slightly curving folds. In this phase, too, the
chiaroscuro contrasts in the modeling are attenuated, with effects that have
led some scholars to assign the execution of a good part of the works
produced in Giottos shop between c. 13151325 to a studio assistant
variously identified under the conventional name Parente di Giotto or
Master of the Stefaneschi Altarpiece.
Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence,
The Crucifixion 186


2001), 73.
[18] Florentine painters of the early Trecento mainly represented the motif of the
fainting Mary in such a way that the swooning Virgin, held up in the arms of
one of the Marys and Saint John, can barely stand upright; she turns to the
left with bowed head, as if she can no longer bear the sight of her dying
son. See Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia
della Passione (Verona, 1929), 148151. We find her in this pose in the
various versions of the Crucifixion painted by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 -
1337) and also in those by Bernardo Daddi, with the exception of those in
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and that formerly in a private collection
in Brussels; in these latter examples, the Madonna seems to be falling not
forward but backward, assuming a pose very different from the more
composed attitude usually shown in similar representations, including the
panels in Washington and Zagreb. See Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits,
A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth
Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed.
(Florence, 1991), pls. 17 and 31.
[19] The frescoes were perhaps executed c. 1320; Richard Offner, Mikls
Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of
Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 122145. Other works painted by
Daddi around this date include, we may assume, the polyptych now
dispersed among the Galleria Nazionale in Parma, the Museo Civico
Amedeo Lia in Spezia, and a private collection; the Madonna no. 180 in the
Pinacoteca Vaticana and the Mary Magdalene in a private collection that
originally belonged to the same altarpiece; and the polyptych in the New
Orleans Museum of Art. See Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical
sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence,
1991), 425436, 133139, and 189, respectively; and the Madonna Enthroned
in a private collection, on which see Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and
vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 342, pl. 169.
[20] For triptych no. 3073 in the Uffizi, Florence, see Richard Offner, Mikls
Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of
Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 110121. Other works belonging
to the same phase and probably slightly later than the Gallery Crucifixion
might include, for example, the Lucarelli polyptych in the Church of San
Martino in Radda, in Chianti; the Madonna Enthroned in the Church of San
Pietro in Lecore (Signa, near Florence); and the dismantled portable triptych
in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, no. 177177b. Cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and
The Crucifixion 187


vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 66, pl. 11; Richard
Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop
and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 105107, 6370.
[21] Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution,
Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:99,
registered the presence of tiny punch marks in Bernardos triptych of 1328
and in the undoubtedly earlier Madonna no. 180 in the Pinacoteca Vaticana.
He also observed (110, n. 174) that Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers in
the National Gallery of Art, generally recognized in the more recent
literature as an autograph work by Bernardo Daddi, is devoid of punch
marks although it is dated 1333. On the problem of Daddis use of halo
decorations incised in freehand as late as c. 1333 and its possible
connection with the devastating flood in November 1333, see Erling S.
Skaug, Bernardo Daddis Chronology and Workshop Structure as Defined
by Technical Criteria, in Da Giotto a Botticelli: Pittura fiorentina tra gotico e
rinascimento; Atti del convegno internazionale Firenze, Universit degli
Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 2021, 2005, ed. Francesca Pasut and
Johannes Tripps (Florence, 2008), 7996.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a single wooden panel [1] with vertical grain, whose frame was
carved as one with the panel. The panel and the frame were prepared with a fabric
interlayer on which the gesso ground was applied. The gesso was then covered
with a layer of red bole in the area to be gilded. The interface between the painted
and gilded areas was demarcated by incising. Single point punches and incised
patterns were used to create the halos and to decorate the gilding along the
outside edge of the pictorial surface. The paint was applied with the small, discrete
brushstrokes typical of tempera technique and with green underpaint in the flesh
areas. Remnants of silver leaf are evident in the helmet and boots of the centurion
on the right side.
The support has been damaged by woodworm in the past, as is apparent in the x-
radiographs. To address this insecurity and a history of blistering, Stephen Pichetto
cradled the panel in 1944. The gilding, bole, and gesso have been lost along the
outer edges of the frame. The painted surface is generally worn, with many
inpainted losses along the edges of figures, where the paint covers the edges of
The Crucifixion 188


the gold leaf background. The gilded background is well preserved, but the
mordant gilding on the decorative borders of the garments survives only in
remnants. The silver leaf of the centurions helmet and boots, also present only as
remnants, has tarnished to black. All shadowed areas in the faces of Christ, Mary
Magdalene, and the Virgin have been reinforced with transparent dark glazes, and
the bridge of Christs nose and the shadows of his legs have been reconstructed.
Inpainted losses and highlights can be seen in the profile of the Pharisee on the
right side. The angels faces have been reconstructed and their wings generously
inpainted. The garments of the Virgin are very worn. According to records in the
NGA conservation files, Stephen Pichetto performed a slight cleaning, inpainted
losses, and revarnished the painting at the time of the cradling in 1944.[2] The
varnish is glossy and slightly yellow.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the wood and found it to
be poplar (report dated January 1990 in NGA conservation files).
[2] See record in NGA conservation files. Apparently the painted surface was
not significantly treated on this occasion; a slight cleaning could refer to a
grime cleaning, a reduction of varnish, or a partial varnish removal.
PROVENANCE
(N. van Slochem, New York) by 1908;[1] sold 1910 to Dan Fellows Platt [1873-1938],
Englewood, New Jersey;[2] sold November 1943 by Trustees of the Platt Estate to
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] Dan Fellows
Platt to Richard Offner; see Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting, Sec. III, vol. VIII, New York, 1958: 142. [2] Dan Fellows Platt Papers,
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University, New
Jersey: box 2, folder 23, call number C0860. The painting was lent by Platt to the
Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitives at F Kleinberger Galleries, New York, in
November 1917. [3] Copies of the documents recording the sale are in NGA
curatorial files; the painting was one of six purchased from the Platt estate and is
listed as Attributed to Bernardo Daddi.
The Crucifixion 189


EXHIBITION HISTORY
1915 Loan Exhibition of Italian Primitive Paintings, Fogg Museum of Art,

Cambridge, Massachusettes, 1915, unnumbered checklist.
no. 3, repro., as Christ on the Cross by Bernardo Daddi.
1939 Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800,

New York World's Fair, May-October 1939, no. 72, repro.
1939 Seven Centuries of Painting: A Loan Exhibition at San Francisco, California

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, December 1939-January 1940, no.
13.
1946 Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art,

Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 795.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1911 Perkins, F. Mason. "Dipinti italiani nella raccolta Platt." Rassegna dArte
11 (1911): 1.
1914 Brown, Alice van Vechten, and William Rankin. A Short History of Italian
Painting. London and New York, 1914: 65 n. 3.
1914 Sirn, Osvald. "Pictures in America by Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi,
Andrea Orcagna and His Brothers, I." Art in America 2 (1914): 264.
1915 Edgell, George Harold. "The Loan Exhibitiion of Italian Paintings in the
Fogg Museum, Cambridge." Art and Archaeology II, no. 1 (July 1915): 13.
1917 Sirn, Osvald. Giotto and Some of His Followers. 2 vols. Translated by
Frederic Schenck. Cambridge, 1917: 1:168, 270; 2:pl. 147.
1918 Gilman, Margaret. "A Triptych by Bernardo Daddi." Art in America (1918):
213.
1919 Offner, Richard. "Italian Pictures at the New York Historical Society and
Elsewhere." Art in America 7 (1919): 149.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):378.
1928 Comstock, Helen. "The Bernardo Daddis in the United States."
International Studio 38 (1928): 21.
1930 Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting.
The Crucifixion 190


The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi.
New York, 1930: 5.
1931 Venturi, Lionello. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931: no. 35, repro.
1932 Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the
Principal Artists and their Works with an Index of Places. Oxford, 1932:
165.
1933 Venturi, Lionello. Italian Paintings in America. Translated by Countess
Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott. 3 vols. New York and Milan, 1933:
1:no. 44, repro.
1936 Berenson, Bernard. Pitture italiane del rinascimento: catalogo dei
principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi. Translated
by Emilio Cecchi. Milan, 1936: 142.
1939 Valentiner, Wilhelm R., and Alfred M. Frankfurter. Masterpieces of Art.
Exhibition at the New York Worlds Fair, 1939. Official Souvenir Guide
and Picture Book. New York, 1939: no. 32.
York, 1944: 15, repro., as by the Riminese Master.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 12, repro., as by Bernardo
Daddi.
1946 Frankfurter, Alfred M. Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National
Gallery. New York, 1946: 21, repro.
Washington, 1951: 23.
The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. VIII: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi.
New York, 1958: 142-143, pl. 38.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 20, repro., as by Bernardo Daddi.
1963 Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine
School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:58.
1967 Kermer, Wolfgang. "Studien zum Diptych in der sakralen Malerei von
den Anfngen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts." 2 vols.
Ph.D. dissertation, Eberhardt-Karls-Universitt, Tbingen, 1967: 1:255 n.
48.
1968 European Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Companion to the
Summary Catalogue, 1965). Washington, 1968: 29, no. 795, repro.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 63, 290, 646, 665.
The Crucifixion 191



Florence, 1984: 67 n. 246.
1989 Offner, Richard, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna. A Critical
and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century.
Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi. 2nd ed. Florence, 1989:
67, 391.
Rodio. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The
Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma;
Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. 2nd ed. Florence,
2001: 13 n. 22, 635.
2008 Skaug, Erling S. "Bernardo Daddis Chronology and Workshop Structure
as Defined by Technical Criteria." In Da Giotto a Botticelli: pittura
fiorentina tra gotico e rinascimento. Atti del convegno internazionale
Firenze, Universit degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 20-21, 2005.
Edited by Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps. Florence, 2008: 79-96.
The Crucifixion 192


Bernardo Daddi
Madonna and Child with

Saints and Angels
c. 1345
tempera on panel
overall (including engaged frame): 57.1 30.5 2.6 cm (22 1/2 12 1 in.)
ENTRY
The painting, which formed the central panel of a portable triptych for domestic
devotion,[1] represents the Madonna and Child, in larger proportions than the other
figures in the composition, seated on a raised throne. The throne is in the form of a
tabernacle or ciborium;[2] its crocketed triangular gable is framed by the inner
trefoil arch of the panel, and its inner canopy is decorated with an azure star-
studded sky. Mary supports her child with both hands. The Christ child is holding
a fruit, perhaps a pomegranate,[3] in his left hand and is stretching out his right to
take the small bird perched on a finger of the angel closest to him.[4] The throne is
flanked on both sides by a red seraph and an azure cherub [5] and, below these,
by two pairs of angels, of which the one to the far left plays a shawmthe medieval
precursor of the oboeand that on the opposite side a psaltery; the concert of
angels is completed by the portative organ and the viol played by two angels
kneeling in the foreground.[6] Of the four saints to the sides of the throne we can
identify, to the left, Apollonia, with a tooth in her hand,[7] and, more doubtfully,
Catherine of Alexandria to the far right,[8] while the six saints in the foreground are
Lucy, John the Baptist, Andrew, Paul, Peter, and Agnes.[9]
The painting has always been recognized as an autograph work by Bernardo

Daddi, to whom Richard Offner (as cited in Sinibaldi and Brunetti 1943) was the first
to attribute it.[10] Subsequently, however, the same scholar (1958) conjectured the
Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels 193


hand of assistants in its execution, but this proposal has found little or no support
in the more recent literature.[11] Indeed, the only interventions alien to Daddi in the
execution are those of modern restorers. Stylistic affinities have been observed
between the panel in the National Gallery of Art and the triptych dated 1338 [fig.
1] now in the Seilern collection of the Courtauld Institute Gallery in London,[12] and
there are also various shared features of ornamentation. Thus, some of the motifs
punched in the gold ground of the Washington painting are present both in the
Seilern triptych and in other dated works by Daddi of the following year.[13] Similar,
too, are the decoration of the cloth of honor [14] and some aspects of the
garments.[15]
The details in question suggest for our panel a date either close to or probably
slightly after 1340. In this phase the artist tended to add more spaciousness to his
compositions, while his figures gain in grandeur thanks both to their expanded
forms and the amplitude of the mantles that envelop them. At the same time,
however, they become more relaxed in posture, more spontaneous in gesture [fig.
2]. Not only spectators but participants in the action, they confer a certain air of
naturalness on the scene. Typical examples of this interpretive approach are the
female saint in our panel, who with a friendly, caressing gesture rests one hand on
Marys throne;[16] the Christ child, who twists impulsively away from his mother to
grasp the small bird that the angel, smiling, is offering to him;[17] and the two
female saints portrayed below this angel and the two angels on the other side of
the throne, who exchange glances, commenting in silent complicity on the childs
joyful reaction. Other characteristic aspects of this phase in Daddis art are a
tendency toward simplification of the drawing: for example, the mantle of Saint
Agnes that falls in an unbroken perpendicular line from head to ground; the
preference for faces drawn in profile; and the clarity of the compositional structure.
The modeling, too, is softer than in Daddis previous works, dated before c. 1335,
anticipating developments that would be expressed more powerfully in the last
years of the artists life.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Bernardo Daddi, Virgin and Child Enthroned with

Saints, and God in an Attitude of Benediction, 1338,
tempera and gold leaf on panel, Courtauld Institute of Art,
The Courtauld Gallery, London. The Samuel Courtauld fig. 2 Detail, Bernardo Daddi, Madonna and Child with
Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London Saints and Angels, c. 1340, tempera on panel, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection
NOTES
[1] The edges of the wooden support and of the engaged frame have been
scraped and smoothed down. Following this operation practically no trace
of the hinges that fastened the shutters to the central panel remain,
although as Laurence Kanter kindly pointed out to me, the concave
channels on the sides of the frame housed rotating columns that secured
the wings of the triptych, as in the Seilern triptych by Bernardo Daddi in the
Courtauld collection in London; see Richard Offner, Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8,
Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following (Florence, 1958), 1921. Not only
the proportions but also the composition and the ornamental decoration
suggest that the panel was the centerpiece of a portable triptych very
similar in form and composition to that in the Courtauld Gallery, which has
images of the Nativity and the Crucifixion in its side panels. Presumably,


both panels being discussed here and the central panel of the triptych in
London were topped by a triangular gable bearing the image of the
Blessing Christ. Another panel by Bernardo Daddi, very similar to this one in
the National Gallery of Art, must also have originally been the centerpiece of
a triptych: namely, the Madonna and Child now in the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art in Kansas City, no. 61.61; see Richard Offner and Mikls
new ed. (Florence, 1991), 297300. According to Eliot W. Rowlands, the
latter should be reconstructed along the lines of the exemplar in London.
Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art:
Italian Paintings, 13001800 (Kansas City, MO, 1996), 5152. Evidently,
Daddis shop produced several related versions. Madonna and Child with
Angels and Saints in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (no. 73) seems, both
in iconography and in the arrangement of the figures, almost a facsimile of
the example in Washington. See Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A
(Florence, 1991), 443446. Further evidence of the success of this
composition is Pietro Nellis replication of it in a panel whose whereabouts
are now unknown; it too was formerly the centerpiece of a portable triptych,
for which see Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del
Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 417.
[2] In the works by Daddi that can be securely dated to 1338 (National Gallery
of Scotland, Edinburgh, no. 904) and 1339 (Minneapolis Institute of Art,
no. 34.20), the Madonna is sitting on a throne with a tall, gabled but flat
backrest. Yet in the same year as the Edinburgh Madonna (1338), the throne
of the Seilern triptych in the Courtauld Art Gallery, London, is transformed
into a gabled and vaulted ciborium, forming a kind of tabernacle around the
Son of God and his mother. The images of the Madonna sitting on a simpler
tabernacle-shaped throne in a private collection in Germany and in the
National Gallery in Prague could be slightly earlier in date; see Richard
Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop
and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 214215, 377380. The tabernacle
throne, however, can be assumed to be an innovative feature of the second
half of the 1330s.
[3] The pomegranate is a well-known symbol of the Church, and also of the
sacrifice and Resurrection of Christ: see Mirella Levi DAncona, The Garden
of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence, 1977),
312318.
[4] According to Herbert Friedmann, in paintings of the Gothic and Renaissance

periods, small birds in the hand of the Christ child may symbolize the soul,


the Resurrection, the Passion of Christ, or death. Herbert Friedmann, The

Symbolic Goldfinch: Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art
(Washington, DC, 1946), 735.
[5] On these representatives of the highest rank of the hierarchies of angels,

see Barbara Bruderer Eichberg, Les neufs choeurs angliques: Origine et
volution du thme dans lart du Moyen ge (Poitiers, 1998), 6267.
[6] Howard Mayer Brown and Joan L. Lascelle, Musical Iconography: A Manual
for Cataloguing Musical Subjects in Western Art before 1800 (Cambridge,
MA, 1972).
[7] The customary iconography of Saint Apollonia is to show her with her
symbol of martyrdom: pincers holding an extracted tooth; see George Kaftal,
Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting
(Florence, 1952), 9798.
[8] Offner identified the two crowned female saints to the right as Margaret and
Catherine, but the attributes of the crown and the processional cross in the
hand of the former could equally well be adapted to other royal saints, such
as Agatha. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo
Daddi (New York, 1958), 16. The identification of the other female saint as
Catherine, the learned saint par excellence, is suggested by the book she
bears in her hand; cf. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography
of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 225234.
[9] For the iconography of these saints, cf. respectively George Kaftal, Saints in
Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence,
1952), 644650, 549560, 3546, 799816, 712.
[10] Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti, eds., Pittura italiana del Duecento e
Trecento: Catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937 (Florence,
1943), 499, no. 157.
1958), 1517.
[12] Fern Rusk Shapley observed these affinities, and Eliot W. Rowlands
confirmed them. Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 26; Fern Rusk
Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979),
1:154; Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art: Italian Paintings, 13001800 (Kansas City, MO, 1996), 53. For the Seilern
triptych, see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo


Daddi (New York, 1958), 1921, pls. IV, IVa; Courtauld Institute of Art, The
Princes Gate Collection (London, 1981), 1012; Courtauld Institute of Art, The
Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House (London, 1998), 2627.
[13] Mojmir S. Frinta (1998) identified punches in the panel in the National Gallery
of Art that recur in various paintings by Daddi, including the two triptychs
dated 1338 and 1339, respectively (cf. note 10) and the Crucifixion in the
Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, dated 1343. Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta,
Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting
(Prague, 1998), 382, 411, 444445. According to Erling S. Skaug, the painting
in the Gallery would be datable in the mid-forties on the basis of its
punches. Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico:
Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel
(Oslo, 1994), 1:114 n. 186.
[14] Brigitte Klesse found the decorative motifs of fabrics in the panel being
discussed here in paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
the Frick Museum in Pittsburgh, and the Galleria Sabauda in Turin; see
Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14.
Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 454; and Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A
(Florence, 1991), 8486, 233238, 293296. These are all undated works,
but on stylistic grounds should be placed in the period 13301335 and
beyond.
[15] Useful clues for the dating are the garments of the young female saints with
their striking dcollt and wide manicottolithe tight-fitting sleeves of their
dresses, which widen considerably at the elbows and hang down to their
thighs. On the basis of these fashionable elements of court dress of the
period, Luciano Bellosi suggested a dating of the panel being discussed
here to the late 1330s or slightly beyond. Luciano Bellosi, Moda e
cronologia: A) gli affreschi della Basilica Inferiore di Assisi, Prospettiva 10
(1977): 2131; Luciano Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: B) per la pittura di primo
Trecento, Prospettiva 11 (1977): 1227.
[16] By the thirteenth century, and hence also in works by Giotto and other
masters of the early Trecento, the angels often lay one hand with a gesture
of familiarity on Marys throne, or grasp it, giving the impression that they
have just brought it before the onlooker or are about to take it away.
Bernardo Daddi, on the other hand, emphasized the emotional contact
between the sacred group and the saints and angels who surround it. One
of the group rests his hand on the throne (as in the small panels in the
Museo Horne in Florence, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the
Museum in Kansas City, etc.), while some of the angels enter in a playful
rapport with the child. See Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical



1991), pls. I, III, XXXIX.
[17] Though expressed with great discretion, the motion of the slightly parted
lips and the slight contraction of the muscles around the eyes seem
deliberately to confer a joyful, smiling expression on the personages,
abandoning the formula of serene but regal composure that hitherto had
almost always seemed to be considered appropriate to images of the
Madonna and saints in Florence. On the theme of the smile in religious
painting of the period, a little investigated aspect, cf. Jan Svanberg, The
Gothic Smile, in Knstlerischer Austausch: Akten des xxviii. Internationalen
Kongresses fr Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, July 1520, 1992, ed. Thomas W.
Gaehtgens (Berlin, 1993), 2:357370.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The painting was executed on a single plank of wood, 2.6 cm thick with vertical
grain. The outer edges of the wooden support and of the engaged frame, which
were originally covered with gesso, have been scraped and smoothed down. Long,
red, concave channels were cut into the outer edges on both sides of the frame,
from the base to the spring of the arch. A continuous layer of gesso was applied to
the front of the panel, including the colonettes and molding, and to the back of the
panel, which was then covered with dark red paint. Areas to be gilded were
prepared with red bole. The gold ground was embellished with punch marks in the
halos and around the edges of the arched termination of the painted surface. The
figures were placed on the panel by incising their outlines into the wet gesso. The
paint was applied with discrete brushstrokes, with green underpainting in the flesh
areas. The trim on the robes was mordant gilded.
The panel has not been thinned and retains its original reverse coating. In spite of
the coating, the panel has a convex warp. A blackened hollow area at the bottom
of the frame on the left side may be the result of a candle burn. By the mid-1930s,
the panel appeared much darkened by dust and opacified varnishes, and the face
of the Virgin had been heavily inpainted, while some areas of the painted surface
appeared worn.[1] Mario Modestini treated the panel in Italy in 1948.[2] The paint
layer is somewhat abraded, especially in the Madonnas face and the Christ child.
There is some inpainting in the shadowed portions of some of the figures blue
robes, in the profile of Saint Paul, and in the face of the female saint (Margaret?)


standing close to the throne on the right side.[3]
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The painting is reproduced in this state in the Brogi photograph no. 26084,
as well as in the reproduction in Sinibaldi and Brunetti 1943, according to
whom il viso della Madonna completamente ridipinto e vi sono qua e l
svelature (the face of the Madonna is completely repainted, and there are
abrasions here and there). Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti, eds., Pittura
italiana del Duecento e Trecento: Catalogo della mostra giottesca di
Firenze del 1937 (Florence, 1943), 498499. See also Richard Offner, A
Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 15
17, pl. III.
[2] According to Roberto Longhis handwritten expertise of March 20, 1950

(copy in NGA curatorial files), questa anconetta...era gravemente offuscata
da un cattivo restauro...ora...una intelligente pulitura ha ricuperato la pittura
originale (this little tabernacle...was gravely compromised by a bad
restoration...now...an intelligent cleaning has recovered the original
painting). The provider of the intelligent cleaning was, as Fern Rusk
Shapley (1979) pointed out, Mario Modestini, in Italy; see Fern Rusk Shapley,
Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:154.
NGA conservation department files have a Kress Restoration Record that
noted that Modestini cleaned and restored the painting in Italy in 1948
before acquisition. Longhis opinion may be somewhat too optimistic. In fact,
Richard Offner (1958), who noted that the painting was cleaned in 1951,
criticized the reconstruction of the Virgins face for its unseemly expression
of spurious suggestiveness. In Offners opinion other areas of the painting
were also, with small exception, retouched. See Richard Offner, A Critical
sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 16.
[3] Describing the state of the painting when Mario Modestini treated it in 1948,
Dianne Dwyer Modestini wrote (2003): The right side of the Madonnas
face as it turns into the shadow is completely missing. The original gesso
was present but there was no verdaccio, or underdrawing.... The eye is
totally missing. All the drapery passages were severely worn. Dianne
Dwyer Modestini, Imitative Restoration, in Early Italian Paintings:
Approaches to Conservation; Proceedings of a Symposium at the Yale
University Art Gallery, April 2002, ed. Patricia Sherwin Garland (New Haven,
2003), 215.


PROVENANCE
According to a tradition reported by a previous owner, Virgoe Buckland, the panel

comes from the Vallombrosa abbey near Florence and in 1872 it was given by the
abbot to the painter and restorer J. Stark;[1] purchased from Stark by Sir Henry
Doulton [1820-1897];[2] his heirs;[3] by inheritance to Commander Virgoe Buckland
[d. 1949], Hove, Sussex;[4] (sale, Sothebys, London, 2 November 1949, no. 76, as
by Bernardo Daddi); (Mannenti), probably the agent for (Count Alessandro Contini-
Bonaccossi, Florence); sold July 1950 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New
York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] Richard Offner (A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting. Sec. III, vol. VIII. New York, 1958: 16) provides the early
provenance, which had been communicated to him by Buckland. After a first
suppression in 1808, the expelled monks were able to return to Vallombrosa,
which was already deprived of its archive, library, and works of art. In 1866,
however, the abbey was suppressed for good and some years later its church
transformed into the parish church. See Nicola R. Vasaturo, Guido Morozzi,
Guiseppe Marchini, and Umberto Baldini, Vallombrosa nel IX centenario della
morte del fondatore Giovanni Gualberto. 12 luglio 1703, Florence, 1973: 141-143.
The abbot in those years, from 1867 to 1877, was Germano Gai, who, indeed, may
have owned the painting, and taken it with him when he was obliged to leave the
abbey. On Gai see Francesco Tarani, Lordine vallombrosano. Note storico
cronologiche, Florence, 1920: 28, 151-152. The identity of "J. Stark" is uncertain.
Possibly he may have been Arthur James Stark (18311902), a landscape painter;
see Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart., ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols., Leipzig,
1907-1950 (reprinted 1970-1971): 31(1937):478. [2] Sir Henry Doulton was
instrumental in developing the firm of Royal Doulton Pottery and served as vice
president of the Society of Art in London; see The Dictionary of National Biography
, London, 1906: 358. [3] Offner 1958, 16 (and repeated by later authors), says
Doulton bequeathed the painting to his daughter, Mrs. Buckland. However,
Doulton's daughters were Sarah Lilian, who married John Kinnersley Hooper, and
Katherine Duneau, who was unmarried. "Mrs. Buckland" would have been one of
Doulton's two younger sisters, either Jane (1824-1892), who married Thomas
Buckland, or Marianne (1829-by 1895), who married Virgoe Buckland (1825-1883).
Virgoe Buckland and Henry Doulton were the executors of the will of Henry's


father, John Doulton (1793-1873), and in that document Virgoe Buckland is

described as an "auctioneer and surveyor" (will made 22 February 1873; John
Doulton died 21 May 1873; will proved 29 October 1873; copy in NGA curatorial
files). In his will Henry Doulton bequeaths "all my furniture books pictures prints
musical instruments works of art...unto my Trustees Upon trust to divide the same
in equal shares as nearly as they can having regard to the money value thereof
between such of them my said son and two daughters as shall survive me." (See
the copy of the will [proved 7 January 1898] and information about the Doulton and
Buckland families, in NGA curatorial files.) [4] The relationship of Commander
Virgoe Buckland to Henry Doulton's daughters and sisters has not yet been
determined. Commander Buckland died 8 May 1949, and his estate consigned the
painting to the sale in November of that year. His will (proved 12 August 1949; copy
in NGA curatorial files) leaves money to various "cousins," including several with
the surname Buckland and Doulton. Other than his wearing apparel, no specific
possessions are itemized. [5] Mannenti is the name recorded as the buyer at the
1949 sale. The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini-Bonacossi on 17 June
1950, for a group of 125 paintings and one sculpture, including NGA 1952.5.61. The
offer was accepted on July 1, and the works of art were released to the foundation
on July 6 after the first payment was received. See copies of correspondence in
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1937 Mostra Giottesca, Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence, 1937, no. 165A (no. 157 in
the 1943 catalogue of the exhibition, edited by Sinibaldi and Brunetti).
1949 Possibly loan to display with permanent collection, Hove Museum and Art
Gallery, England (according to 1949 sale catalogue).[1]
2012 Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-
1350, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2012-
2013, not in catalogue (shown only in Toronto).
EXHIBITION HISTORY NOTES


[1] See the Provenance of the painting for details about the 1949 sale. The Hove
Museum is now unable to locate a record of the painting being lent to them (e-
mail, 6 June 2011, Karen Wraith to Anne Halpern, in NGA curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY

New York, 1941: nos. 15-16, repros.
1943 Sinibaldi, Giulia, and Giulia Brunetti, eds. Pittura italiana del Duecento e
Trecento: catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937. Exh. cat.
Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence, 1943: 498 (repro.), 499, no. 157.
York, 1944: 16, repro.
The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla
Palma; Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. New York,
1947: 182 n. 1.
Washington, 1951: 20-23, repro.
1951 Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker,
text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 32,
no. 4, repro., as Madonna and Child Enthroned, Surrounded by Angels
and Saints.
New York, 1958: xxiii, 15-17, pl. 3.
1958 Paccagnini, Giovanni. "Daddi, Bernardo." In Enciclopedia Universale
dellArte. Edited by Istituto per la collaborazione culturale. 15 vols.
Florence, 1958-1967: 4(1961):183.
1960 Damiani, Giovanna. "Daddi, Bernardo." In Dizionario biografico degli
italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 82+ vols. Rome, 1960+:
31(1985):624.



1967 Klesse, Brigitte. Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14.
Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 454 no. 471c.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 63, 318, 647, 666.
of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:153-154; 2::pl. 108.
1984 Brown, Howard Mayer. "Catalogus. A Corpus of Trecento Pictures with
Musical Subject Matter, pt. 1." Imago Musicae 1 (1984): 242-243.
1984: 73, no, 15, color repro.
1986 Ford, Terrence, compiler and ed. Inventory of Music Iconography, no. 1.
National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York 1986: 1.
87, 391.
1:104, 114 n. 186; 2:punch chart 5.3.
1996 Rowlands, Eliot W. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art:
Italian Paintings, 1300-1800. Kansas City, MO, 1996: 53.
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 382, 411, 445.
2001: 394 n. 1.
2003 Modestini, Dianne Dwyer. "Imitative Restoration." in Early Italian
Paintings: Approaches to Conservation. Proceedings of a Symposium at
the Yale University Art Gallery, April 2002. Edited by Patricia Sherwin
Garland. New Haven, 2003: 215.


Bernardo Daddi
Saint Paul and a Group of

Worshippers
1333
tempera on panel
overall: 233.53 88.8 5.3 cm (91 15/16 34 15/16 2 1/16 in.)
Inscription: above the saint's halo: S[ANCTUS]; above the saint's shoulders: PAU
LUS; on the lower frame below the worshippers: [ANNO DOMI]NI.MCCCXXXIII
M...II.ESPLETUM FUIT H[O]C OPUS (In the year of the Lord 1333... this work was
finished) [1]
[1] The much-abraded inscription has been variously read. Sirn (1919) transcribed
it as ESPLETUM FUIT H(OC) OPUS (ANN)O DI MCCCXXXIII MED; Venturi (1931,
1933), as A.MCCCXXXVI... ESPLETUM FUIT H(OC) OPUS; Coletti (1942),
accepting Sirns reading, interpreted the letters MED as a fragment of
Mediolanum and suggested the very unlikely theory that the painting was
executed in Milan. Shapley (1979) and more recent authors accepted the date
1333; Shapley considered the fragmentary letters after the year (M...II?) as probable
indication of the month and day. Boskovits (1984) read the letters after the date as
MEN[SE]. Conti (1994) specified that if so, the panel must have been executed
within the month of July (MEN[SE IUL]II). See Osvald Sirn, A Great Contemporary
of Giotto, 1, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 229; Lionello
Venturi, Pitture italiane in America, Milan, 1931: no. 27; Lionello Venturi, Italian
Paintings in America, translated by Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott,
3 vols., New York and Milan, 1933: 1:no. 34; Luigi Coletti, Contributo al problema
MasoGiottino, Emporium 98 (1942): 463-464; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of
the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, DC, 1979: 1:152-153; Mikls Boskovits, A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec.
3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency, Florence 1984: 349; Alessandro Conti, Maso,
Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana, Prospettiva 73-74 (1994): 43 n. 19.
Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers 205


ENTRY
The panel, with the frontal figure of the standing saint, who is not accompanied to
the sides by a series of superimposed narrative scenes of his legend as in so-
called biographical icons, belongs to a type of image that began to appear in
Florence and in other cities in Italy in the thirteenth century and remained
widespread throughout the following century: narrow and elongated in format,
these paintings were probably intended to be hung against a pillar in a church.[1]
Paintings of this kind, however, were more frequently painted directly onto the
pillar or onto the wall of the church with the more economical technique of
fresco.[2] Panels with single figures of saints were realized either with a votive
intention, as for instance the one by Daddi himself representing Saint Catherine of
Alexandria and a kneeling donor, now in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in
Florence,[3] or as an expression of the cult of a confraternity or a religious lay
company that met to pray and sing before the image at particular times. Both the
number of the minuscule kneeling figures below the saintsix men and six women
and the absence of any name or coat of arms of a donor family make it likely that
a confraternity commissioned our panel.[4]
The composition of the painting is decidedly archaic: the device of placing the
inscription of the name of the saint over a red ground against the gold on both
sides, divided into two syllables by the figure, is especially found in paintings
dating to the last decades of the thirteenth and early decades of the fourteenth
centuries.[5] Also archaizing seems to be the exclusive use of decorations incised
by hand, without any punched motifs, in the ornament of the halo [fig. 1]: in the
years in which Bernardo painted this panel, major Florentine painters preferred to
use the more rapid and labor-saving as well as more showy method of decorations
impressed with punches in the gold ground. On the other hand, ornamental motifs
very similar to those that decorate the halo of Saint Paul in this panel are also
found in the lateral panels of the polyptych painted by Bernardo Daddi for the
Ospedale della Misericordia in Prato only a few years later.[6] So the incised
decoration, if it is not a deliberate archaism, is at any rate somewhat demod,
though it would recur throughout the painters work. Clearly, this archaic character
of the image, the form itself of the panel with the triangular gable (without the
inscribed Gothic arch and other decorative elements that usually embellished
painted panels from the 1330s on), and the severity of expression of the frontally
standing saint misled art historians, who failed for so long to recognize the master
who painted it. Osvald Sirns attribution to the Master of Santa Cecilia, or to


Buonamico Buffalmacco, with whom the art historian thought he could identify the
anonymous master (1919, 1920), was the first attempt to establish an authorship.[7]
Raimond van Marle (1924) accepted his reference to the Master of Santa Cecilia,
but Richard Offner (1927, 1931, 1947) firmly rejected it, though without suggesting
an alternative name.[8] By 1931, Bernard Berenson had given the painting to a
contemporary and close follower of Giotto, and George Martin Richter was
inclined to feel [the painting] is too good for Maso, and [thought it] could be by
Orcagna.[9] Lionello Venturis alternative proposal (1931, 1933) of the authorship of
Maso di Banco was probably formulated after the restoration commissioned by
Duveen Brothers, Inc., a treatment that attenuated the grandeur and softened the
rather rough character of the original image.[10] Wilhelm Valentiner (1933, 1935)
accepted the proposed attribution to Maso, as did Luigi Coletti (1942, 1946), at least
initially; Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca (1951) endorsed it, and Walter Paatz
reported it skeptically (1941) before the later literature jettisoned it for good.[11]
Emilio Cecchi gave the panel to Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) himself (1937).
The more cautious definition School (or follower) of Giotto, with which the
painting was first labeled in its present location (The Mellon Gift 1937), was
promulgated by the earlier catalogs of the National Gallery of Art (NGA 1941, NGA
1949) and by the volume Duveen Pictures (1941), in which an attribution with a
question mark to Giotto himself was hazarded; the postwar studies also
abandoned it (Salvini 1952, Vigorelli and Baccheschi 1966).[12] David George
Wilkins (1969, 1985), however, did not exclude the possibility that it might have
been a product of the late Giotto workshop, while Arno Preiser (1973) preferred to
speak vaguely of Florentine school.[13] Richter (1941) returned to the old
identification proposed by Sirn and conjectured an attribution to Buffalmacco, a
point of view that remained without any following.[14] So, too, did the hypothesis of
Richard Offner (1958), who compared the panel in the Gallery with four lateral
panels of a dismantled polyptych in the Galleria dellAccademia in Florence (nos.
8704, 8705, 8708, 8709), subsequently given to Lorenzo Monaco (Florentine, c.
1370 - c. 1425) by Federico Zeri and by most modern authorities.[15] Berenson, in
letters to Edward Fowles and Joseph Duveen, had altered his opinion in favor of
Daddi by 1935, and the dealer recorded it on the 1936 bill of sale to the Mellon
Trust while describing the painting as attributed to Giotto.[16] Coletti (1950)
reproposed Daddis authorship, perhaps independently and with considerable
caution.[17] This view finally achieved almost unanimous acceptance after being
cited in the posthumous edition of Berensons Lists (1963) and then in the catalogs
of the Gallery from 1965 onwards.[18]


How, then, can this panel be inserted in the sequence of the painters works,
assuming that the date in the inscription should be transcribed as 1333?[19]
Observing the imposing figure of Saint Paul and especially his brooding face,
rigidly frontal, dilated eyes, as well as the forms modeled (as the old photo testifies)
with extreme delicacy, we may at first be reminded of certain paintings by Giotto
himself, especially in his earlier phase. But the elements that exclude a Giottesque
authorship are too many to be ignored. The proportions of the figure (in which the
ratio between head and overall height of the figure lies between 8:1 and 9:1) are
without parallel in Giottos oeuvre, with the exception of the final phase in his
career, for example in the frescoes in the chapel of the Bargello, Florence, where
the scenes painted by the artist (or by his pupils) are populated by very tall
figures.[20] The subtle detailing of the garments and the saints furrowed brow are
also quite alien to Giotto. The works most closely related to the Saint Paul in
Washington are to be found, instead, in the output of Bernardo Daddi, especially
among those paintings that reveal affinities with Giottos pupil Taddeo Gaddi, with
whom Bernardo seems to have established a kind of collaborative venture around
13331334.[21] In his cycle of frescoes in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce,
Florence, Taddeo adopted extremely tall figures of powerful monumentality.[22]
On the other hand, the rhythm of the draperies in the Washington panel is too
refined, too static, and the chiaroscuro modeling of the forms too delicate for an
artist trained exclusively in the school of Giotto. Admittedly, the physiognomic type
of the saint is rather unusual in the production of Daddis shop;[23] nonetheless a
Saint Paul with a youthful face framed by a short and silky beard does occasionally
appear in Daddis paintings dating to the early 1330s.[24] The delicately
calligraphic pictorial modeling of the face can be compared with that of the frontal
bust of Christ in the votive Madonna, now in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo,
Florence, executed in February 1335.[25] The soft fabric of our saints mantle,
breaking into sweeping folds that further emphasize the figures corporeal
substance, seems very similar to that presented by Daddi in the already cited
figure of Saint Catherine, dated 1333.[26] In conclusion, that Bernardo Daddi was
the artist of the Gallery panel can, I think, be unhesitatingly confirmed.[27]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Tracing of halo, Bernardo Daddi, Saint Paul and a

Group of Worshippers, 1333, tempera on panel, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection.
(Joanna Dunn, National Gallery of Art, Washington)
NOTES
[1] On the typology and function of panels with the figure of a single standing
saint, cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His
Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio,
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 222 n.1.
[2] Pillar frescoes with figures of saints, the patrons of a family or guild, are
common in fourteenth-century Florence; we may cite those in the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore and in Orsanmichele. See Walter Paatz and Elisabeth
Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols.
(Frankfurt am Main, 19401953), 3:625629; and Diane Finiello Zervas, ed.,
Orsanmichele a Firenze, 2 vols., Mirabilia Italiae (Modena, 1996), 1:549557.
[3] See Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting:
The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed.
Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed.
(Florence, 2001), 221226. The paintings votive character is suggested by
the presence of the donor as devoteeevidently a member of the Medici
family, as is indicated by the well-known family coat of arms at the foot of
the panel.
[4] For more on this question, see Ronald F.E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in
Renaissance Florence, Population and Social Structure (New York and
London, 1982); John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval
Florence (Oxford, 1994). An appendix in Henderson lists confraternities


active in Florence between the mid-thirteenth and the mid-fifteenth

centuries. He included among them a Compagnia di San Paolo, founded in
1434, which used to meet in the Badia Fiorentina, and a Compagnia di San
Paolo dei Sarti, founded in 1435, whose meeting place is unknown. One
should not forget, however, that confraternities were often active many
years or even decades before their first documentation.
[5] Examples of a bilateral placing of the inscription include the thirteenth-

century panel of Saint Luke and two devotees attributed to the Magdalen
Master, now in the Uffizi, Florence (no. 3493), and various Florentine
paintings of the early Trecento, such as Giottos polyptych in the church of
the Badia (now displayed in the Uffizi) or the panel of the Vicchio-Paris
Master representing Saint Felix, formerly in the Cini collection in Venice; cf.
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 6, Following of the St. Cecilia Master, Lippus
Benivieni, Master of the Fogg Piet (New York, 1956), 116.
[6] In the polyptych in Pratoprobably dating to after 1334, when Fra Francesco
di Tieri became rector of the hospitalthe particular foliate motif in the halo
of Saint Catherine (further embellished in the external and internal circles
with tiny motifs impressed with metal tools) seems virtually identical with the
decoration of the halo of Saint Paul in the National Gallery of Art. The year
1337, when Bernardo Daddi was entrusted with the commission to paint the
altarpiece of the Cappella del Sacro Cingolo in what is now the cathedral
(then pieve) of Prato, should be considered a probable terminus ante quem
for the hospital polyptych; cf. Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica
Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
(Florence, 1989), 45 n.53; Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical
1991), 124. Bernardo also used motifs incised by hand in the halo of a panel
of Saint Catherine, its present whereabouts unknown, dated 1333 (the
painting was auctioned at Christies, New York, January 24, 2003, lot 25);
see also Offner (1991, 102104), though here small punched motifs also
appear in the external and internal circles of the halo.
[7] Osvald Sirn, A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1, The Burlington Magazine

for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 228230, 236; Osvald Sirn, The Buffalmaco
Hypothesis: Some Additional Remarks, The Burlington Magazine for
[8] Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting,
vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 276;
Richard Offner, A Great Madonna by the St. Cecilia Master, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 50 (1927): 97; Richard Offner, A Critical and


vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle (New York, 1931), 17; Richard
Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle (New
York, 1947), 7, 39, 42 n. 1, 94 n. 1.
[9] These opinions are recorded by Duveen Brothers, Inc.; see cable,
November 3, 1931, Duveens London office to Duveens Paris office; cable,
November 4, 1931, Paris to London; and letter, July 9, 1935, Duveens New
York office to Edward Fowles in the Paris office (Duveen Brothers Records,
Angeles: reel 101, box 246, folder 4; copies in NGA curatorial files). I wish to
thank Anne Halpern in the National Gallery of Art department of curatorial
records and files for this information.
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 34. The
restoration was done in 1928; see cables, April 30 and May 3, 1928,
Duveens New York office to the Paris office (see note 9 for citation). Again,
Anne Halpern kindly provided this information.
[11] Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Die Leihausstellung frhitalienischer Malerei in

Detroit, Pantheon 12 (1933): 238239; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Giovanni
Balducci a Firenze e una scultura di Maso, LArte 38 (1935): 29; Luigi
Coletti, Contributo al problema MasoGiottino, Emporium 98 (1942): 463
464; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xli;
Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3
vols. (Milan, 1951), 2:1604, 1606; Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die
Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt
am Main, 19401953), 2 (1941): 51.
[12] The Mellon Gift: A First Official List, Art News 35 (1937): 15; Emilio Cecchi,
Giotto (Milan, 1937), 174; National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of
Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 8081; National Gallery of
Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection (Washington, DC,
1949), 7; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America
(New York, 1941), no. 12; Roberto Salvini, ed., Tutta la pittura di Giotto,
Biblioteca darte Rizzoli (Milan, 1952), 52; Giancarlo Vigorelli and Edi
Baccheschi, Lopera completa di Giotto (Milan, 1966), 122123.
[13] David G. Wilkins, Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento
(PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1969), 214; David G. Wilkins, Maso di
Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (New York, 1985), 209; Arno
Preiser, Das Entstehen und die Entwicklung der Predella in der italienischen
Malerei (Hildesheim and New York, 1973), 3738.
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177 n. 3.


1958), 46 n. 2. On the problem relating to the dismantled polyptych from the
Ardinghelli Chapel in the Church of the Carmine, documented between
1398 and 1400, cf. the contribution by Angelo Tartuferi, in Daniela Parenti
and Angelo Tartuferi, eds., Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al
Rinascimento (Florence, 2006), 120127.
[16] Letters (see note 9 for citation): Bernard Berenson to Edward Fowles, July
13, 1935, in which Berenson wrote, This attribution [to Bernardo Daddi] I
came to years ago, and it has stood the test of timefor me; Berenson to
Joseph Duveen, October 20, 1935; Berenson to Joseph Duveen, October
15, 1936. Information kindly supplied by Anne Halpern. For the bill of sale,
see Provenance, note 6.
[17] Luigi Coletti, Il Maestro colorista di Assisi, Critica darte 89 (19491950):

447.
[18] Apart from the above-cited catalogs and scholars, the following recognized,
though sometimes with reservations or doubts, Bernardo Daddi as the
master of the Saint Paul: Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census
of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public
Collections (Cambridge, 1972), 63, 437, 645; Mikls Boskovits, Pittura
fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 22, 195
n. 47, 243 n. 201; Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist
Tendency (Florence, 1984), 71, 349350, pls. 177b, 178; Richard Offner and
Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle, new
ed. (Florence, 1986), 309; Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri
Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
(Florence, 1989), 35 n. 15, 37, 87, 391; Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits,
A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth
(Florence, 1991), 166 n. 3, 513; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and
Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 635; Roberta Ferrazza,
Elia Volpi e il commercio dellarte nel primo trentennio del Novecento, in
Studi e ricerche di collezionismo e museografia, Firenze 18201920 (Pisa,
1985), 414 n. 50; Roberta Ferrazza, Palazzo Davanzati e le collezioni di Elia
Volpi (Florence, 1993), 128, 174 (repro.), 216 n. 52, 220 n. 70; Enrica Neri
Lusanna, in The Martello Collection: Further Paintings, Drawings and
Miniatures 13th18th Centuries, ed. Mikls Boskovits (Florence, 1992), 54;
Enrica Neri Lusanna, Daddi, Bernardo, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane


Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 8:442; Lucia Meoni, San Felice in Piazza a
Firenze (Florence, 1993), 41 fig. 27, 44; Alessandro Conti, Maso, Roberto
Longhi e la tradizione offneriana, Prospettiva 7374 (1994): 36, 38 fig. 6, 43
n. 19; Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution,
Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:99,
108, 110 n. 174; 2: punch chart 5.3; Andrew Ladis and Hayden B.J. Maginnis,
Sculptures Pictorial Presence Reflections on the Tabernacles of
Orsanmichele, Studi di storia dellarte 56 (19941995): 45, 49 n. 3, 53
fig. 6; Ada Labriola, Daddi, Bernardo, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die
bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols.
(Munich, 1999), 23:356; Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York,
2004), 444; Angelo Tartuferi, in Da Bernardo Daddi al Beato Angelico a
Botticelli: Dipinti fiorentini del LindenauMuseum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls
Boskovits and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2005), 70.
[19] The reading of the date as 1333 seems to be safe (but see Inscription note
1). However, as Erling S. Skaug (2008) observed, it might mean any date
between January 1, 1333, and March 24, 1334. In fact, in Florentine style the
year began on March 25. Skaug recalled that a big punch mark that
Bernardo used in a Madonna dated August 14, 1333 (inv. no. 6170, Galleria
dellAccademia, Florence), never appeared again in the artists later works
and hypothesized that the punch, absent also in the Gallery's Saint Paul,
might have been lost at the time of the disastrous flood in November 1333.
See Erling S. Skaug, Bernardo Daddis Chronology and Workshop Structure
as Defined by Technical Criteria, in Da Giotto a Botticelli: Pittura fiorentina
tra gotico e rinascimento; Atti del convegno internazionale Firenze,
Universit degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 2021, 2005, ed.
Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps (Florence, 2008), 8283.
[20] Giovanni Previtali and Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua bottega, ed.
Alessandro Conti, 3rd ed. (Milan, 1993), 129, 348353; Janis Elliott, The
Judgement of the Commune: The Frescoes of the Magdalen Chapel in
Florence, Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 61 (1998): 509519.
[21] The composition of the small triptych with folding shutters now in the Museo
del Bigallo in Florence, which bears the date 1333, is virtually replicated by
Taddeo Gaddi in a work of similar structure signed and dated 1334, now in
the Gemldegalerie in Berlin (nos. 10791081), a circumstance that has been
variously interpreted. James Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista
Cavalcaselle (1864) believed that the Florentine triptych was also painted by
Taddeo, while in more recent times, once Daddis authorship of it was
universally accepted, the inference has been drawn that a now lost
prototype from the hand of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) himself (Coletti
1946) or of Maso di Banco (Longhi 1959) must have existed. The present
writer (Boskovits 1987; cf. also 2001), on the other hand, conjectures, if not a


shared shop, then perhaps a collaboration between the two artists and a
kind of commercial arrangement whereby Bernardo painted only panels for
Florentine churches, and Taddeo almost exclusively frescoes. See Joseph
Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in
Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1864), 1:360
362; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946),
xliii; Roberto Longhi, Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi, Paragone 10,
no. 109 (1959): 3435; Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei:
1988), 50; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 12.
[22] On the decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel, see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo
Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonn (Columbia, MO, 1982),
88112.
[23] I wonder whether it was not the saints youthful face, with its close-trimmed
beard, that prompted so acute a connoisseur as Richard Offner to compare
the Saint Paul in Washington with the image of the same saint in the Galleria
dellAccademia, Florence (inv. no. 8709), rather similar in facial type but in
style clearly belonging to the last years of the fourteenth century.
[24] I refer, for example, to the image of the saint that appears in the left shutter
of a portable triptych in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts
(no. 18.33), dated 1334.
[25] Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi,
His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 192200. The date
indicated in the inscription below, February 25, 1334, is in Florentine style,
which calculated the year as beginning on March 25.
[27] Perhaps it may not be superfluous to refer briefly to the kinship sometimes
suggested between the Saint Paul and a fresco now preserved in the
Pinacoteca of Forl. In a typewritten note (copy in NGA curatorial files),
Wilhelm Suida observed similarities between the panel and the
representation of the same saint in a fragment of mural painting from the
church of Santa Maria in Laterano (or di Schiavonia) at Forl, where some
saints and part of the Procession of the Magi are represented. Since some
authorities claimed to have deciphered the signature of a certain Agostino
in the fresco, Suida concluded that it was this painter, not otherwise
documented, who executed the panel in Washington; cf. Eberhard Kasten,
Agostino, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller
Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols. (Munich, 1992), 1:546547.


Unpublished and ignored by the more recent literature, the hypothesis was
cited only by Fern Rusk Shapley (1979); denying that the two paintings
belong to the same master, she asserted the view that the painter
Augustinus, probably a native of Forl, made use of a cartoon inherited from
the painter of No. 3, that is, the Saint Paul. Although Anna Tambini (1982)
accepted this proposal in substance, it should be rejected. Apart from the
fact that the reading of the presumed signature is quite uncertain (cf. Viroli
1980), the shared use and exchange of cartoons between fourteenth-
century painters seems very improbable. The Saint Paul in the fresco,
though presented in a frontal pose similar to the saints painted by Bernardo
Daddi, is different both in pictorial style and in physiognomic type. It is
clearly the work of an Emilian or Lombard artist of the last quarter of the
fourteenth century, who could not, I think, have been influenced in any way
by the Florentine panel. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:152; Anna Tambini, Pittura
dallAlto Medioevo al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forl (Faenza,
1982), 112; Giordano Viroli, ed., La Pinacoteca Civica di Forl (Forl, 1980), 25
28.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden support, which has not been cradled, retains its original thickness of
3.3 cm. The engaged frame adds another 1.2 cm around the edges. The vertically
grained panel is composed of three planks; the central one has a crack running the
length of the panel. Three horizontal battens, attached with very large nails,
reinforce the panel on the reverse; the lowest of these appears more recent than
the other two, which are probably original. The wood panel was covered with
fabric, and over it, gesso.[1] The craquelure is continuous over the panel and the
inner part of the molding, indicating that the inner portion of the frame molding,
attached with nails and dowels, is original. The outermost portion of the molding,
however, is a later addition. Red bole serves as the preparation layer for the gold
ground, upon which Saint Pauls halo is incised rather than punched. The gold trim
on Saint Pauls robe and mantle was mordant gilded. The wooden support shows
extensive worm damage, especially along the sides. The gold ground is much
abraded. The silver leaf of Saint Pauls sword has oxidized to black in some areas.
A broad pattern of wide-aperture craquelure penetrates the painted surface, which
contains many small, scattered losses, especially in the headdresses of several
small figures at the lower right, and a few scratches. The original engaged frame,
decorated with silver leaf overlaid with orange and green pigments, has discolored


in some of the areas where the leaf is exposed.[2] A small section of the original
gable top, mostly underneath the frame, has been replaced. Photographs of the
painting made in the years 19101915 [fig. 1] [3] show it much darkened by dust and
somewhat opaque varnishes. Shortly after the 1916 sale the panel underwent
partial varnish removal; the inscription with the date was discovered on this
occasion [fig. 2].[4] It was treated again in 1928, when the figures were inpainted
and the frame completed above and re-gilded.[5] The painting was treated most
recently between 1984 and 1989.[6] During this treatment the insecure areas in the
wooden support were strengthened, the discolored varnish and old inpainting
were removed, and losses were inpainted.


fig. 2 Detail after cleaning but before inpainting, Bernardo

Daddi, Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers, 1333,
tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 1915, Bernardo Daddi, Saint

Paul and a Group of Worshippers, 1333, tempera on
panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W.
Mellon Collection
TECHNICAL NOTES


[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the ground layer using x-
ray powder diffraction (XRD), and the gesso was identified as the dehydrate
form of calcium sulfate (see report dated December 15, 1986, in NGA
conservation files).
[2] The NGA scientific research department analyzed pigments using x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) and optical microscopy. The greens were
mixtures of azurite and lead tin yellow; the browns contained massicot and
red iron oxide; the reds contained red lakes, red iron oxides, and vermilion;
the purples contained azurite and red lake; and the yellows were ocher
pigments (see report dated December 15, 1986, in NGA conservation files).
[3] Apart from the small and rather dark reproduction published in the 1916 sale
catalog, the paintings state in these years is also illustrated by a
photograph made c. 1910, apparently by the firm Brogi, in Florence. A copy
of it is now in the photographic archive of the Fondazione Federico Zeri in
Bologna (no. PI 0044/2/32).
[4] Osvald Sirn, A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1, The Burlington Magazine

for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 229, reported that by the Spring of 1917 it had
been very successfully cleaned.
[5] This can be deduced both from a comparison of the photo reproduced by
Sirn with Venturis reproduction (1931 and 1933) and from the Duveen
Brothers habit of immediately cleaning the pictures they acquired. See, e.g.,
Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers (London, 1976), 123; Meryle
Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York, 2004), 334. See also Entry, note 9.
[6] See the report dated 1984 and the treatment report of 1989 in NGA
conservation files.
PROVENANCE
The often-repeated statement in the earlier literature that the panel comes from
the Florentine monastery of San Felice in Piazza[1] does not seem to be based on
any secure, or at any rate documented, evidence. Perhaps more plausible, based
at least on the identity of the saint, is the more recent proposal of a provenance
either from the Florentine Ospedale di San Paolo or from the nearby church of San
Paolino, since a handwritten annotation on an old photograph indicated its
provenance dai padri di San Paolino.[2] Elia Volpi [18581938], Florence, by the
early 1900s;[3] (his sale, American Art Galleries, New York, 21-27 November 1916,
seventh day, no. 1040, as Primitive school of Tuscany, early XVth century);
(Bourgeois Galleries, New York);[4] purchased January 1920 by (Duveen Brothers,


Inc. London, Paris, and New York);[5] sold 15 December 1936 to The A. W. Mellon
Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[6] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] In the
introduction to the 1916 sale catalogue (n.p.), Elia Volpi states that among his
pictures which belong . . . to the School of Italian Primitives, the majority . . . [come]
from the sacristy of the convent of St. Felice in Florence. On this basis both
Venturi and several other later authors claimed that the NGA Saint Paul formerly
belonged to that church; however, as Lucia Meoni has (1993) pointed out, nessuna
fonte antica o le schede del Carocci testimoniano lantica collocazione del San
Paolo nella chiesa di San Felice. . . . ("No early source nor the entries in Carocci's
Inventory [an inventory compiled in 1892 on behalf of the Soprintendenza of
Florence] record the presence of the Saint Paul in the church of San Felice...").
Roberta Ferrazza (Palazzo Davanzati e le collezioni di Elia Volpi, Florence, 1993:
216 n. 52) has found records of sales of art objects from the Conservatorio di San
Pier Martire, annexed to the church of San Felice, in the years between 1884 and
1901, as well as a note in the photo archive of the Biblioteca Berenson at I Tatti
(Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence), according to
which Stephan Bourgeois, who bought the panel now in Washington at the Volpi
sale, went to see Mr. Guglielmetti, Mr. Volpis secretary, from whom he [Bourgeois]
received the information that Mr. Volpi [said he had] bought the picture in 1907
from the administrators of the Monastery of S. Felice in Florence. . . . NGA
systematic catalogue author Mikls Boskovits is inclined, however, to think that the
records of Volpis secretary were based on the same rather vague memories and
should not be considered trustworthy. [2] According to the unpublished research of
Kathleen Giles Arthur (c. 1991; copy in NGA curatorial files) the Saint Paul most
probably was commissioned by one of the major charitable institutions in
fourteenth century Florence, i.e., the Ospedale di San Paolo, and the worshippers
of the saint can be identified as the members of the third order of Saint Francis, lay
men and women who formed the staff of the hospital. The claim, however, is no
more than speculation on the part of the author. The provenance from San Paolino,
on the other hand, is asserted by a handwritten note on the reverse of an early
photograph in the photo archive of Federico Zeri in Bologna (no. PI 0044/2/32;
originally taken c. 1910 apparently by the firm Brogi in Florence); see also Mikls
Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The fourteenth
century, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency, Sec.III, Vol. IX, Florence,1984:
350 n. 3). San Paolino (originally San Paolo), in the Quartiere Santa Maria Novella,
was already a collegiate church in the eleventh century and, after various
vicissitudes, was sold to the discalced Carmelites in 1618; they rebuilt the church in


its present form later in the seventeenth century and still officiate it. After the
suppression of religious orders in 1808, the friars had to abandon the church and
its annexed convent, but it was restored to them in 1814, and they remained there
until a second suppression of the convent in 1866 (Osanna Fantozzi Micali and
Piero Rosselli, Le soppressioni dei conventi a Firenze, Montelupo Fiorentino, 2000:
233). Since the late nineteenth century, however, the church has once again been
officiated by the discalced Carmelites; see Walter and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen
von Florenz. Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, Vols. 1-6, Frankfurt am Main,
1940-1953: 4(1952): 591. There is no documentation of any confraternity dedicated
to Saint Paul that met in this church, but the large group of donors at the foot of the
NGA panel suggests that a lay confraternity commissioned it. It is known, on the
other hand, that Daddi did work for San Paolino: another painting by him,
representing the Madonna and Child and now in the Galleria dellAccademia (no.
3466; see Angelo Tartuferi in Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia di Firenze.
Vol. 1: Dipinti, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi, Florence, 2003: 60-63),
also comes from this church and can be assumed to be close in date to the
Gallery's painting. [3] After an early career as a painter and restorer, Volpi began to
work as an art dealer in Citt di Castello towards the end of the nineteenth century.
He then moved to Florence, where he purchased the Palazzo Davanzati in 1904
and transformed it into a private museum, furnishing it with paintings and objets
dart from his collection. The museum was opened to the public in September 1910.
Presumably by then the panel discussed here was already in Volpis possession;
the Volpi sale catalogue of 1916 noted that it had come from the Palazzo Davanzati.
Luigi Coletti (Il Maestro colorista di Assisi, Critica d'Arte 8-9 (1949-1950): 447)
claims that the painting passed through the hands of the dealer Stefano Bardini
(18361922), but Everett Fahys research (LArchivio storico fotografico di Stefano
Bardini. Dipinti, disegni, miniature, stampe, Florence, 2000) does not confirm this.
[4] A copy of the sale catalogue in the NGA library is annotated with the Bourgeois
name, which is also given in the Duveen prospectus (in NGA curatorial files). See
Osvald Sirn, A great contemporary of Giotto I, The Burlington Magazine 35
(December 1919): 229; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2
vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 152; and note 1 above. [5] Boskovits 1984, 349-350,
and Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 422; reel 45, box 133, folder 1; reel 101, box
246, folder 4; copies from the Duveen records in NGA curatorial files. [6] The
original bill of sale is in Records of The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable
Trust, Subject Files, Box 2, Gallery Archives, NGA; copy in NGA curatorial files. The


painting is attributed to Giotto, with a parenthetical note stating that Bernard

Berenson gives it to Daddi.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1910 Palazzo Davanzati, Florence, between September 1910 and 1916.
1921 Loan Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Italian Artists of the Fourteenth,
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Cincinnati Art Museum, 1921, no catalogue.
1933 Sixteenth Loan Exhibition of Old Masters. Italian Paintings of the XIV to XVI
Century, Detroit Institute of Art, 1933, no. 3.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1919 Sirn, Osvald. "A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1." The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 228 (repro.), 229, 230, 236.
1920 Sirn, Osvald. "The Buffalmaco Hypothesis: Some Additional Remarks."
The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 37 (1920): 183.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):276, 277, 287, 290.
1927 Offner, Richard. "A Great Madonna by the St. Cecilia Master." The
The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. I: The School of the S. Cecilia
Master. New York, 1931: 17.
1933 Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Die Leihausstellung frhitalienischer Malerei in
Detroit." Pantheon 12 (1933): 238, repro. 239.
1:no. 34, repro.
1935 Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Giovanni Balducci a Firenze e una scultura di
Maso." LArte 38 (1935): 29, fig. 25.
1937 Cecchi, Emilio. Giotto. Milan, 1937: 174, pl. 177.
1937 "The Mellon Gift. A First Official List." Art News 35 (20 March 1937): 15.
1940 Paatz, Walter and Elisabeth Paatz. Die Kirchen von Florenz: ein
kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch. 6 vols. Frankfurt am Main, 1940-1954:
2(1941):51.
1941 Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 2(1946):xli.



New York, 1941: no. 12, repro., attributed to Giotto, as St. Paul with
Twelve Adorers.
(repro.), 233.
Art, Washington, 1941: 80-81, no. 3, as by Follower of Giotto.
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 177 n. 3.
repro. 116, as by Follower of Giotto.
1942 Coletti, Luigi. "Contributo al problema Maso-Giottino." Emporium 98
(1942): 463-464.
1947: 7, 39, 42 n. 1, 94 n. 1.
1949 Coletti, Luigi. "Il Maestro colorista di Assisi." Critica darte 8-9 (1949-
1950): 447.
Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 7, repro., as by
Follower of Giotto.
1950 Florisoone, Michel. Giotto. Paris, 1950: 116 n. 6.
Washington, 1951: 23 n. 1.
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 2:1604, 1606.
1952 Salvini, Roberto, ed. Tutta la pittura di Giotto. Biblioteca darte Rizzoli.
Milan, 1952: 52.
New York, 1958: 46 n. 2.
(reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 297, repro., as by
Follower of Giotto.
1966 Vigorelli, Giancarlo, and Edi Baccheschi. Lopera completa di Giotto. 1st
ed. Milan, 1966: repro. 122-123.
1969 Wilkins, David G. "Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early


Trecento." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1969.

Ann Arbor, MI, 1979: 214.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 63, 437, 645.
1973 Preiser, Arno. Das Entstehen und die Entwicklung der Predella in der
italienischen Malerei. Hildesheim and New York, 1973: 37, 38, fig. 10.
1975 Boskovits, Mikls. Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-
1400. Florence, 1975: 22, 195 n. 47, 243 n. 201.
1975 Fremantle, Richard. Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio:
A Guide to Painting in and near Florence, 1300 to 1450. London, 1975:
47, 50, fig. 92.
1981 Salvini, Roberto. Giotto: Werkverzeichnis. Die groen Meister der
Malerei. Frankfurt, 1981: 94, fig. 191.
Faenza e Forl. Faenza, 1982: 112.
1983 Volpe, Carlo. "Il lungo percorso del dipingere dolcissimo e tanto unito."
In Storia dellarte italiana 2: dal Medioevo al Novecento. pt. 1, dal
Medioevo al Quattrocento. Edited by Federico Zeri, Giulio Bollati and
Paolo Fossati. Turin, 1983: 265 n. 11, 275 n. 23.
Florence, 1984: 71, 349-350, pls. 177b, 178.
1985 Ferrazza, Roberta. "Elia Volpi e il Commercio dellarte nel primo
Trentennio del Novecento." In Studi e ricerche di Collezionismo e
Museografia, Firenze 1820-1920. Pisa, 1985: 414 n. 50.
1985 Wilkins, David G. Maso di Banco: a Florentine Artist of the Early
Trecento. New York, 1985: 209.
1986 Offner, Richard, and Mikls Boskovits. A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. I: The School
of the S. Cecilia Master. 2nd ed. Florence, 1986: 309.
35 n. 15, 37, 87, 391.


Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. IV: Bernardo
Daddi, His Shop and Fllowing. 2nd ed. Florence, 1991: 166 n. 3, 513.
1992 Boskovits, Mikls, ed. The Martello Collection: Further Paintings,
Drawings and Miniatures 13th-18th Centuries. Florence, 1992: 54.
1992 Labriola, Ada. "Daddi, Bernardo." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die
bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und Vlker. Edited by Gnter Meissner.
87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 23(1999):356.
1993 Ferrazza, Roberta. Palazzo Davanzati e le collezioni di Elia Volpi.
Florence, 1993: 128, 174 (repro.), 216 n. 52, 220 n. 70.
1993 Meoni, Lucia. San Felice in Piazza a Firenze. Florence, 1993: 41 fig. 27,
44.
1994 Conti, Alessandro. "Maso, Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana."
Prospettiva 73-74 (1994): 36, 38 fig. 6, 43 n. 19.
1994 Ladis, Andrew and Hayden B. J. Maginnis. "Sculptures Pictorial
Presence: Reflections on the Tabernacles of Orsanmichele." Studi di
storia dellarte 5-6 (1994-1995): 45, 49 n. 3, 53 fig. 6.
1:99, 108, 110 n. 174; 2:punch chart 5.3.
1996 Neri Lusanna, Enrica. "Daddi, Bernardo." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
by Jane Turner. New York and London, 1996: 8:442.
2001: 635.
2004 Secrest, Meryle. Duveen: A Life in Art. New York, 2004: 444.
2004: 102 n. 4.
2005 Boskovits, Mikls, and Daniela Parenti, eds. Da Bernardo Daddi al
Beato Angelico a Botticelli: dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau-Museum di
Altenburg. Exh. cat. Museo di San Marco. Florence, 2005: 70.
2008 Skaug, Erling S. "Bernardo Daddis Chronology and Workshop Structure
as Defined by Technical Criteria." In Da Giotto a Botticelli: pittura
fiorentina tra gotico e rinascimento. Atti del convegno internazionale
Firenze, Universit degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 20-21, 2005.
Edited by Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps. Florence, 2008: 82-83.


Jacopo di Cione
Also known as
Robiccia
Florentine, c. 1340 - c. 1400?
BIOGRAPHY
Brother of Andrea (nicknamed Orcagna) and of Nardo di Cione (Florentine, active

from c. 1340; died 1365/1366), both of them painters and by midcentury considered
among the best masters active in Florence,[1] Jacopo is cited in documents for the
first time in 1365 as one of the heirs of Nardo, who had died in that year.[2] Only
after 1368 is he mentioned as a painter. It may be presumed, however, that by that
date he had been working in that role for a decade; the first dated work (1362) that
can plausibly be attributed to him (private collection, New York) shows him as a
fully formed artist.[3] Jacopos birth therefore should be placed in years close to
1340.
Upon the death of Andrea di Cione in 1368, Jacopo became the heir to his
brothers prestigious shop, and, according to the unanimous opinion of art
historians, he was responsible for the execution of such important commissions as
the polyptych for the high altar of the church of San Pier Maggiore (13701371) and
the Pala della Zecca (the Mint) in Florence (13721374).[4] In the years thereafter
the artist is frequently documented until 1398, but no securely authenticated work
by his hand has come down to us. It seems that he did not personally participate in
the execution of the frescoes in the Palazzo dei Priori at Volterra, for which he was
paid in 1383 together with Niccol Gerini.[5] The attempted reconstruction of
Jacopos oeuvre has thus been based on the two large polyptychs mentioned
above, both dating to the early 1370s. Since no registered payment appears
alongside his name in the list of Florentine prestanze (state loans) dating to 1400,
the inference can be drawn that he was dead by that date.[6]
Jacopo must have been trained in the shop of his brother Andrea, for he was
strongly influenced by the severe compositional balance of scenes and the
sculptural modeling of figures that distinguish Andreas paintings. Especially in his
works dating to the sixth and seventh decade of the fourteenth century, Jacopo
adopted Andreas tendency to reduce the mise-en-scne to the minimum and
concentrate his attention on the human figures, modeled with dense chiaroscuro
Jacopo di Cione 225


and enveloped in precious stuffs that imitate gold-embroidered brocades. Apart

from the Madonna dated 1362 formerly in the Stoclet collection, Brussels, we can
probably place in his early phase the altarpieces depicting the Annunciation
respectively in the churches of Santissima Annunziata di Rosano (Florence) and
San Niccol at Calenzano (Prato), and the Madonna and Child with angels in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, as well as several portable panels intended for
private devotion. Among the latter, two small triptychs deserve particular mention
because of their extremely accomplished workmanship: one in the Galleria
dellAccademia, Florence (no. 8465), and the other formerly in the Galleria Moretti
in Florence,[7] in which a delicate poetic vein alleviates and adds grace to the
severe monumentality and the brooding gravity normative in Orcagnas workshop.
Subsequently, the compositional formulae inherited from Andrea di Cione are

reformulated with ever greater rigidity in such works as the polyptych formerly in
the Fischel collection in Vienna, dated 1379. In addition, Jacopos style in the 1380s
was enriched, his compositions enlivened, and his repertoire of motifs diversified
as a result of his collaborations, both with Niccol Gerini, who partnered with him in
the polyptych in the church of Santi Apostoli in Florence dated 1383, and with
Giovanni del Biondo, with whom he painted the panel Saint Zenobius Enthroned in
Florence Cathedral. In the last decade of the century his creative vein, which had
contributed greatly to shaping the characteristics of Florentine painting in the
second half of the fourteenth century, showed signs of exhaustion. As
demonstrated by the triptych dated 1391 in the Academy of Arts in Honolulu,
Jacopo gradually dissociated himself from, or failed to achieve, the ideals of
elegance and vivacity typical of the Gothic renewal pursued by painters of the
younger generation.
[1] Andrea and Nardo di Cione are listed among the leading masters of Florence in
an undated Pistoian document that was probably written shortly after the Black
Death in 1348, which had decimated the population of Tuscany. The document was
published by Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue
Raisonn (Columbia, MO, 1982), 257.
[2] For the documents relating to Jacopo, see Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg,
A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century,
sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), 713.
[3] Formerly in the Stoclet collection in Brussels, the painting represents the
Madonna and Child surmounted by a bust of the Blessing God the Father. It formed
Jacopo di Cione 226


the centerpiece of a polyptych bearing the coat of arms of the Parte Guelfa, so it
was undoubtedly a commission of some prestige and would hardly have been
entrusted to a novice painter. Cf. Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del
Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), pl. 48; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna,
Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Knstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 162
163 and pl. 46 (where Kreytenberg reproduced the painting in a deceptively
overpainted state and with an erroneous attribution to Andrea di Cione).
[4] Most of the panels of the first of these works are now in the National Gallery in
London, while the second altarpiece is now in the Galleria dellAccademia in
Florence. Cf. Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New
York, 1965), 3174, 8593; Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi, eds., Dipinti,
vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia
di Firenze (Florence, 2003), 127135. The documents relating to the Pala della
Zecca cite the name of the painter Jacobus Cini, generally identified with the
younger brother of Andrea di Cione. The San Pier Maggiore polyptych is assigned
to the artist only on the basis of style.
[5] Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
York, 1965), 115119. Recently, Laurence Kanter questioned the traditional
reconstruction of Jacopos oeuvre; see Laurence B. Kanter and John Marciari,
Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 1218.
York, 1965), 13 n. 17, drew this plausible conclusion. The Jachopo di Cione
dipintore recorded in a Florentine document of 1410 is probably a different person,
perhaps a grandson of the Trecento painter with the same name; cf. Werner
Jacobsen, Die Maler von Florenz zu Beginn der Renaissance (Munich, 2001), 583.
[7] For these paintings cf. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi, eds., Dipinti, vol. 1,
Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia di
Firenze (Florence, 2003), 116121; and Daniele Benati, in Da Bernardo Daddi a
Jacopo di Cione 227


BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. Jacopo di Cione. In

1907-1950: 26(1932):39.
1908 Sirn, Osvald. Addenda und Errata in Meinem Giottino - Buch.

Monatshefte fr Kunstwissenschaft 1 (1908): 1118-1123.
1908 Sirn, Osvald.

Giottino und seine Stellung in der gleichzeitigen florentinischen Malerei.
Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien Bd 1. Leipzig, 1908: 76-81.
1960 Tartuferi, Angelo. Jacopo di Cione. In

Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti.
79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 62(2004)57-59.
1965 Offner, Richard, and Klara Steinweg.

Century. Sec. IV, Vol. III: Jacopo di Cione. New York, 1965.

Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,1370-1400. Florence, 1975:
50-54, 95-98, 321-330.
1986 Biagi, Enza. "Jacopo di Cione." In

Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:587.
2010 Kanter, Laurence B., and John Marciari.

Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection. New Haven,
2010: 12-18.
Jacopo di Cione 228


Jacopo di Cione
Florentine, c. 1340 - c. 1400?

God the Father Blessing
and Angels
c. 1370/1375
tempera on panel
overall: 141.2 69 1.5 cm (55 9/16 27 3/16 9/16 in.)
framed: 156.8 x 84.1 x 6.7 cm (61 3/4 x 33 1/8 x 2 5/8 in.)
ENTRY
The image of Mary seated on the ground (humus) accentuates the humility of the
mother of Jesus, obedient ancilla Domini (Lk 1:38). The childs gesture, both arms
raised to his mothers breast, alludes, in turn, to another theme: the suckling of her
child, a very ancient aspect of Marian iconography. In the medieval interpretation,
at a time when the Virgin was often considered the symbol of the Church, the motif
also alluded to the spiritual nourishment offered by the Church to the faithful.[1] As
is common in paintings of the period, the stars painted on Marys shoulders allude
to the popular etymology of her name.[2] The compositionas it is developed
herepresumably was based on a famous model that perhaps had originated in
the shop of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348).[3] It enjoyed
considerable success in Florentine painting of the second half of the fourteenth
century and even later: numerous versions of the composition are known, many of
which apparently derive directly from this image in the Gallery.[4] This painting,
therefore, must have been prominently displayed in a church of the city, and
familiar to devotees.
Osvald Sirn (1917) published the panel as an autograph work of Andrea Orcagna,
with a dating around 1350.[5] The proposal was widely accepted in the art historical
Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels 229

literature, though Richard Offner initially stated (see Lehman 1928), that it was the
work of an assistant to the artist.[6] Bernard Berenson also at first proposed an
attribution to Orcagna (Lehman 1928), but later (1931, 1932, 1936) suggested that
the master executed the painting in collaboration with the youthful Jacopo di
Cione, Orcagnas brother.[7] The attribution to Jacopo himself was suggested by
Hans Dietrich Gronau (1932, 1933); Frederick Antal (1948); Offner (in Shorr 1954 and
Offner 1962), though the same scholar in 1965 and 1967 detected the collaboration
of assistants in the work; Mirella Levi dAncona (1957); Klara Steinweg (19571959
and Offner and Steinweg 1969); Mikls Boskovits (1962, 1967, 1975); Alessandro
Parronchi (1964); Luisa Marcucci (1965); Barbara Klesse (1967 with admission of
workshop assistance); Carl Huter (1970); Marvin Eisenberg (1989); Barbara Deimling
(1991, 2000, 2001, 2009); Paul Joannides (1993); Erling Skaug (1994); Mojmir S.
Frinta (1998); Daniela Parenti (2001); Costanza Baldini (2003); Angelo Tartuferi
(2003, 2004); Carl B. Strehlke (2004); and in Galleria dellAccademia
2010.[8] However, the painting entered the Kress Collection (NGA 1945) as a joint
work by Orcagna and Jacopo, probably at Berensons suggestion,[9] and this
proposal met with wide support: it was accepted by Millard Meiss (1951); Berenson
(1963); NGA (1965, 1968, 1985); Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, but in 1979 she attributed
the painting to Jacopo alone, or to Jacopo and his workshop); Deborah Strom
(1980); Perri Lee Roberts (1993); Marilena Tamassia (1995); and Gaudenz Freuler
(1994, 1997).[10] More recently, the proposal by Pietro Toesca (1951) and Michel
Laclotte (1956), who both considered the painting a product of the shop of Andrea
Orcagna, has met with some favor, though modified by some to suggest it is
substantially an autograph work by Orcagna (Laclotte and Mognetti 1976; Padoa
Rizzo 1981; Kreytenberg 1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000; Franci 2002; Laclotte
and Moench 2005; Freuler 2006).[11]
As for the dating of our panel, its attribution, even partial, to Orcagna implies that it
was completed by or not much later than 1368, the year of the artists death. Sirn
(1917) dated the painting to c. 1350, and Raimond van Marle (1924) substantially
accepted the proposal. Gronau (1932), though he too supported an attribution to
Jacopo, dated the painting c. 13601370. Presumably Berenson (1936) had a similar
dating in mind when classifying the panel as a youthful work by Jacopo. So did
Meiss (1951), who defined the painting as probably designed by Orcagna and
partly executed by Jacopo di Cione.[12] Levi dAncona (1957) suggested a date of
13601365 for the painting; the National Gallery of Art (1965) catalog, c. 1360.
Steinweg (19571959), in turn, dated the panel to after the death of Orcagna in
1368, and Shapley (1966) to 1370.[13] Some scholars who have argued in favor of

Jacopos authorship have suggested a dating as late as 13701380. Offner and

Steinweg (1965) dated the panel c. 1380, followed by Klesse (1967) and Carl Huter
(1970). Huter detected in the painting, unconvincingly, a reflection of the vision of
the Nativity of Our Lord attributed to Saint Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden during her
journey to the Holy Land. Reconsidering her earlier opinion, Steinweg (Offner and
Steinweg 1965) called the panel Jacopo di Ciones latest work. She was followed
by Shapley (1979), according to whom it was painted perhaps as late as the
1380s, while Boskovits (1975) proposed a date of c. 13701375.[14] The question is
complicated by the problems relating to the reconstruction of the youthful activity
of Jacopo di Cione,[15] and also by the poor condition of the former Stoclet
Madonna, which, with its date of 1362, represents the only secure chronological
point of reference for the artists initial phase.[16]
The hypothesis that the panel is an autograph work by Orcagna clearly would need
to be verified by comparing it with authenticated works of this artist, or works
generally recognized as by his hand, in particular the polyptych in the Strozzi
Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, signed and dated 1357; the fresco of the
Crucifixion in Santa Marta a Montughi (Florence);[17] the triptych in the
Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam, dated 1350;[18] and the polyptych in the Galleria
dellAccademia,[19] Florence, probably dating to 1353. These paintings illustrate the
main stages in Orcagnas career in the years preceding the altarpiece of 1357. His
last stylistic phase, in turn, is attested by the frescoes in the former refectory of
Santo Spirito in Florence, now Fondazione Salvatore Romano,[20] and the
Pentecost triptych in the Galleria dellAccademia.[21] The presence of the master in
the Fondazione Romano frescoes and the Accademia triptych is often judged
partial, but even if the involvement of assistants can freely be admitted, especially
in the fresco of large dimensions, Andreas direct intervention is undoubtedly
revealed in various parts of the cycle.[22]
The stylistic features that distinguish the art of Orcagna in the last two decades of
his life emerge from a comparative assessment of the above-cited paintings. They
document his gradual transition from ample, softly modeled and majestic forms,
defined by sharp contours, chiaroscuro effects of great delicacy, and a predilection
for the abstract purity of large sweeping expanses of color, to a quite different
manner. His late works are characterized indeed by a more marked, even at times
brutal, accentuation of the three-dimensionality of bodies. Apparently, after the
experience of realizing the sculptures for the tabernacle of Orsanmichele
(13521360), Orcagna was intent on reproducing in his paintings a two-dimensional

simulation of the effect of reliefs that stand out clearly, with smooth and lustrous
surfaces, from a monochromatic, enamel-like ground. His narrative scenes are
characterized by an extreme reduction to essentials in composition and by the
predominant role of the human figure, whose plasticity is accentuated by being
delineated, as if contre-jour, against the gold ground.
The artist of the Madonna in the Gallery, however, does not seem to have aimed at
results of this kind. The delicate passages of chiaroscuro confer softness on the
flesh parts, while the gradual darkening of the varicolored marble floor on which
Mary is sitting subtly accentuates its extension into depth.[23] In particular the
foreshortened prayer book in the foreground and the undulating lower hem of the
Virgins mantle are painted with a deliberate illusionistic effect: the latter in
particular projects beyond the front edge of the marble floor that defines the frame
of the image, and thus seems to extend into the real space of the spectator. Such
illusionistic effects are, as far as his generally recognized works show, alien to
Orcagnas repertoire. In the Gallery panel, moreover, there is no trace of the
metallic hardness and sheen of forms. Nor does the drapery show any of the
angular folds with deep, sharp-edged undercutting that are usually found in
Andreas paintings, especially in those dating to the seventh decade, such as the
abovementioned triptych of the Pentecost or the triptych of Saint Matthew in the
Uffizi, Florence, a work begun by the artist but completed by a workshop assistant
after Orcagnas death in 1368.[24] Only some secondary passages, such as the
fluttering angels in the central panel of the Pentecost altarpiece (of which Jacopos
partial execution has been proposed),[25] recall the more fluid drawing and more
relaxed emotional climate of the Gallery panel.
It is in fact in the oeuvre of Jacopo di Cione that our panel finds its closest affinities,
in particular with the polyptych painted between 1370 and 1371 for the Florentine
church of San Pier Maggiore and with the Florentine Pala della Zecca (now in the
Galleria dellAccademia) for which Jacopo received final payment in
1373.[26] Close relatives of the face of Mary in the Gallery panel seem to me that of
the crowned Virgin in the Pala della Zecca [fig. 1] and that of the Madonna of
Humility, also now in the Galleria dellAccademia.[27] The Christ child, in turn, is
closely akin to counterparts both in the latter panel and in the versions of the
Madonna and Child in the church of Santi Apostoli in Florence and in the Museum
of Fine Arts, Budapest.[28] The tiered angels in the upper part of our painting [fig.
2] are almost identical to those in the two gabled panels from the San Pier
Maggiore altarpiece [fig. 3], now in the National Gallery in London. The analogies

can also be extended to the blessing God the Father [fig. 4], who recalls the Christ
in the Pala della Zecca [fig. 5] and some of the saints, too, in the polyptych of San
Pier Maggiore [fig. 6].[29] In most of these images the modeling is now
impoverished as a result of repeated, over-energetic cleaning, but the fluency of
design, spaciousness of composition, and the artists ever greater attention to
three-dimensional effects confirm the attribution of the painting to Jacopo. Typical
of Jacopo di Cione, in addition, are such details as Marys tapering fingers and the
mood of subtle languor that characterizes her face. The pursuit of gracefulness of
pose and the delicate chiaroscuro in the modeling strongly suggest that the Gallery
panel belongs to a phase preceding the artists output in the 1380s [30] and was
probably produced in the years c. 1370/1375, probably closer to the second of
these dates.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Detail of Mary, Jacopo di Cione, Coronation of the

Virgin (Pala della Zecca), 1373, tempera on panel, Galleria fig. 2 Detail of angels, Jacopo di Cione, Madonna and
dell'Academia, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels, c.

fig. 4 Detail of God the Father, Jacopo di Cione, Madonna

and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels, c.
fig. 3 Detail of angels in adoration, Jacopo di Cione, San

Pier Maggiore altarpiece, 13701371, tempera on panel,
National Gallery, London. National Gallery, London/Art
Resource, NY

fig. 6 Detail of adoring saints, Jacopo di Cione, San Pier

Maggiore altarpiece, 13701371, tempera on panel,
National Gallery, London. National Gallery, London/Art
Resource, NY
fig. 5 Detail of Jesus, Jacopo di Cione, Coronation of the
Virgin (Pala della Zecca), 1373, tempera on panel, Galleria
dell'Academia, Florence. Scala/Art Resource, NY
NOTES
[1] On the question, see E. Morsbach, Lactans (Maria Lactans), in

Marienlexikon, eds. Remigius Bumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St.
Ottilien, 1991), 3:701703. That the suckling of the child has a wider
significance than the maternity of Mary is revealed not only by the
circumstance that the child mainly directs his gaze towards the spectator
but also by the inscription MATER OMNIUM (mother of all) on a Madonna of
Humility attributed to Roberto dOderisio in the church of San Domenico
Maggiore in Naples. Cf. Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Arte di corte nella Napoli
angioina (Florence, 1986), 377 and fig. 63.
[2] See P. De Ambrogio, Maria, Santissima, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols.

(Vatican City, 1952), 8:7685; Gnter Bernt, Stella maris, in Marienlexikon,
eds. Remigius Bumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1994), 6:291.

[3] A Madonna of Humility painted on the back of Bernardo Daddis Gambier

Parry polyptych dated 1348, and now in the Courtauld Institute Art Gallery in
London, is the earliest known version of the iconographic theme in
Florentine painting. See Frederick Antal, Florentine Painting and Its Social
Background: The Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo de Medicis Advent to
Power, XIV and XV Centuries (London, 1948), 181. The composition of the
London painting is close to that of the panel being discussed here; it
suggests that the model, now lost, for Jacopos panel can be traced to
Daddis shop. The fundamental study of the iconography of the Madonna of
Humility remains that of Millard Meiss, The Madonna of Humility, The Art
Bulletin 18 (1936): 435464; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena
after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 132156; see also Gregor Martin
Lechner, Umilt, in Marienlexikon, eds. Remigius Bumer and Leo
Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1994), 6:512515. Contrary to what Meiss
suggested (1936) and what virtually all the subsequent literature endorsed,
the iconography of the Madonna of Humility originated not c. 1340 but
sometime earlier, and probably at Avignon, where it was familiar even
before the arrival of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) in
that city in 1335. See Joseph Polzer, Concerning the Origin of the Virgin of
Humility Theme, Racar 27 (2000): 131; and Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe
italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemlde, trans.
Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 83.
(Princeton, 1951), 138 n. 23, lists the following copies of the Gallery panel:
Giovanni del Biondo, New York, former Tolentino sale; Don Silvestro dei
Gherarducci (now attr. to), Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, no. 3161;
Lorenzo di Bicci (now attr. to), Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, no. 3148,
now Santa Maria Assunta, Loro Ciuffena; Niccol di Pietro Gerini, Muse du
Petit Palais, Avignon, no. M.I. 365; Lorenzo di Niccol, chiesa parrocchiale,
Cevoli, Pisa; Master of the Orcagnesque Misericordia, formerly Galerie
Pardo, Paris; Tommaso del Mazza (now attr. to), Johnson
Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, no. 1945.25.119. For more on these
copies see, respectively, Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and
vol. 5, pt. 2, Giovanni del Biondo (New York, 1969), 190, pl. xlv; Gaudenz
Freuler, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 4, vol. 7,
pt. 2, Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro de Gherarducci, ed.
Mikls Boskovits, new ed. (Florence, 1997), 412417, pl. xlii; Luisa Marcucci,
Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 2, I dipinti toscani del secolo XIV (Rome,
1965), 128129, fig. 89; Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench, Peinture
italienne: Muse du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), 103; Adelheid
Medicus Gealt, Lorenzo di Niccol (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1979), 44
and fig. 23; Marilena Tamassia, Collezioni darte tra Ottocento e Novecento:
Jacquier fotografi a Firenze, 18701935 (Naples, 1995), 8586; Carl

Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 12501450, in the John G. Johnson

Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004),
414416. Other paintings to be added to this list are those of Don Silvestro
dei Gherarducci in the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, no. 83.68.4;
Niccol Gerini, Acton collection, Florence; as well as Masolinos famous
panel in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. For these paintings, see Freuler
1997, 422423; Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del
Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), fig. 162; Perri Lee Roberts,
Masolino da Panicale (Oxford, 1993), fig. 5.
[5] Osvald Sirn, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans. Frederic Schenck, 2
vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:220, 224, 225, 275; 2: pl. 187.
[6] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 5.
[7] See note 6 above. Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento
fiorentino, 2, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 1057; Bernard Berenson, Italian
Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works
with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 275; Bernard Berenson, Pitture
italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere
con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 236. In fact,
Berenson annotated the back of the photograph in his archive (now in the
Berenson Library at I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian
Renaissance Studies, Florence): Madonna by Andrea Orcagna; Christ and
angels probably by Jacopo di Cione. This annotation is also on a
photograph in the Kress Foundation records (copy in NGA curatorial files).
[8] Hans Dietrich Gronau, Jacopo di Cione, in Allgemeines Lexikon der

bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme,
Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1932), 26:39; Hans
Dietrich Gronau, Lorenzo di Bicci: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch,
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 4 (1933): 114;
Frederick Antal, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background: The
Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo de Medicis Advent to Power, XIV and
XV Centuries (London, 1948), 145, 194, 225 nn. 126127, pl. 44a; Dorothy C.
Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century
(New York, 1954), 7475; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 1, Andrea di Cione
(New York, 1962), 73; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and
vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), iv, 3, 5, 6, 103, 104 n. 1, 107111,
123, 125 n. 5, 139, pls. XX3; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical
sec. 4, vol. 4, Giovanni del Biondo (New York, 1967), ix n. 77; Mirella Levi
DAncona, Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci e il Maestro delle Canzoni: Due
miniatori trecenteschi della scuola di S. Maria degli Angeli a Firenze, Rivista
darte 32 (1957): 11, 13; Klara Steinweg, Die Kreuzigung Petri des Jacopo di

Cione in der Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rendiconti: Pontificia Accademia

romana di archeologia 3031 (19571959): 244 n. 19; Richard Offner and
Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The
Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 5, pt. 2, Giovanni del Biondo (New York,
1969), v, 59 n. 2; Mikls Boskovits, Une Madonne de latelier de Niccol di
Pietro Gerini, Bulletin du Muse Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 21 (1962): 27;
Mikls Boskovits, Der Meister der Santa Verdiana: Beitrge zur Geschichte
der florentinischen Malerei um die Wende des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts,
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 13 (1967): 50; Mikls
Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400
(Florence, 1975), 330; Alessandro Parronchi, Studi sulla dolce prospettiva
(Milan, 1964), 121; Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 2, I dipinti
toscani del secolo XIV (Rome, 1965), 102, 129, 136, 137; Brigitte Klesse,
Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967),
99, 149, 160, 255, 397; Carl Huter, Gentile da Fabriano and the Madonna of
Humility, Arte veneta 24 (1970): 2930, 34 n. 12, fig. 38; Marvin Eisenberg,
Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 7, 53 n. 27, fig. 266; Barbara Deimling, Il
Maestro di Santa Verdiana: Un polittico disperso e il problema
dellidentificazione, Arte cristiana 79 (1991): 406; Barbara Deimling and
Simona Pasquinucci, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting,
sec. 4, vol. 8, Tradition and Innovation in Florentine Trecento Painting:
Giovanni BonsiTommaso del Mazza, ed. Mikls Boskovits, new ed.
(Florence, 2000), 187 n. 1; Barbara Deimling, The Contamination of the
Senses and the Purification of the Air in Mid-Fourteenth-Century Florence,
in Opere e giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europea dedicati a Max Seidel,
ed. Klaus Bergdolt and Giorgio Bonsanti (Venice, 2001), 171 fig. 6; Barbara
Deimling, Tommaso del Mazza: The Portrait of a Painter in Late Trecento
Florence, in Discovering a Pre-Renaissance Master: Tommasso del Mazza,
ed. Anne Short (Greenville, SC, 2009), 3; Paul Joannides, Masaccio and
Masolino: A Complete Catalogue (London, 1993), 41, 48, 380, pl. 28; Erling
S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology,
and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting with Particular
Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:195; Mojmir
Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and
Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 514; Daniela Parenti, Studi recenti su
Orcagna e sulla pittura dopo la peste nera, Arte cristiana 89 (2001): 330;
Costanza Baldini, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano,
Cataloghi della Galleria dell Accademia di Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and
Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 124; Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal
Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia di
Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 136;
Angelo Tartuferi, Jacopo di Cione, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
82 vols. (Rome, 2004), 62:58; Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings,
12501450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia

Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 415416; Mikls Boskovits and Daniela

Parenti, eds., Dipinti, vol. 2, Il tardo Trecento: Dalla tradizione orcagnesca
agli esordi del gotico internazionale, Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia
di Firenze (Florence, 2010), 154.
(Princeton, 1951), 31, 42, 138, fig. 140; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of
the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 2:106, 163;
National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and
Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 85; National
DC, 1985), 294; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 3132; Fern
Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC,
1979), 1:247249; Deborah Phyl Strom, A New Look at Jacopo della
Quercias Madonna of Humility, Antichit viva 19, no. 6 (1980): 19, fig. 6;
Perri Lee Roberts, Masolino da Panicale (Oxford, 1993), 25, 253, fig. 7;
Marilena Tamassia, Collezioni darte tra Ottocento e Novecento: Jacquier
fotografi a Firenze, 18701935 (Naples, 1995), 85; Gaudenz Freuler, in
Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 13001450, ed.
Laurence B. Kanter et al. (New York, 1994), 130, 168; Gaudenz Freuler, A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 4, vol. 7, pt. 2,
Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro de Gherarducci, ed. Mikls
Boskovits, new ed. (Florence 1997), 275, 293294, 296, 412 n. 1, 416, 420
n. 1, 422 n. 2, 277 fig. 1.
[11] Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 637 n. 157;
Michel Laclotte, De Giotto Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les muses de
France (Paris, 1956), 17; Michel Laclotte and Elisabeth Mognetti, Avignon,
Muse du Petit Palais: Peinture italienne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1976), no. 78; Anna
Padoa Rizzo, Per Andrea Orcagna pittore, Annali della Scuola normale
superiore di Pisa: Classe di lettere e filosofia 11 (1981): 852, 887, pl. lxiii2;
Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagnas Madonna of Humility in the National Gallery of
Art in Washington: Fragen nach Attribution und Ikonographie, Center/
National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 10
(1990): 5758; Gert Kreytenberg, Andrea di Cione, in Enciclopedia
dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1991), 1:607; Gert Kreytenberg, Larca di
San Ranieri di Tino di Camaino: Questioni di tipologia e di iconografia, in
Storia ed arte nella piazza del Duomo: Conferenze 19921993, ed. Opera
della Primaziale pisana (Pisa, 1995), 3637, fig. 17; Gert Kreytenberg,
Cione, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996),
7:335; Gert Kreytenberg, Cione, Andrea di, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon:
Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols.

(Munich, 1998), 19:259; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein

universeller Knstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 164166, 180, 250,
pl. 47; Beatrice Franci, Orcagna, Andrea, in La pittura in Europa: Il
dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 2:660661;
Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench, Peinture italienne: Muse du Petit
Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), 103; Gaudenz Freuler, in Lorenzo Monaco:
Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela
Parenti (Florence, 2006), 101, fig. 1.
[12] Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death (Princeton, 1951), 42.
vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:220, 224, 225, 275; Raimond van Marle, The
Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School
of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 466468; Hans Dietrich Gronau,
Jacopo di Cione, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der
Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans
Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1932), 26:39; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane
del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un
indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 236; Millard Meiss,
Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 42;
Mirella Levi DAncona, Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci e il Maestro delle
Canzoni: Due miniatori trecenteschi della scuola di S. Maria degli Angeli a
Firenze, Rivista darte 32 (1957): 11, 13; National Gallery of Art, Summary
Klara Steinweg, Die Kreuzigung Petri des Jacopo di Cione in der
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rendiconti: Pontificia Accademia romana di
archeologia 3031 (19571959): 244 n. 19; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings
from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century
(London, 1966), 3132.
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione
(New York, 1965), 108; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen
Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 255; Carl Huter, Gentile da
Fabriano and the Madonna of Humility, Arte veneta 24 (1970): 29; Richard
Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 5, pt. 2, Giovanni del Biondo
(New York, 1969), 59 n. 2; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:247249; Mikls Boskovits,
Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975),
330.
[15] For the problems in reconstructing the artists youthful phase, see Angelo
Tartuferi, Jacopo di Cione, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols.
(Rome, 2004), 62:5758. Bernard Berenson assigned to Jacopos early

activity several paintings now generally attributed to the Master of San

Lucchese, whereas he attributed to Niccol di Tommaso various paintings
that the present writer and much of the more recent literature has reinstated
in the catalog of Jacopo di Cione. Cf. Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza
casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 2, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 10391058; Mikls
(Florence, 1975), 321330. Richard Offner (1933) attributed to Jacopo the
former Stoclet Madonna now in a private collection in New York, but the
volume of the Corpus dedicated to Jacopo excluded it, apparently on the
initiative of Klara Steinweg, who believed the most appropriate classification
for the painting to be DaddesqueOrcagnesque. Cf. Richard Offner, The
Mostra del Tesoro di Firenze Sacra, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 84 n. 59; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A
Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), iii n. 2. These
doubts about the attribution to Jacopo of the important ex-Stoclet painting,
which apart from the date 1362 also bears the coat of arms of the Parte
Guelfa, were later transformed by Gert Kreytenberg into an attribution to
Andrea Orcagna. See Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein
universeller Knstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 162163.
[16] Comparing the photograph of the painting taken on the occasion of its sale
(Sothebys, London, June 30, 1965, lot 20) with that illustrated by Gert
Kreytenberg (2000), it is apparent that the Stoclet Madonna had in the
meantime been subjected to the embellishment of a restoration that had
altered its original character. Cf. Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla
vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), pl. 48; and Gert
Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Knstler der Gotik
in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), pl. 46. Nevertheless, its stylistic character is
sufficiently apparent to be able confidently to affirm for it an attribution to
Jacopo di Cione.
[17] Mikls Boskovits, Orcagna in 1357and in Other Times, The Burlington

Magazine 113 (1971): 239251; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione:
Ein universeller Knstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 3234.
[18] Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 1, Dedalo 11

(19301931): 986, attributed the Rijksmuseum triptych to Orcagna; see also
Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Knstler der
Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 6671.
[19] Mario Salmi, Review of Studies in Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth

Century by Richard Offner, Rivista darte 11 (1929): 133145; Gert
Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Knstler der Gotik
in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 7880.

vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:232239; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical

Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 1, Andrea
di Cione (New York, 1962), 6569.
vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:226227; Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal
Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 4347.
[22] This is the opinion expressed by Mikls Boskovits, Orcagna in 1357And in

Other Times, The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971): 251; Anna Padoa Rizzo,
Per Andrea Orcagna pittore, Annali della Scuola normale superiore di
Pisa: Classe di lettere e filosofia 11 (1981): 864, 874, 876, 889; Stefania Ricci,
Orcagna, Andrea/Andrea di Cione, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il
Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:645; Angelo
Tartuferi, Larte dellet gotica, in La chiesa e il convento di Santo Spirito a
Firenze, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Elena Capretti (Florence, 1996), 67.
[23] The spatial device of the gradual darkening of the floor could be called
pseudo-perspective; it is of the kind prescribed in Cennino Cennini, Il libro
dellarte, ed. Fabio Frezzato (Vicenza, 2003), chap. LXXXV, 127, to suggest
distance: E quando i da fare le montagnie che paiano pi a lunghi, pi fa
scuri i tuoi colori; et quando le fai dimostrare pi appresso, fa i colori pi
chiari (And when you need to make mountains that appear farther away,
make your colors darker; and when you need to show them closer, make
your colors lighter). As the editor of the treatise pointed out (Cennini 2003,
222223 n. 100), some modern commentators consider this rule the result
of a mistaken description, but in fact it was a practice that Trecento painters
frequently followed.
[24] As is well known, the commission of the Uffizi triptych was transferred from
Andrea to Jacopo di Cione in 1368, essendo malato detto Andrea (the said
Andrea being ill). Cf. Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and
vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), 1726; Gert Kreytenberg,
Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Knstler der Gotik in Florenz
(Mainz, 2000), 166169. I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere that the
painting was completed not by Jacopo but by one of his assistants, the
Master Ashmolean Predella; in any case, there can be no doubt that
Orcagna himself was responsible for the design of the whole work and also
for the painting of the central figure. See Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina
alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 51.
[25] Mikls Boskovits, Orcagna in 1357And in Other Times, The Burlington

Magazine 113 (1971): 251 n. 38; Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia
del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 324.


(New York, 1965), 2, 8.
(New York, 1965), pls. VI and VIII.
(New York, 1965), pls. IXIX and XIIXX. The second of the two paintings,
already given to Jacopo by Bernard Berenson, Offner, and other scholars,
was described as circle of Jacopo di Cione in the volume of the Corpus
devoted to this master, again on Steinwegs initiative.
[29] I refer in particular to the images of Saint James Major (with the pilgrims
staff) and Saint Julian (with the sword) in the right lateral of the polyptych.
See Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
(New York, 1965), pl. III10.
[30] Apart from the triptych formerly in the Fischel collection in Vienna and dated
1379, and the main figures of the polyptych in the church of Santi Apostoli in
Florence, which bears the date 1383, another painting dated to the same
year may also be mentioned here, namely the Madonna in the church of
SantAgata di Mugello in Scarperia. See Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina
alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), pl. 53 and fig. 119;
and Lia Brunori, Il patrimonio artistico, in Scarperia: Storia, arte,
artigianato (Florence, 1990), 4750.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is constructed with several (probably five) planks of wood with vertical
grain. The painted surface is surrounded by unpainted edges, originally covered by
the now lost engaged frame. The panel has been thinned down to its present
thickness of 0.6 cm, backed by an additional panel, and cradled by Stephen
Pichetto in 1944. It has suffered from worm damage in the past. The painting was
executed on a white gesso ground that was covered by a red bole preparation in
the parts to be gilded. The outlines of the figures were demarcated with incised
lines. The artist used warm, brown green underpaint in the flesh tones, and the
paint was built up with smooth striations. The decorative borders of the Madonnas
clothing were created by mordant gilding.

Pichetto removed a discolored varnish during his treatment in 1944. Mario

Modestini removed the varnish again and inpainted the panel in 1962.[1] Old
photographs,[2] as well as the photo taken during restoration in 1962, show
damage to the paint surface deriving from cracking along the joins between the
panels. A vertical join runs through the right wrist of God the Father, the Virgins
forehead and left hand, and the childs right wrist. There are paint losses along this
join and along checks passing through the faces and necks of the angels on the
right, as well as in the extreme right edge of the Madonnas cloak and in the gold
ground. A horizontal scratch through the dove of the Holy Spirit and the faces of
the lower pair of angels on the left has also caused minor damage. The losses
were inpainted in 1962, when a now somewhat discolored varnish was applied to
the paint layer. Apart from the abovementioned damage, the painting is in
reasonably good condition.
TECHNICAL NOTES
DC, 1979), 1:249, provided summary information on these restorations. See
also the note added to the Condition and Restoration Record in NGA
curatorial files, probably after the 1962 treatment.
[2] Richard Offner and Steinweg seem to have used an earlier photograph for
their reproduction in the Corpus volume of 1965 than the photograph
reproduced by Robert Lehman (1928). The painting appears to have been
treated during the time period between the two photos. Lehmans
photograph presumably was taken when the painting was still in the art
market. The condition of the panel remains essentially the same in the
photograph used by Lehman and the photographs taken prior to Pichettos
treatment in 1944. Cf. Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and
vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), pls. XX3; Robert Lehman, The
Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 5.
PROVENANCE
Art market, Florence; Philip Lehman [1861-1947], New York, by 1917;[1] sold
September 1943 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1952 to
NGA. [1] Osvald Sirn (1917) cites the painting as formerly belonging to a Florentine

art dealer; the terminus post quem for Lehman's purchase might be 1911, the year in
which he began his activity as a collector. Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
Collection, New York: Paintings, Paris, 1928: Introduction, n.p. [2] Lehman 1928, no.
5. The bill of sale between Robert Lehman and the Kress Foundation for three
paintings, including Madonna and Child with Angels, is dated 15 September 1943
(copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale indicate
that Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (1892-1963) was the owner of the
paintings, but it is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, whether Robert made the sale for his father or on his
own behalf. See Laurence Kanters e-mail of 6 May 2011, about ownership of the
Lehman collection, in NGA curatorial files.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
no. 5, repro.

Washington, D.C., 1946.
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26(1932):39.
1917 Sirn, Osvald. Giotto and Some of His Followers. 2 vols. Translated by
Frederic Schenck. Cambridge, 1917: 1:220, 224, 225, 275; 2:pl. 187.
1919 Offner, Richard. "Italian Pictures at the New York Historical Society and
Elsewhere." Art in America 7 (1919): 14.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):466-468; 5(1925):479, fig. 284.
1928 Lehman, Robert. The Philip Lehman Collection, New York: Paintings.
Paris, 1928: no. V, repro.
1930 Berenson, Bernard. "Quadri senza casa. Il Trecento fiorentino, 2."
Dedalo 11 (1930-1931): 1057.
1930 Mayer, August L. "Die Sammlung Philip Lehman." Pantheon 5 (1930): 113.
1930 Salmi, Mario. "Review of Larte nelle Marche dalle origini cristiane alla

fine del Gotico by Luigi Serra." Rivista darte 12 (1930): 309.

1931 Venturi, Lionello. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931: no. 43, repro..
275.
1933 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. "Lorenzo di Bicci: ein Rekonstruktionsversuch."
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 4 (1933): 114.
1:no. 53, repro.
fig. 10.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 15, repro.
1946 Friedmann, Herbert. The Symbolic Goldfinch. Its History and
Significance in European Devotional Art. Washington, DC, 1946: 145.
1948 Antal, Frederick. Florentine Painting and its Social Background: The
Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo de Medicis Advent to Power, XIV
and XV Centuries. London, 1948: 145, 194, 225 nn. 126-127, pl. 44a.
Princeton, 1951: 31, 42, 138, fig. 140.
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the XIV Century. New York, 1954: 74, 75, repro. 80.
1956 Laclotte, Michel. De Giotto Bellini: les primitifs italiens dans les muses
de France. Exh. cat. Muse de lOrangerie, Paris, 1956: 17.
1957 Levi D'Ancona, Mirella. "Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci e il Maestro delle
Canzoni. Due miniatori trecenteschi della scuola di S. Maria degli Angeli
a Firenze." Rivista darte 32 (1957): 11, 13.
1957 Steinweg, Klara. "Die Kreuzigung Petri des Jacopo di Cione in der
Pinacoteca Vaticana." Rendiconti. Pontificia Accademia romana di
archeologia 30-31 (1957-1959): 244 n. 19.
1960 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Jacopo di Cione." In Dizionario biografico degli
62(2004):58.
1962 Boskovits, Mikls. "Une Madonne de latelier de Niccol di Pietro
Gerini." Bulletin du Muse Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 21 (1962): 27.

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1962: 73.
School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 2:106, 163.
1964 Parronchi, Alessandro. Studi sulla dolce prospettiva. Milan, 1964: 121.
1965 Marcucci, Luisa. Gallerie nazionali di Firenze. Vol. 2, I dipinti toscani del
secolo XIV. Rome, 1965: 102, 129, 136, 137.
1965 Offner, Richard, and Klara Steinweg. A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. IV, Vol. III: Jacopo di
Cione. New York, 1965: iv, 3, 5, 6, 103, 104 n. 1, 107111, 123, 125 n. 5, 139,
pls. X X3.
1967 Boskovits, Mikls. "Der Meister der Santa Verdiana: Beitrge zur
Geschichte der florentinischen Malerei um die Wende des 14. und 15.
Jahrhunderts." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
13 (1967): 50.
Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 99, 149, 160 (repro.), 255, 397.
Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. IV, Vol. IV: Giovanni
del Biondo, Part I. New York, 1967: ix n. 77.
Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. IV, Vol. V: Giovanni
del Biondo, Part II. New York, 1969: v, 59 n. 2.
1970 Huter, Carl. "Gentile da Fabriano and the Madonna of Humility." Arte
veneta 24 (1970): 29-30, 34 n. 12, fig. 38.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 102, 152, 646.
Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 382.
1400. Florence, 1975: 54, 96, 211 n. 52, 330.
1976 Laclotte, Michel, and Elisabeth Mognetti. Avignon, Muse du Petit Palais:
peinture italienne. 2nd ed. Paris, 1976: no. 78.
1979 Gealt, Adelheid Medicus. "Lorenzo di Niccol." Ph.D. dissertation,
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of Art. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:248-249; 2:pl.
169, as by Jacopo di Cione.
1980 Gli Uffizi: catalogo generale. 2nd ed. Florence, 1980: 288.
1980 Strom, Deborah Phyl. "A New Look at Jacopo della Quercias Madonna
of Humility." Antichit viva 19, no. 6 (1980): 19, fig. 6.
1981 Padoa Rizzo, Anna. "Per Andrea Orcagna pittore." Annali della Scuola
normale superiore di Pisa. 11 (1981): 852, 887, pl. lxiii-2.
1989 Eisenberg, Marvin. Lorenzo Monaco. Princeton, 1989: 7, 53 n. 27, fig.
266.
1990 Kreytenberg, Gert. "Orcagnas Madonna of Humility in the National
Gallery of Art in Washington: Fragen nach Attribution und Ikonographie."
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1991 Deimling, Barbara. "Il Maestro di Santa Verdiana. Un polittico disperso e
il problema dellidentificazione." Arte cristiana 79 (1991): 406.
1991 Kreytenberg, Gert. "Andrea di Cione." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 1(1991):607.
1992 Kreytenberg, Gert. "Cione, Andrea di." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon:
Meiner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 19(1998):259.
1993 Joannides, Paul. Masaccio and Masolino: A Complete Catalogue.
London, 1993: 41, 48, 380, pl. 28.
1993 Roberts, Perri Lee. Masolino da Panicale. Oxford, 1993: 25, 253, fig. 7.
1994 Kanter, Laurence B., Barbara Drake Boehm, Carl Brandon Strehlke,
Gaudenz Freuler, and Christa C. Mayer-Thurman. Painting and
Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450. Exh. cat. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994: 130, 168.
1:195; 2:punch chart 6.14.
1995 Kreytenberg, Gert. "Larca di San Ranieri di Tino di Camaino. Questioni
di tipologia e di iconografia." In Storia ed arte nella Piazza del Duomo:
Conferenze 1992-1993. Edited by Opera della Primaziale pisana. Pisa,
1995: 36-37, fig. 17.
1995 Tamassia, Marilena. Collezioni darte tra Ottocento e Novecento:
Jacquier Fotografi a Firenze, 1870-1935. Naples, 1995: 85.
1996 Kreytenberg, Gert. "Cione." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane
Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 7:335.
1997 Freuler, Gaudenz. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting.

Sec. IV, Vol. VII, pt. 2: Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro
de Gherarducci. Edited by Mikls Boskovits. Florence, 1997: 275, 277
fig. 1, 293294, 296, 412 n. 1, 416, 420 n. 1, 422 n. 2.
2000 Deimling, Barbara, and Simona Pasquinucci. A Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting. Sec. IV, Vol. VIII: Tradition and Innovation
in Florentine Trecento Painting: Giovanni Bonsi Tommaso del Mazza.
Edited by Mikls Boskovits. Florence, 2000: 187 n. 1.
2000 Kreytenberg, Gert. Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: ein universeller Knstler
der Gotik in Florenz. Mainz, 2000: 164-166, 180, 250, pl. 47.
2001 Deimling, Barbara. "The Contamination of the Senses and the
Purification of the Air in Mid-Fourteenth-Century Florence." In Opere e
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2001 Parenti, Daniela. "Studi recenti su Orcagna e sulla pittura dopo la peste
nera." Arte cristiana 89 (2001): 330.
2002 Franci, Beatrice. "Orcagna, Andrea." In La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario
dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan, 2002: 2:660-661.
2003 Boskovits, Mikls, and Angelo Tartuferi, eds. Dipinti. Vol. 1, Dal
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2010 Boskovits, Mikls, and Daniela Parenti, eds. Cataloghi della Galleria
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2010: 154, 174.

Duccio di Buoninsegna
Also known as
Duccio
Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319
BIOGRAPHY
The greatest exponent of Sienese painting between the last quarter of the
thirteenth and the first two decades of the fourteenth century, Duccio is
documented for the first time in the role of painter in 1278, when he was paid by
the Comune of Siena for the decoration of twelve coffers (casse) for the
conservation of documents. Although this cannot have been a work of any
particular artistic distinction, we may assume that the civic authorities would have
chosen an artist who was already prominent in the city and in charge of a thriving
workshop. Duccio is further recorded in Siena in 1279 and 1281, and then almost
annually from 1285 onward.[1]
Some inferences can be drawn about his youthful career on the basis of his first
documented panel painting, the altarpiece ad honorem beate et gloriose Virginis
Marie, commissioned on April 14, 1285, by a Florentine confraternity, the
Compagnia dei Laudesi, for Santa Maria Novella in Florencethe so-called
Madonna Rucellai, now in the Uffizi, Florence. The strongly Cimabuesque
character of this work (though, in contrast to the contemporary production of
Cimabue, it is distinguished by a more intimate and lyrical interpretation of the
subject and by more studied calligraphic elegance of line and rich decorative
patterning that recall the refinement of French and English Gothic painting of the
period) suggests the existence of close relations between the leading Florentine
master and the young Sienese painter in the first half of the 1280s. This also seems
confirmed by other works probably painted in these years, such as the frescoes in
the Chapel of Saint Gregory in Santa Maria Novella, the Madonna Gualino (Galleria
Sabauda, Turin), and the Madonna di Crevole (Museo dellOpera del Duomo,
Siena), as well as by the circumstance that some paintings of Cimabue datable to
the 1280s were in the past erroneously thought to be works of Duccio or executed
with his collaboration (the Madonna in the Santa Verdiana Museum,
Castelfiorentino, the Maest in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna, and
the Flagellation in the Frick Collection in New York).[2] There seem to be good
Duccio di Buoninsegna 251


grounds, therefore, for supposing that the two artists worked closely together in
the early 1280s, perhaps within the same atelier. But there can be no doubt that
Duccio was first trained in Siena in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century,
under the influence of such masters as Guido and Rinaldo da Siena. A testimony of
the style of this initial phase can perhaps be found in some of the mural paintings
in the crypt below the cathedral in Siena, rediscovered in recent years.[3]
Duccio presumably spent the years 12801285 in Rome. This is evidenced by a

single work, the painted cross formerly in the Castello Orsini at Bracciano (near
Rome) and now in the Salini collection near Asciano in the province of Siena.
Evidence of the artists encounter with classical and postclassical figurative culture
in Rome is also clearly visible in the great stained-glass rose window (Dormition,
Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin and Saints) in Siena Cathedral, based on
a design by Duccio and likely dating to the late 1280s. Thereafter the master
probably spent his career permanently in his hometown, where he began
producing precious small devotional paintings for high-ranking private patrons (the
Madonna in the Kunstmuseum in Bern, the former Stoclet collection Madonna now
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the small triptych in the Royal
Collections of England, Hampton Court). But he was also commissioned to paint
altarpieces for churches outside Siena (the Madonna formerly the center of a
polyptych in San Domenico in Perugia and now in the Galleria Nazionale
dellUmbria, Perugia). The hypothesis of Duccios identification with a documented
Duch de Siene, reported at Paris in 1296 (Stubblebine 1979), has now been
discarded.[4]
Both the Cimabuesque reminiscences and the pursuit of grandeur suggested by

his experience of Roman art disappeared from the works of Duccios full maturity.
In this phase he seemed more interested in cultivating elegance of pose, softness,
and the expression of feelings. Important stages of his development in the first
decade of the fourteenth century are the polyptychs nos. 28 and 47 in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena and, especially, the great Maest destined for the
high altar of Siena Cathedral, executed between c. 1308 and 1311. It was the largest
and most complex altarpiece ever produced in Italy until then. Painted on front and
rear sides, it comprised in all some eighty separate scenes.
Many uncertainties surround the output of the last years of Duccios life. Some art
historiansthough without sufficient groundsassign polyptych no. 47 in the
Pinacoteca of Siena to this period. A more likely late work of the artist is the
important though much damaged fresco The Submission of the Castle of


Giuncarico in the Sienese seat of government, the Palazzo Pubblico, which is

datable to c. 1314. Documents suggest that the two-sided altarpiece for the
Cathedral in Massa Marittima, modeled on the Maest in Siena Cathedral, was in
the course of execution in 1316. Undoubtedly painted with the extensive
participation of Duccios workshop assistants, the work is now fragmentary. Its
most accomplished passages reveal an extraordinary delicacy in the modeling and
a renewed pursuit of realistic effects, both in the composition and in the
representation of the human figure, worthy of the master himself.
[1] See I Documenti, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 573582.
[2] For the relations between Cimabue and Duccio in the 1280s cf. Luciano Bellosi,
Duccio, la Maest (Milan, 1998), 128137; and Mikls Boskovits, in Duecento:
Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei
(Venice, 2000), 271278. Hayden B. J. Maginnis, on the other hand, reversed the
influence and conjectured that Cimabue, under the influence of the Madonna
Rucellai, responded rapidly to the challenges of Duccio. See Hayden B. J.
Maginnis, Duccios Rucellai Madonna and the Origins of Florentine Painting,
Gazette des Beaux-Arts 123 (1994): 161.
[3] Cf. Alessandro Bagnoli, Alle origini della pittura senese: Prime osservazioni sul
ciclo dei dipinti murali, in Sotto il duomo di Siena: Scoperte archeologiche,
architettoniche e figurative, ed. Roberto Guerrini and Max Seidel (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 105145.
[4] James H. Stubblebine (1979) cited Parisian documents relating to a Duch de

Siene in 1296 and a Duch le Lombard in the following year. Neither one is
described as a painter. See James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His
School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:4, 6, 8, 198199.
BIBLIOGRAPHY


1907 Weigelt, Curt H. "Duccio di Buoninsegna." In

1907-1950: 10(1914):25-29.
1911 Weigelt, Curt H.

Duccio di Buoninsegna: Studien zur Geschichte der frhsienesischen
Tafelmalerei. Leipzig, 1911.
1913 Vasari, Giorgio, Arturo Jahn Rusconi (into. and notes).

Vita di Duccio di Buoninsegna. Le vite dei pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e
architettori 17. Florence, 1913.
1929 Toesca, Pietro. "Duccio di Buoninsegna." In

Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti. Edited by Istituto
Giovanni Treccani. 36 vols. Rome, 1929-1939: 13(1932):245-247.
1951 Brandi, Casare.

Duccio. Florence, 1951.
1960 Bologna, Ferdinando. "Duccio di Buoninsegna." In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 41(1992):742-749.
1972 Cattaneo, Giulio, and Edi Baccheschi.

Lopera completa di Duccio. 1st ed. Milan, 1972.
1976 Stoichita, Victor Ieronim.

Ucenicia lui Duccio di Buoninsegna. Bucharest, 1976.
1979 Stubblebine, James H.

Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School. 2 vols. Princeton, 1979.
1979 White, John.

Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop. New York, 1979.
1984 Deuchler, Florens.

Duccio. Milan, 1984.
1984 White, John.

Studies in Late Medieval Italian Art. London, 1984.


1989 "Duccio di Buoninsegna." In

Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo and
Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-1994: 2(1990):137-139.
1989 Ragionieri, Giovanna.

Duccio: catalogo completo dei dipinti. Florence, 1989.
1991 Bellosi, Luciano. "Duccio di Buoninsegna." In

Enciclopedia dellarte medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia
italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 5(1994):738-750.
1991 Jannella, Cecilia.

Duccio di Buoninsegna. Antella (Florence), 1991.
1992 Schmidt, Victor M. "Duccio di Buoninsegna." In

Vlker. Edited by Gnther Meissner. 83+ vols. Munich and Leipzig,
1983+: 30(2001):153-157.
1994 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. Duccios Rucellai Madonna and the Origins of

Florentine Painting.
Gazette des Beaux-Arts Ser. 6,123 (1994): 147-164.
1996 Gordon, Dillian. "Duccio di buoninsegna." In

The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and
London, 1996: 9:341-350.
1998 Bellosi, Luciano.

Duccio, la Maest. Milan, 1998.
1999 Carli, Enzo.

Duccio. Milan, 1999.
2000 Medica, Massimo, and Stefano Tumidei, eds.

Duecento: forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna. Exh. cat. Museo
Civico Archeologico, Bologna. Venice, 2000.
2000 Satkowski, Jane Immler.

Duccio di Buoninsegna: the Documents and Early Sources. Edited by
Hayden B. J. Maginnis. Athens, Georgia, 2000.


2003 Bagnoli, Alessandro. Alle origini della pittura senese. Prime

osservazioni sul ciclo dei dipinti murali. In
Sotto il Duomo di Siena: scoperte archeologiche, architettoniche e
figurative. Edited by Roberto Guerrini and Max Seidel. Milan, 2003: 105-
145.
2003 Bagnoli, Alessandro, Roberto Bartalini, Luciano Bellosi, and Michel

Laclotte, eds.
Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico. Milan, 2003.

2006.


Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319
The Calling of the Apostles Peter and

Andrew
1308-1311
tempera on panel
overall: 43.3 46.2 4.4 cm (17 1/16 18 3/16 1 3/4 in.)
framed: 53.3 x 55.9 x 4.4 cm (21 x 22 x 1 3/4 in.)
ENTRY
The episode illustrated in the panel is that recounted in the synoptic Gospels of the
calling of the first two apostles: Jesus [fig. 1], walking by the Sea of Galilee, accosts
Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, as they are casting a net into the sea,
and invites them: Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.[1] The
composition conforms to the iconographic scheme already familiar in Sienese art in
the thirteenth century,[2] though enriched by such details as the motif of the net full
of fishes and Peters timid gesture of remonstrance, reported only by Luke (Go
away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!). The painting was the fourth of the nine
scenes ([fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8] [fig. 9]) representing
episodes of the public ministry of Jesus, arranged in the predella on the rear side
of the altarpiece, the side turned towards the apse [fig. 10] (see also Reconstruction
). It was a kind of introduction to the narrative of the Passion, recounted in the
twenty-six scenes of the main register of the back of the Maest and the seven
postmortem scenes placed in the gables [fig. 11] (see also Reconstruction). The
The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew 257


front side [fig. 12] (see also Reconstruction), facing the nave, was dedicated to the
glorification of the Virgin Mary, to whom the cathedral was consecrated. In the
main register she appears enthroned, surrounded by twenty angels and ten saints.
In the upper register was a gallery of ten busts of apostles, while the predella
illustrated seven stories of the childhood of Christ interspersed with six figures of
prophets (see entry for The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel). The
stories of the death and glorification of the Virgin appeared in the seven panels of
the gable. Above these latter, at the very top of the altarpiece, on both sides of the
work, small panels with busts of angels flanked further lost images.
The altarpiece of monumental dimensions and complex structure, of which The

Nativity and The Calling of the Apostles formed part, is unusually well
documented.[3] The procedures regulating the execution of the work and the
payments to be made to the artist were meticulously described in a document
dated October 9, 1308. It obliged Duccio to conduct the enterprise continuously,
without any interruption, and without taking on any other work. It also stipulated
that the hours of any absences from his workshop should be deducted from his
daily remuneration. The wording of the document, and the fact that it fails to
specify the subject or structure of the altarpiece, suggests that it was not in fact the
original contract but a supplement to it, presumably prompted by the excessive
slowness in the progress of the execution. By October 1308, therefore, Duccio
probably had been at work on the Maest for some time. On the other hand, we do
have a secure terminus ante quem for the completion of the altarpiece: on June 9,
1311, some musicians were paid for having accompanied it as it was being
transported, in triumphal procession, from the artists workshop to the cathedral.[4]
Subsequent events in the history of the work also can be followed almost step by
step, thanks to the rich surviving documentation.
Art historical discussion of the Maest has concentrated mainly on the problem of
reconstructing the original appearance of the dismantled and in part dispersed
ensemble. An exception is James Stubblebines attempts to distinguish the parts
attributable to various assistants who hypothetically participated in its execution.[5]
The only fully autograph parts, in his view, were the large image of the Maest
itself on the front side and the predella below, while the rest of the altarpiece was
attributable to various of the main Sienese painters of the early Trecento. In
particular, the rear predella, of which this panel formed part, was, according to
Stubblebine, painted by Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345). More recent
studies have not accepted this attribution, at variance with the stylistic data, and


the wording of the contract of 1308 also apparently contradicts it: a daily
remuneration for Duccio was stipulated as sixteen soldi of Sienese money for
each day that the said Duccio shall work with his own hands on the said panel.[6]
In any case, the extraordinary stylistic coherence of the altarpiece seems to
exclude the participation of artists who had already completed their apprenticeship
and were able to express themselves with a style of their ownin other words,
artists other than those of Duccios shop. Duccio, of course, would not have
tackled single-handedly the daunting task of painting the eighty or so images of
various size that make up the Maest: he would have undoubtedly entrusted to
others the largely mechanical realization of the more decorative parts. His
assistants, following the outlines of his drawing, would have intervened in the
painting of the less demanding areas of the settings, architectural backdrops, and
draperies. But it is equally certain that the master rigorously controlled the work of
his assistants, reserving for himself the task not only of painting the faces, or the
bodies in movement, but also of revising and finishing the passages he had not
personally painted himself.[7]
Discussion has also focused on how best to interpret the iconography of the
scenes on the back of the Maest,[8] which remains in some respects problematic.
But art historical analysis has been especially prolific, as noted above, in trying to
reconstruct its original appearance. This task, made difficult by the dismemberment
of the altarpiece at an early date and the loss of some of its components, was
systematically tackled for the first time by Eduard Dobbert (1885), a scholar whose
knowledge of the front predella was limited to six scenes and six figures of
prophets.[9] He rightly intuited that the sequence of the stories of the childhood of
Christ must have begun with The Annunciation [fig. 2], that the scenes must have
been interspersed with figures of prophets, and that the predella as a whole must
have been as broad as the main panel of the Maest above. Of the back predella,
Dobbert seemed familiar only with The Wedding at Cana [fig. 5], which had
remained in the Opera del Duomo in Siena, but he succeeded in correctly
guessing the subjects of five other scenes.[10] Dobbert assumed that the number
of episodes in the predella must have been identical on both sides of the
altarpiece; so it followed that the scenes relating to the public life of Jesus, the first
of which must have been a lost Baptism of Christ, would have been similarly
interspersed with figures of prophets. Curt Weigelt (1909) accepted Dobberts
reconstruction of the front predella but proposed the presence of ten stories in the
rear predella (adding to the subjects already taken into consideration the
Temptation in the Wilderness, Temptation on the Mount [fig. 4], and the Temptation


on the Temple [fig. 3], the latter a panel he himself had rediscovered).[11] Weigelt
was in error in assuming that the gable zones were filled by eight panels of
identical size on both sides.[12] This error was corrected in the reconstruction
proposed by Vittorio Lusini (1912), who intuited the presence of a panel of larger
size at the center of the upper tier: an image of identical width to that of the
Crucifixion below. The two central panels, he conjectured, would have been
composed of the now lost scenes of the Coronation of the Virgin (on the front side)
and the Ascension (on the back), each of which would have been flanked by three
gable panels on either side: the last episodes of the life of Mary above the Maest
and the postmortem stories of Christ on the back. This suggestion has in general
been endorsed by more recent studies, whereas the reconstruction proposed by
Lusini of a predella with as many as fifteen compartments (nine stories and six
prophets) below the Maest and eleven in the predella on the opposite side has
not been accepted.[13]
In more recent decades, general consensus has been reached regarding the nine
episodes of the rear predella. Weigelts reconstruction of the front predella has
also been accepted. It is also generally conceded that one of the stories of the
public life of Jesus and the two scenes filling the front and rear of the central gable
have been lost.[14] A second order of gable panels with busts of angels, some of
them still extant, is also a generally accepted hypothesis.[15] The important
research by John White (1973, 1979) has permitted the original dimensions of the
Maest to be established in a plausible way. It measured, according to White,
439 cm in width, while the predella would have been about 450 cm long. The
altarpiece would have been supported by two robust lateral pillars or buttresses,
with a width of some 30 cm.[16] The overall height of the Maest remains difficult
to calculate, since the gabled elements at the center of the altarpiece are now
missing. Sporadic attempts to identify the lost panels with surviving paintings have
not met with acceptance in the literature. Alessandro Conti thought that
Coronation of the Virgin in Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, no. 16) was a
surviving fragment of the central panel of the upper tier on the front side.[17] The
proposal is interesting, since the painting in question undoubtedly has Duccesque
characteristics and its proportions (contrary to what has been claimed) do not seem
at variance with those of the Maest. Moreover, a witness as trustworthy as
Lorenzo Ghiberti maintained that the Coronation did appear on the front side of the
altarpiece. So, while we may admit that the pictorial treatment of the panel in
Budapest reveals a hand inferior to that of Duccio himself, we ought not to dismiss
too hastily the hypothesis that it originally formed part of the Maest.[18]


Another hypothesis, formulated more recently by the present writer (1982, 1990),
concerns the missing first scene of the back of the predella.[19] It seems to me that
it can be identified with the little painting also in the museum in Budapest, Saint
John the Baptist Bearing Witness [fig. 2]. In general, previous proposals for the
reconstruction of the Maest assumed for this part of the predella an image
(perhaps the one that was still visible in the sacristy of the cathedral in 1798 and
then disappeared) representing the Baptism of Christ or the Temptation in the
Wilderness, though the theme of the Baptist Bearing Witness was also considered
a possible subject.[20] The Budapest panel, which is in poor condition and perhaps
for this very reason sold by the Opera del Duomo, represents a rare subject; very
likely it formed part of a larger complex of which, however, no other component
has yet been identified. Usually it has been connected with the activity of Ugolino
da Siena. Might it instead have formed part of the altarpiece over the high altar in
the cathedral? In its present condition it is very difficult to judge, but both the
circumstance that Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (who had perhaps been able to
see it, in the mid-nineteenth century, in better condition than it is now) did not
hesitate to attribute it to Duccio [21] and the slenderness of the arguments with
which art historians have tried to deny that it formed part of the predella of the
Maest concur to make its belonging to this work an option that still, in my view,
remains valid.[22]
The original appearance of the Maest, and in particular of the back predella, thus
still remains a discussed problem. What remains unchallenged, on the other hand,
is the artistic quality of the two panels now in the National Gallery of Art, and on
this point a further brief comment should be made. The particular accomplishment
of execution of the paintings in the lower zones of the Maest has long been
recognized. Some have tried to explain this phenomenon by assuming that the
painter left less room there for the intervention of studio assistants than in the less
visible parts, in the upper tiers of the altarpiece.[23] Others emphasize, more
plausibly, the more retardataire style detectable in the panels that would have
adorned the gables of the work. They point out that the work would have
proceeded from top to bottom, and suggest that during the long gestation of the
enterprise Duccio was able to experiment with new solutions and to modify his
initial project.[24] The painstaking execution, accomplished technique, concise
narrative, and expressive emotion in the figures that populate the stories of the
predella, where the perspective incongruities present in the gable panels and in
the stories of the Passion no longer appear, would therefore depend on their later


dating, though this cannot be any later than June 30, 1311.[25] If we compare a
passage such as the Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew with the similar
scene of the Apparition of Jesus on the Sea of Tiberius (Museo dellOpera del
Duomo, Siena), we will immediately feel the greater spaciousness of the
composition of the painting now in the Gallery. The figures are smaller and fewer
but characterized by particular fluency and eloquence in gesture [fig. 13]. Similar
aspects can also be detected in the predella panel of the Nativity [fig. 14],
especially if the painting is compared, for example, with one of the last episodes of
the life of Mary, recounted in the gable panels. In the Nativity, by contrast, a large
number of figures are included, and yet the scene does not seem unduly crowded.
In spite of some archaic features, such as the adoption of a larger scale for the
figure of Mary than for the other figures, or the incongruity of the roof of the stable,
seen from below on the right side and from above on the left, Duccios digressive
approach to narration [26] succeeds in both creating convincing spatial effects
and combining the various episodes into a coherent composition. This is also
thanks to the masters subtle analysis of the conduct of the protagonists, who, with
their intense emotional participation, render the narrative vivid, complex, and
humanly credible.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Saint John the Baptist

Bearing Witness, c. 13081311, tempera on panel
transferred to canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
fig. 1 Detail of Christ, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Calling

of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, 13081311, tempera on
Kress Collection


fig. 3 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the Temple, fig. 4 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Temptation on the
13081311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Mountain, 13081311, tempera on panel, Frick Collection,
Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il New York. Image The Frick Collection, New York
Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo


fig. 5 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Wedding at Cana, fig. 6 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ and the Samaritan
13081311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Woman, 13101311, tempera on panel, Thyssen-
Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. Image Museo Thyssen-
Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo Bornemisza, Madrid


fig. 7 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Healing of the Man Born fig. 8 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Transfiguration,
Blind, 1307/13081311, tempera on panel, The National 13081311, tempera on panel, The National Gallery,
Gallery, London. Image National Gallery London/Art London. Image National Gallery London/Art Resource,
Resource, NY NY


fig. 10 Reconstruction of the back of the predella of

Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maest: a. Saint John the Baptist
Bearing Witness (fig. 2); b. Temptation on the Temple (fig.
3); c. Temptation on the Mountain (fig. 4); d. The Calling of
the Apostles Peter and Andrew; e. The Wedding at Cana
(fig. 5); f. Christ and the Samaritan Woman (fig. 6); g.
Healing of the Man Born Blind (fig. 7); h. The
Transfiguration (fig. 8); i. The Raising of Lazarus (fig. 9)
fig. 9 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Raising of Lazarus,

13081311, tempera on panel, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort
Worth. Image: Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas/Art
Resource, NY
fig. 11 Reconstruction of the back of the Maest altarpiece fig. 12 Reconstruction of the front of the Maest altarpiece
for Siena Cathedral by Duccio di Buoninsegna for Siena Cathedral by Duccio di Buoninsegna


fig. 13 Detail of apostles Peter and Andrew, Duccio di fig. 14 Detail of First Bath of the child, Duccio di
Buoninsegna, The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Buoninsegna, The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and
Andrew, 13081311, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Ezekiel, 13081311, tempera on panel, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection


RECONSTRUCTIONS
Reconstruction of the back of the predella of Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maest

a. Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness (Entry fig. 2)
b. Temptation on the Temple (Entry fig. 3)
c. Temptation on the Mountain (Entry fig. 4)
d. The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew
e. The Wedding at Cana (Entry fig. 5)
f. Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Entry fig. 6)
g. Healing of the Man Born Blind (Entry fig. 7)
h. The Transfiguration (Entry fig. 8)
i. The Raising of Lazarus (Entry fig. 9)


Reconstruction of the back of the Maest altarpiece for Siena Cathedral by Duccio di Buoninsegna:


1. John the Baptist Bearing Witness (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)

2. Christs Temptation on the Temple (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
3. Christs Temptation on the Mountain (Frick Collection, New York)
4. The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
5. The Wedding at Cana (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
6. Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid)
7. The Healing of the Blind Man (The National Gallery, London)
8. The Transfiguration (The National Gallery, London)
9. The Raising of Lazarus (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth)
10. The Entry into Jerusalem (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
11. The Washing of the Disciples Feet (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
12. The Last Supper (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
13. Christ Taking Leave of the Apostles (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
14. Judas Taking the Bribe (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
15. The Agony in the Garden (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
16. The Betrayal of Christ (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
17. The First Denial of Saint Peter (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
18. Christ before Annas (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
19. The Second Denial of Saint Peter (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
20. The Third Denial of Saint Peter (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
21. Christ Accused by the Pharisees (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
22. Christ before Pilate (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
23. Christ before Herod (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
24. The Mocking of Christ (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
25. The Flagellation (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
26. The Crowning with Thorns (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
27. Pilate Washing His Hands (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
28. Christ Carrying the Cross (lost)
29. The Crucifixion (lost)
30. The Deposition (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
31. The Entombment (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
32. The Holy Women at the Tomb (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
33. The Descent into Limbo (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
34. Noli me tangere (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
35. The Way to Emmaus (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
36. The Apparition behind Closed Doors (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
37. The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
38. The Apparition on the Sea (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
39. Christ in Glory or The Last Judgment (lost)
40. The Ascension (lost)
41. The Apparition in Galilee (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
42. The Apparition at Supper (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
43. Pentecost (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)


Reconstruction of the front of the Maest altarpiece for Siena Cathedral by Duccio di Buoninsegna:


1. The Annunciation (The National Gallery, London)

2. Isaiah (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
3. The Nativity (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
4. Ezekiel (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
5. The Adoration of the Magi (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
6. Solomon or David (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
7. The Presentation in the Temple (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
8. Malachi (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
9. The Massacre of the Innocents (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
10. Jeremiah (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
11. The Flight into Egypt (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
12. Hosea (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
13. Christ among the Doctors (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
14. The Virgin and Child, Saints, and Angel (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
15. Saint Thaddaeus (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
16. Saint Simon (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
17. Saint Philip (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
18. Saint James the Great (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
19. Saint Andrew (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
20. Saint Matthew (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
21. Saint James the Less (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
22. Saint Bartholomew (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
23. Saint Thomas (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
24. Saint Matthias (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
25. The Annunciation of the Virgins Death (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
26. The Virgins Farewell to Saint John (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
27. The Virgins Farewell to the Apostles (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
28. The Coronation of the Virgin (lost)
29. The Assumption (lost)
30. The Death of the Virgin (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
31. The Funeral of the Virgin (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
32. The Entombment of the Virgin (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena)
NOTES
[1] See Mt 4:1820; Mk 1:1618; Lk 5:111.
[2] Guido da Siena had proposed a similar composition in his Pala di S. Pietro,
no. 15 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena.
[3] For the relevant documentation, cf. Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di
Buoninsegna: The Documents and Early Sources, ed. Hayden B.J. Maginnis
(Athens, GA, 2000), 6981; Alessandro Bagnoli et al., eds., Duccio: Siena fra
tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 577
579.
[4] Various scholars rightly have accepted John Pope-Hennessys suggestion

that the document of 1308 could not have been the original contract.
Luciano Bellosi, however, thought that the work was executed between
October 1308 and June 1311. See John Pope-Hennessy, Some Italian
Primitives, Apollo 118 (1983): 1011; Luciano Bellosi, Il percorso di Duccio,
in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro
Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 124.
[5] James H. Stubblebine, Duccio and His Collaborators on the Cathedral


Maest, The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 185204; James H. Stubblebine, The

Back Predella of Duccios Maest, in Studies in Late Medieval and
Renaissance Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John
Plummer, 2 vols. (New York, 1977), 1:430436; James H. Stubblebine,
Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:32, 39
48.
[6] Duccius promisit...laborare continue in dicta tabula temporibus quibus

laborari poterit in eadem, et non accipere vel recepire aliquod aliud
laborerium ad faciendum donec dicta tabula conpleta et facta fuerit....
dominus Jacoppus operarius...promisit dicto Duccio pro suo salario...sedicim
solidos denariorum Senensium pro quolibet die quo dictus Duccius
laborabit suis manibus in dicta tabula (Duccio promised...to work
continuously upon the said panel at such times as he was able to work on it,
and not to accept or receive any other work to be carried out until the said
panel shall have been made and completed.... Lord Jacopo, clerk of works...
promised the said Duccio as his salary...sixteen soldi of Sienese money for
each day that the said Duccio shall work with his own hands on the said
panel). Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Buoninsegna: The Documents and
Early Sources, ed. Hayden B.J. Maginnis (Athens, GA, 2000), 69; Alessandro
Bagnoli et al., eds., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 577.
[7] For the organization of the work and the involvement of studio assistants in
the execution of the Maest, cf. John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the
Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 102119; Luciano Bellosi, Duccio, la
Maest (Milan, 1998), 20. Bruno Zanardis observations on the system of
collaboration between the painters in the fresco decoration of the basilica of
San Francesco in Assisi should, however, be taken into consideration in this
regard. Cf. Bruno Zanardi, Giotto e Pietro Cavallini: La questione di Assisi e
il cantiere medievale di pittura a fresco, Biblioteca darte Skira (Milan,
2002), 3983. Although in my view not always convincing, the observations
of this intelligent and well-prepared restorer remain valuable, because they
are the outcome of long experience with restoring medieval cycles of
frescoes. The organization of teamwork between master and pupils in a
cycle of mural paintings cannot have been very different from that
ascertained, or assumed, in a large altarpiece like the Maest.
[8] Cf. John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York,
1979), 124130; Florens Deuchler, Duccio (Milan, 1984), 5863; Luciano
Bellosi, Duccio, la Maest (Milan, 1998), 1415.
[9] Eduard Dobbert, Duccios Bild Die Geburt Christi in der Kniglichen
Gemlde-Galerie zu Berlin, Jahrbuch der Preuischen Kunstsammlungen 6
(1885): 153163.


[10] Though Dobbert did not say so, he probably knew, either directly or at least
indirectly, the five components of the back predella that passed into the
hands of Fairfax Murray: The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew,
Christ with the Woman of Samaria, and Raising of Lazarus, all three
subsequently sold to the Benson collection in London; Healing of the Man
Born Blind, sold together with the Annunciation from the front predella to
the National Gallery in London in 1883; and the Transfiguration, purchased
in Siena (presumably again from Fairfax Murray) by R.H. Wilson and donated
to the National Gallery in London in 1891. The omission of the Temptation on
the Mountain, undoubtedly in the hands of the same painter and art dealer
in the early years of the nineteenth century, is difficult to explain. It was
perhaps ignored merely because, according to Dobbert, no more than
seven stories could have been placed on this side of the predella.
[11] Curt H. Weigelt, Contributo alla ricostruzione della Maest di Duccio di

Buoninsegna, che si trova nel Museo della Metropolitana di Siena,
Bullettino senese di storia patria 16 (1909): 191214.
[12] A hypothetical reconstruction of the Maest that proposed a complete

series of representations of the three Temptations would involve an
intractable problem of how to coordinate panels of unequal number in the
various registers of the complex: ten stories in the predella, eight in the
upper register, and seven episodes of the narrative of the Passion in the
main panel. The thesis of ten stories in the back predella was revived in
more recent times in the reconstruction proposed by Ernest T. DeWald,
Observations on Duccios Maest, in Late Classical and Mediaeval
Studies in Honor of Albert Mathias Friend Jr, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton,
1955), 367; Cesare Brandi, ed., Il restauro della Maest di Duccio (Rome,
1959), 9.
[13] In his efforts to complete the iconographic program in what seemed to him
the most plausible way, though without taking sufficient account of the
evidence of the surviving parts, Vittorio Lusini argued that the
representations extended on both sides beyond the width of the main
panel, also occupying the lateral pillars of the frame. Vittorio Lusini, Di
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Rassegna darte senese 8 (1912): 7075.
[14] Frederick A. Cooper, A Reconstruction of Duccios Maest, The Art

Bulletin 47 (1965): 163164, proposed, implausibly, a predella with only six
stories of the childhood of Christ, transferring the scene of Christ among the
Doctors to the predella on the back. James H. Stubblebine rightly pointed
out that the front and back predella must have had the same width and
therefore that the back predella could not have accommodated more than
nine scenes. James H. Stubblebine, The Angel Pinnacles on Duccios
Maest, Art Quarterly 32 (1969): 131152; James H. Stubblebine, The Back
Predella of Duccios Maest, in Studies in Late Medieval and Renaissance
Painting in Honor of Millard Meiss, ed. Irving Lavin and John Plummer, 2


vols. (New York, 1977), 1:430436; James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di

Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:54. In his attempt
iconographically to complete the subjects of the panels, he conjectured that
a further two stories, a representation of Christ with the Baptist (the Baptism
of Christ or the Baptist Bearing Witness) and a scene of a miracle (the
Raising of Lazarus), were placed at the two narrow sides of the frame of the
altarpiece, respectively flanking the episodes of Christ among the Doctors
and the Transfiguration. Ruth Wilkins Sullivan made a similar proposal,
though it has to be said that predellas of this type (with narrow side panels)
otherwise appear in Sienese painting no earlier than the end of the
fourteenth century. Ruth Wilkins Sullivan, The Anointing in Bethany and
Other Affirmations of Christs Divinity on Duccios Back Predella, The Art
Bulletin 67 (1985): 3250.
[15] The payment memorandum, undated but datable to c. 1309, referred to

certain angiolette di sopra (little angels above) in the Maest, which ever
since Dobberts reconstruction (1885) were understood as panels of the
highest tier. Cf. Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Buoninsegna: The
Documents and Early Sources, ed. Hayden B.J. Maginnis (Athens, GA,
2000), 7576; Alessandro Bagnoli et al., eds., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione
bizantina e mondo gotico (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 578. Different
proposals, however, have been formulated about the form and number of
the components of this third register. Dobbert assumed twelve such busts of
angels, placed to the sides of the stories of Christ, while Curt Weigelt (1909)
concluded that there were eight on either side of the panel. After some
tentative attempts at identification, it was James H. Stubblebine (1969) who
identified the four busts of angels that the more recent literature recognizes
as belonging to the Maest: those in the Mount Holyoke College Art
Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts; in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
(J.G. Johnson Collection); in the Stichting Huis Bergh in s-Heerenbergh,
Holland; and the panel formerly in the Stoclet collection in Brussels.
According to Stubblebine there must originally have been six busts of
angels, both on the front and back sides, placed to the sides of the central
image. Stubblebines proposal regarding the round-arched termination of
these panels seems unjustified, since none of the four surviving busts of
angels retains its original profile. See Eduard Dobbert, Duccios Bild Die
Geburt Christi in der Kniglichen Gemlde-Galerie zu Berlin, Jahrbuch der
Preuischen Kunstsammlungen 6 (1885): 153163; Curt H. Weigelt,
Contributo alla ricostruzione della Maest di Duccio di Buoninsegna, che si
trova nel Museo della Metropolitana di Siena, Bullettino senese di storia
patria 16 (1909): 191214; James H. Stubblebine, The Angel Pinnacles on
Duccios Maest, Art Quarterly 32 (1969): 131152. On this question see
also Giovanna Ragionieri, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo
gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 25;
Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 12501450, in the John G. Johnson


Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 124

133.
[16] John White, Measurement, Design and Carpentry in Duccios Maest, 1,

The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 334364; John White, Measurement, Design and
Carpentry in Duccios Maest, 2, The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 547569; John
White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979),
94, 207208. White calculated the dimensions of the individual components
of Duccios altarpiece starting from the assumption that the artist almost
certainly used a Roriczer Progression based on the width of the main panel
together with a second progression based on the diagonal of the main
panel, to control the entire proportional design of his altarpiece(White 1979,
94). On the buttresses that served to support the elaborate and heavy
structure of the Maest, cf. Christa Gardner von Teuffel, The Buttressed
Altarpiece: A Forgotten Aspect of Tuscan Fourteenth-Century Altarpiece
Design, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 21 (1979): 2165.
[17] Alessandro Conti, Review of Duccio, Tuscan Art and the Medieval
Workshop by John White, Prospettiva 23 (1980): 100.
[18] Vittorio Lusini (1912) maintained that the subject represented in the central
panel of the gable zone would have been a theme of particular importance
and would have been linked iconographically with the central part of the
main part of the altarpiece: he conjectured the Coronation of the Virgin
(surmounted by the image of the Blessing Christ) over the Maest and the
Ascension (surmounted by the image of the Blessing God the Father) on the
other side. Vittorio Lusini, Di Duccio di Buoninsegna, Rassegna darte
senese 8 (1912): 74. This proposal still retains its validity today, though a
more accredited variant is that which links the episode of the Assumption
with the Coronation and the Resurrection with the Ascension; both subjects
are missing from the surviving panels of the Maest. It is very significant,
moreover, that Ghiberti, speaking of Duccio and the tavola maggiore del
duomo di Siena (high altarpiece of Siena Cathedral), said that nella parte
dinani (on its front side), one could see la incoronatione di Nostra Donna
(the coronation of Our Lady); cf. Julius von Schlosser, ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis
Denkwrdigkeiten, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912), 1:43. Alessandro Contis hypothesis,
which Giovanni Ragionieri accepted (1989), was, however, rejected by more
recent studies (Schmidt 1999, 2001, 2003) and evidently was not shared by
Luciano Bellosi (1998), who failed to refer to it in his study on the Maest.
See Giovanna Ragionieri, Duccio: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence,
1989), 134135; Victor M. Schmidt, A Duccesque Fragment of the
Coronation of the Virgin, Bulletin du Muse Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 90
91 (1999): 3952, 167174; Victor M. Schmidt, Duccio di Buoninsegna, in
Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und
Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols. (Munich, 2001), 30:153157; Victor M.
Schmidt, Tipologie e funzioni della pittura senese su tavola, in Duccio:


Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al.
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 557, 560; Luciano Bellosi, Duccio, la
Maest (Milan, 1998). However, as Victor M. Schmidt pointed out, the
pattern of the cloth of honor behind the Virgin in the Budapest panel is a
virtual repetition of that of St. Catherines mantle, and the pattern of the
Virgins mantle in the fragment repeats that of St. Agnes: two of the female
saints that appear alongside the Madonna in the Maest (Schmidt 1999, 40
42). It should also be recalled that the motifs incised in the halos of the
panel in Budapest closely resemble those in Duccios altarpiece.
According to Schmidt, the dimensions of the fragment (51.5 32 cm) would
exclude its belonging to the Maest, since if the parts now truncated were
to be reintegrated the panel would be too big to fit into the central gable.
However, the reconstruction proposed by Schmidt did not take into account
uncertainties in the calculation of the original size of the Budapest fragment:
the difference between its effective width and the lost width of the central
gable as John White reconstructed it (77.8 cm) would, in my view, leave
sufficient space to accommodate the now lost figure of Christ and the
essential structures of the throne. What seems hardly compatible with
Duccios work is not the size but the style of the Budapest fragment, with its
overly dense chiaroscuro and rather schematic modeling. On the other
hand, the date of execution of the painting in the Hungarian museum (also
in light of the analogies of the ornamental motifs that Schmidt observed)
ought to fall more or less in the same years as the Maest. Bearing this in
mind, as well as the relative rarity of the subject as a self-standing image, I
cannot categorically exclude the intervention of a studio assistant in this
upper zone of the complex.
[19] Mikls Boskovits, Review of Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School by J.H.
Stubblebine; and Duccio di Buoninsegna by J. White, The Art Bulletin 64
(1982): 497502; Mikls Boskovits and Serena Padovani, The Thyssen-
[20] Though admitting the possibility that the first scene of the back predella
might have been the Baptism of Christ, James H. Stubblebine wrote that
there is evidence pointing to the likelihood that the scene...represented the
first time that the Baptist bore witness, as it is described in the Gospel(John
1: 2627). James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2
vols. (Princeton, 1979), 5354. According to Stubblebine, the painting
representing this subject in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (no. 6) could
be a copy of the lost scene of the Maest.
[21] Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of
Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London,
1864), 2:52. The attribution to Duccio was later confirmed by such
connoisseurs as Robert Langton Douglas, in Joseph Archer Crowe and
Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy from the Second


to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian
Schools, ed. Robert Langton Douglas (London, 1908), 19 n. 2; and Bernard
Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists
and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 176.
[22] Victor M. Schmidt observed that in the painting now in Budapest some
significant details are at odds with the scenes...that surely belong to the
Maest. First, the red color of the Christs garment is too dark.... Second,
Christs blue mantle is striated with golden striations.... Third, Christs halo...
has painted contours. Victor M. Schmidt, A Duccesque Painting
Representing St John the Baptist Bearing Witness in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Bulletin du Muse Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 96 (2002): 5354. But in
the paintings current state, with its surface covered by a layer of grime and
darkened varnish, and with the gold ground completely regilded, the first
and last of these observations cannot be seriously taken into consideration.
As for the second, since the mantle of Jesus also has golden striations
in the last episode of the predella, the Transfiguration, it cannot be excluded
that the same was also the case in the initial scene, another epiphany, in
which John recognizes the Messiah in Jesus: This is he of whom I said,
After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me (Jn
1:30). According to Anna Ersi, the panel, which she confirmed to be
probably the missing element on the back predella, illustrates the words of
the Gospel of John (1:26): there is one among you whom you do not
recognize. Anna Ersi, . . . There is one among you whom you do not
recognise: Some Golden Threads to Mikls Boskovits with Reference to
Duccios Saint John the Baptist, Bulletin du Muse Hongrois des Beaux-
Arts 104 (2006): 6373.
The dimensions of the Budapest painting in its present condition (28.5 38
cm) are considerably smaller than those of the predella (c. 48 50 cm is the
average size of those predella panels that have not been cropped), but it
seems that it has been cut on all sides, with the possible exception of the
lower side. The proportions of the figures correspond, however, to those of
the protagonists in the stories of Duccios predella. Evidently in view of its
poor condition, the painting was transferred to a new support. This
operation, conducted at some point in the first half of the nineteenth
century, was botched, making drastic restoration of the paintings whole
surface necessary. Johann Anton Ramboux, who had purchased the
painting in Siena, said it was comparable with those preserved in the
sacristy of Siena Cathedral, i.e., the surviving gable and predella panels of
the Maest. See J.M. Heberle, Catalog der nachgelassenen Kunst-
Sammlungen des Herrn Johann Anton Ramboux (Cologne, May 23, 1867)
no. 70. This raises the strong suspicion that it was just this episode that was
still present in the sacristy of the cathedral in 1798 but was then discarded.
[23] Weigelt, who suspected the intervention of assistants in the Marian scenes


of the upper register, considered the postmortem stories of Christ ganz

Schlerarbeit. Curt H. Weigelt, Duccio di Buoninsegna: Studien zur
Geschichte der frhsienesischen Tafelmalerei (Leipzig, 1911), 16. Vittorio
Lusini also proposed the intervention of assistants in the gable panels, while
in more recent times Enzo Carli spoke of the involvement of collaborators in
the execution of the gable zone and perhaps also in the series of busts of
apostles. See Vittorio Lusini, Il Duomo di Siena (Siena, 1911), 68; Enzo Carli,
La pittura senese (Milan, 1955), 48; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del
Trecento (Milan, 1981), 66.
[24] Apart from a first mention by Hayden B.J. Maginnis, it was John White who
formulated a hypothesis on how such a large and complex work as the
Maest might have been painted. Hayden B.J. Maginnis, The Literature of
Sienese Trecento Painting 19451975, Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 40
(1977): 279280; John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval
Workshop (New York, 1979), 93, 106107. In his view, the execution must
have begun only after the completion of its wooden frame. He also assumed
that the painting of the huge surface must have proceeded with the use of
scaffolds, as in the case of a fresco. According to White, the undated
memorandum of c. 1309 that established the procedures for the payment of
the rear side of the altarpiece did not mention the predella, because at the
time it was not yet in the course of execution. Therefore, it would have been
the last part of the complex to be executed. Julian Gardner noted that the
idea of alternating narrative scenes and standing figures derives from Nicola
Pisanos pulpit in the cathedral of Siena. Julian Gardner, Some Aspects of
the History of the Italian Altar, ca. 1250ca. 1350: Placement and
Decoration, in Objects, Images and the Word: Art in the Service of the
Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2003), 151.
[25] Basing himself on the more advanced style of the scenes of the predella,
Alessandro Conti suggested that it was added to the Maest later than 1311.
Alessandro Conti, Review of Duccio, Tuscan Art and the Medieval
Workshop by John White, Prospettiva 23 (1980): 101. Except for Giulietta
Chelazzi Dini et al., however, no recent scholars seem to have shared this
hypothesis. Giulietta Chelazzi Dini, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina
Sani, Pittura senese (Milan, 1997), 36.
[26] Keith Christiansen, Duccio and the Origins of Western Painting (New York;
New Haven, 2008), 29.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support consists of a single piece of horizontally grained wood, cradled by

Stephen Pichetto in 1935 and probably thinned (thickness 0.9 cm) at that time.


Before the painting process, fabric and gesso layers were applied to the panel. The
main contour lines were incised into the gesso, and red bole was applied to the
areas to be gilded. Infrared reflectography at 1.12.5 microns [1] reveals
underdrawing marking the main folds of the garments, the facial features, and
hatching in the boat. It also shows that Christs face and proper right foot were
moved. The paint was applied in thin, smooth layers.
The gold ground is probably modern, but the paint surface is only slightly worn.
The two apostles probably had incised halos, which have completely disappeared.
Small areas of inpainting are intended to conceal the prominent, vertical linear
cracks in the panel that appear throughout the composition. In an area between
the left edge of the boat and the left edge of the panel a series of thin, vertical,
white lines form a kind of hatching. These lines seem to be a combination of
damage and inpainting. They do not appear in early twentieth-century
photographs,[2] and therefore the inpainting was probably added during the 1935
restoration. At that time, in addition to cradling the panel, Pichetto removed a
discolored varnish and inpainted the losses. The similar but diagonally aligned
hatching that appears in the water to the right of the net full of fishes also probably
dates from the same intervention.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Santa Barbara Focal plane
InSb camera fitted with H, J, and K astronomy filters.
[2] See the reproduction in Portfolio of Photographic Reproductions in the Early

Italian Art Exhibition (London, 1894), pl. 42; Robert Langton Douglas, ed.,
Exhibition of Pictures of the School of Siena and Examples of the Minor Arts
of That City (London, 1905), pl. VI.
PROVENANCE
NGA 1939.1.141 formed part of the rear predella of Duccio's double-sided altarpiece
the Maest, which was in the course of execution by October 1308 and was placed
on the high altar of the Cathedral of Siena on 30 June 1311;[1] the altarpiece was
removed from the cathedral in 1506, first stored by the Cathedral authorities, and
then later displayed on the wall of the left transept, close to the altar of Saint


Sebastian, but probably by this time the predella and gable panels had already
been separated from it;[2] the altarpiece was moved to the church of Sant'Ansano
in 1777, where its two sides were separated and returned to the cathedral;[3] in
1798 the gables and eight panels of the predella were reported as being housed in
the sacristy of the cathedral, whereas the rest, including NGA 1939.1.141, must
already have been in private hands;[4] Giuseppe and Marziale Dini, Colle Val d'Elsa
(Siena), by 1879;[5] purchased 1886 by (Charles Fairfax Murray [1849-1919], London
and Florence) for Robert Henry [1850-1929] and Evelyn Holford [1856-1943]
Benson, London and Buckhurst Park, Sussex;[6] sold 1927 with the entire Benson
collection to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[7] sold 1
October 1928 to Clarence H. Mackay [1874-1938], Roslyn, New York;[8] sold 1934 to
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[9] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] The documents
are published in Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Boninsegna. The Documents
and Early Sources, ed. Hayden B.J. Maginnis, Atlanta, 2000: 69-81, and in
Allesandro Bagnoli et al., eds. Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo
gotico, Milan, 2003.: 577-579. [2] See Alessandro Lisini, Notizie di Duccio pittore e
della sua celebre ancona, Bullettino senese di storia patria 5 (1898): 24-25.
According to this author, in 1506 the altarpiece "venne confinata in certi mezzanini
dell'Opera [del Duomo]...e per introdurvela fu necessario di togliere tutte le cuspidi
e gli accessori" ("was stored in certain passages in the Opera del Duomo...and to
enter there it was necessary to cut off all the pinnacles and accessories"). This
latter term presumably comprises the predella. Lisini stated that only "sulla fine del
secolo" - i.e., at the end of the sixteenth century - was the painting brought back to
the cathedral. In Giovanna Ragionieri's opinion, however, the altarpiece had
already been returned to the cathedral in 1536 and installed near the altar of Saint
Sebastian. See Giovanna Ragionieri, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e
mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al., Siena, 2003: 212. [3] See Pleo Bacci,
Francesco da Valdambrino, Emulo del Ghiberti e collaboratore di Jacopo della
Quercia, Siena, 1936: 185-186. The author did not mention the gables and predella;
these had probably been separated earlier from the rest of the altarpiece (see the
previous note). After the separation of the two sides of the main panel, the front
with the image of the Madonna and Child enthroned in majesty surrounded by
saints and angels was hung in its former place in the left transept, and the narrative
scenes of the back were hung in the opposite transept. [4] See Bacci 1936, 187.
Vittorio Lusini specified that, apart from the twelve scenes of the gable, eight
panels of the predella were present in the sacristy at this time, i.e., one more than
the predella panels now preserved in the Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del


Duomo in Siena. The identity of this eighth scene is uncertain, but presumably it
was different from those that reappeared in private hands in the second half of the
nineteenth century. See Vittorio Lusini, Il Duomo di Siena, 2 vols., Siena, 1911-1939:
2:77. The seven predella panels now in the Siena cathedral museum represent the
Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Massacre of the
Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, and Christ among the Doctors from the front
predella, and the Temptation on the Temple and the Wedding at Cana from the
rear predella. James Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, around the
mid-nineteenth century, were only able to see six predella panels in the sacristy of
the cathedral: the much damaged Temptation on the Temple and the eighth panel
of unknown subject were no longer there. See Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan
Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the
Sixteenth Century, 3 vols., London, 1864: 2:44 n. 1. Curt H. Weigelt discovered
Temptation on the Temple in the storerooms of the Opera del Duomo in 1909,
whereas the eighth panel has so far not been identified. See Curt H. Weigelt,
Contributo alla ricostruzione della Maest di Duccio di Buoninsegna nel Museo
della Metropolitana di Siena, Bullettino senese di storia patria 16, no. 2 (1909): 191-
214. The predella, its many panels now divided among various museums in the
world, was probably disposed of by the Opera del Duomo during the eighteenth
century, and was at first privately owned in Siena. [5] The painting was exhibited in
Colle Val dElsa in 1879 as the property of Giuseppe and Marziale Dini, together
with three other predella panels: The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew
framed together with the Raising of Lazarus, now in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort
Worth, and the Temptation on the Mountain (Frick Collection, New York) framed
together with the Christ and the Woman of Samaria, now in the Thyssen-
Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. [6] Fern Rusk Shapley (Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:172 n. 2) quotes the following
annotation written by Benson in his personal copy of the catalogue of his
collection: In 1886 I gave a commission to C. Fairfax Murray to spend 2000 for
me in Italy. These 4 Duccios were part of the spoils. This information was supplied
by Bensons grandson, Peter Wake, in a letter of 2 February 1976, to Anna Voris (in
NGA curatorial files). [7] See Tancred Borenius, The Benson collection, Apollo 6
(1927): 65-70, and Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Special
Collections, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 206, box 351, folders 2 and
3; reel 207, box 352, folders 1 and 2 (copies in NGA curatorial files). [8] Duveen
Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Special Collections, Getty Research
Institute, Los Angeles, Series I Business Records, New York Sales Lists 1922-1928.


The painting was in the Mackay collection in Roslyn, New York (Royal Cortissoz,
The Clarence H. Mackay Collection, International Studio 40 (December 1929):
120), whereas the Raising of Lazarus together with the Christ and the Woman of
Samaria were bought by John D. Rockfeller, Jr. for his collection in New York, and
the Temptation on the Mountain was acquired for the Frick Collection, also in New
York. Not long after its acquisition, financial difficulties obliged Mackay gradually to
sell off parts of his collection, and Duveen Brothers, Inc. assisted him in this effort
(see Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976:157, and the
Duveen Brothers Records, reels 336339). The NGA painting had been
offeredunsuccessfullyto Samuel H. Kress in 1932 (see Colin Simpson, The
Partnership. The Secret Association of Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen,
London, 1987: 236). [9] Shapley 1979, 1:172.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1904 Exhibition of Pictures of the School of Siena, Burlington Fine Arts Club,
London, 1904, nos. 1 and 7.
1927 Loan Exhibition of the Benson Collection of Old Italian Masters, City of
Manchester Art Gallery, 1927, no. 108.
1935 Exposition de L'Art Italien de Cimabue Tiepolo, Petit Palais, Paris, 1935,
no. 150.
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historischer Gleichzeitigkeit. Edited by Andreas Speer and David


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University Park, Pennsylvania, 2015: 113, color fig. 49.


Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319
The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah

and Ezekiel
1308-1311
tempera on single poplar panel
painted surface (left side image): 43 16 cm (16 15/16 6 5/16 in.)
painted surface (center image): 43 43.9 cm (16 15/16 17 5/16 in.)
painted surface (right side image): 43 16 cm (16 15/16 6 5/16 in.)
overall (including original frame): 48 86.8 7.9 cm (18 7/8 34 3/16 3 1/8 in.)
Inscription: left section, on the scroll of Isaiah: ECCE VIR / GO CONCI / PIET [et] PA / RIET FILIU[M] / [et] VOCABI / TUR
NOM / EN EIUS / [E]MANUE[L] (Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Immanuel;
from Isaiah 7:14); middle section, on the scroll of the announcing angel: A[nnunti]o / Vobis / Gaudiu[m] / Magnu[m] (Behold,
I bring you tidings of great joy; variant of Luke 2:10); right section, on the scroll of Ezekial: VIDI PORTA[M] / I[N] DOMO
D[OMI]NI / CLAUSA[M] / VIR / NO[N] TR[AN]SIBIT / P[ER] EA[M] DOM / IN[US] SOLUS / I[N]TRAT ET[?] / IT [?] P[ER] EA[M] (I
saw a door in the house of the Lord which was closed and no man went through it. The Lord only enters and goes through
it; variant of Ezekial 44:2)
ENTRY
The Nativity is flanked by the full-length figures of the two prophets who foretell
the birth of Christ [fig. 1] [fig. 2]. Isaiah, to the left, as revealed by the text of his
scroll and his leftward-turned gaze, is thematically linked to the previous scene of
the front predella, representing the Annunciation [fig. 3], now in the National
Gallery of London. The iconography of the Nativity follows the figurative tradition of
Byzantine art, combining the scene with the subsidiary episodes of the Glad
The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel 294


Tidings to the Shepherds and the First Bath of the Child. Mary is shown
semirecumbent on a mattress inside the cave setting, into which a simple wooden
hut with sloping roof is inserted. At the center of the hut, in the background, we
see the manger with the child and two animals. In the foreground the episode of
the First Bath occupies a central position, with the two midwives portrayed in
slightly smaller proportions than the Madonna.[1] To the left we see Saint Joseph
seated on a rock, sunk in meditation, while to the right appear the two shepherds
conversing with one of the fourteen angels that throng the upper part of the scene.
The painting was the second of seven scenes ([fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8])
interspersed with standing figures of prophets that formed the predella of the front
side of the two-sided altarpiece placed over the high altar in Siena Cathedral [fig.
9] (see also Reconstruction). For a discussion of the multipart complex of which this
work has always been recognized as an integral part, see the entry on The Calling
of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Detail of Ezekiel, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The

Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, 13081311, fig. 2 Detail of Isaiah, Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Nativity
tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, 13081311, tempera
Andrew W. Mellon Collection on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W.
Mellon Collection


fig. 3 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Annunciation,

fig. 4 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Adoration of the Magi,
13081311, tempera on panel, The National Gallery,
13081311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del
London. National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY
Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il
Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo


fig. 5 Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ among the Doctors, fig. 6 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Massacre of the
13081311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera del Innocents, 13081311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera
Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il del Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti
Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo
fig. 7 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Presentation in the fig. 8 Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Flight into Egypt with
Temple with Salomon (or David?) and the Prophet the Prophets Jeremiah and Hosea, 13081311, tempera on
Malachi, 13081311, tempera on panel, Museo dell'Opera panel, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena. Image:
del Duomo, Siena. Image: Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti Soprintendenza per le Belle Arti e il Paesaggio di Siena,
e il Paesaggio di Siena, Grosseto ed Arezzo Grosseto ed Arezzo


fig. 9 Reconstruction of the front of the predella of Duccio

di Buoninsegna's Maest: a. The Annunciation (fig. 3); b.
The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel; c. The
Adoration of the Magi (fig. 4); d. The Presentation in the
Temple with Salomon (or David?) and the Prophet Malachi
(fig. 7); e. The Massacre of the Innocents (fig. 6); f. The
Flight into Egypt with the Prophets Jeremiah and Hosea
(fig. 8); g. Christ among the Doctors (fig. 5)


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of the front of the predella of Duccio di Buoninsegna's Maest:

a. The Annunciation (Entry fig. 3)
b. The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel
c. The Adoration of the Magi (Entry fig. 4)
d. The Presentation in the Temple with Salomon (or David?) and the Prophet Malachi (Entry fig. 7)
e. The Massacre of the Innocents (Entry fig. 6)
f. The Flight into Egypt with the Prophets Jeremiah and Hosea (Entry fig. 8)
g. Christ among the Doctors (Entry fig. 5)
NOTES
[1] On the iconography of the scene, cf. Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der
christlichen Kunst, 6 vols. (Gtersloh, 19661990), 1:6998; and Gnter
Ristow, Geburt Christi, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus
Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1971), 2:637662. The motif of the cave setting for
the Nativity first appeared in the East in the sixth century, while the
amalgamation of this tradition with that usual in the West, in which the scene
is placed in a hut, took place in Italy about 1300. The presence of the two
animals next to the child lying in the manger is found in the earliest
examples of the iconography, dating to the fourth century. The Church
fathers linked the image of the ox and the ass with a passage in the Prophet
Habakkuk (3:2): O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, a text
that in Hebrew and in the Greek version of the Septuagint reads, You will
reveal yourself between the two animals. Christian exegetical literature
later related these words to the two Churches: the one that descended from
the Jewish people, and the other that derives its origin from the gentiles.
The motif of the First Bath of the Child, with an evident baptismal reference,
was especially disseminated in Byzantine art on the basis of the apocryphal
Protoevangelium of Saint James. An aspect peculiar to Byzantine art is the
inclusion of the scene of the Glad Tidings to the Shepherds, found in
representations of the Nativity starting in the tenth century.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This is one of the few early Italian panels in the collection that has not been
cradled. The wooden support is a two-member poplar panel [1] of remarkable
thickness (6 cm), with horizontal grain; engaged to this is a simple gilded molding
that demarcates the three areas of the support to be painted. The panel and
moldings were prepared with a fine fabric followed by gesso. A thin, orange bole
was applied under the gilded areas. The ornamental border along the edges of the
gold ground, the halos, and the contours of the figures of the prophets were
incised in the preparation before painting. Mordant gilding is evident in the robes
of the Virgin and of the angels. Infrared reflectography reveals a simple
underdrawing.[2]
A photograph taken in or shortly before 1885 [3] suggests that the painting was
subjected to a rather drastic restoration, of unspecified date but probably carried
out before the acquisition for the Gemldegalerie der Knigliche Museen in Berlin,
in order to integrate the abrasions and render the image more pleasing by
extensive retouching. The inscriptions were also reinforced. Helmut Ruhemann
treated the painting in 1929;[4] photographs made after this treatment show the
worn areas of the painting. The figures of the prophets in particular are damaged
by abrasion and by small flaking paint losses as well as by sharp craquelure. A Dr.
Friedlander cleaned the painting at some point between 1929 and 1937.[5]
According to information in the William Suhr archives at the J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles, William Suhr removed a varnish, inpainted, and revarnished the
painting.[6] On the whole the painted surface, in spite of some abrasion, is fairly
well preserved. Numerous small areas of inpainting affect the faces of the angels,
the hair and beard of Isaiah, and the face of the Virgin.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the wood using cross-
sectional microscopy, and it was determined to be poplar (see report dated
January 31, 1989, in NGA conservation files).
[2] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Hamamatsu c/1000-03

Vidicon camera fitted with a lead sulphide tube and a Kodak Wratten 87A


filter.
[3] Reproduced in Eduard Dobbert, Duccios Bild Die Geburt Christi in der
Kniglichen Gemlde-Galerie zu Berlin, Jahrbuch der Preuischen
Kunstsammlungen 6 (1885): 158159.
[4] On this treatment, see Helmut Ruhemann, The Cleaning of Paintings:

Problems and Potentialities (London, 1968), 41. The same restorer noted that
on seeing the painting again in 1952, it looked finished with invisible
retouchings. The evidence of an old photograph in the photographic
archive of the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence suggests that a partial
cleaning of the panel may have occurred sometime before Ruhemanns.
[5] A telegram dated April 6, 1937, recorded in the Duveen Brothers Records,
Angeles: reel 92, box 237, folder 23, stated, picture cleaned off several
years ago by Dr. Friedlander.
[6] William Suhr archives at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (notes in
NGA conservation and curatorial files). This treatment was probably
accomplished in 1937, because a telegram dated April 6, 1937, in Duveen
Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 92, box 237, folder 23, stated,
Absolutely cannot be shown its present state although no important parts
missing yet much small detail work necessary get proper effect, and
another telegram dated May 7, 1937, stated, Duccio marvelous perfectly
exquisite color enchanting very happy with it far superior Benson Duccios.
PROVENANCE
NGA 1937.1.8 formed part of the front predella of Duccio's double-sided altarpiece
the Maest, which was in the course of execution by October 1308 and was placed
on the high altar of the Cathedral of Siena on 30 June 1311;[1] the altarpiece was
removed from the cathedral in 1506, first stored by the Cathedral authorities, and
then later displayed on the wall of the left transept, close to the altar of Saint
Sebastian, but probably by this time the predella and gable panels had already
been separated from it;[2] the altarpiece was moved to the church of Sant'Ansano
in 1777, where its two sides were separated and returned to the cathedral;[3] in
1798 the gables and eight panels of the predella were reported as being kept in
the sacristy of the cathedral, whereas the rest, including NGA 1937.1.8, must
already have been in private hands.[4] probably with Charles Fairfax Murray [1849-


1919], London and Florence, in the early 1880s,[5] who seems to have been the
seller, in 1884, to the Gemldegalerie der Knigliche Museen, Berlin;
deaccessioned 1937[6] and exchanged with (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New
York, and Paris);[7] purchased 26 April 1937 by The A.W. Mellon Educational and
Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[8] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The documents are published in
Jane Immler Satkowski, Duccio di Boninsegna. The Documents and Early Sources,
ed. Hayden B.J. Maginnis, Atlanta, 2000: 69-81, and in Allesandro Bagnoli et al.,
eds., Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, Siena, 2003.: 577-579.
[2] See Alessandro Lisini, Notizie di Duccio pittore e della sua celebre ancona,
Bullettino senese di storia patria 5 (1898): 24-25. According to this author, in 1506
the altarpiece "venne confinata in certi mezzanini dell'Opera [del Duomo]...e per
introdurvela fu necessario di togliere tutte le cuspidi e gli accessori" ("was stored in
certain passages in the Opera del Duomo...and to enter there it was necessary to
cut off all the pinnacles and accessories"). This latter term presumably comprises
the predella. Lisini stated that only "sulla fine del secolo" - i.e., at the end of the
sixteenth century - was the painting brought back to the cathedral. In Giovanna
Ragionieri's opinion, however, the altarpiece had already been returned to the
cathedral in 1536 and installed near the altar of Saint Sebastian. See Giovanna
Ragionieri, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli et al., Siena, 2003: 212. [3] See Pleo Bacci, Francesco di
Valdambrino, Emulo del Ghiberti e collaboratore di Jacopo della Quercia, Siena,
1936: 185-186. The author did not mention the gables and predella; these had
probably been separated earlier from the rest of the altarpiece (see the previous
note). After the separation of the two sides of the main panel, the front with the
image of the Madonna and Child enthroned in majesty surrounded by saints and
angels was hung in its former place in the left transept, and the narrative scenes of
the back were hung in the opposite transept. [4] See Bacci 1936, 187. Vittorio Lusini
specified that, apart from the twelve scenes of the gable, eight panels of the
predella were present in the sacristy at this time, i.e., one more than the predella
panels now preserved in the Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo in Siena.
The identity of this eighth scene is uncertain, but presumably it was different from
those that reappeared in private hands in the second half of the nineteenth
century. See Vittorio Lusini, Il Duomo di Siena, 2 vols., Siena, 1911-1939: 2:77. The
seven predella panels now in the Siena cathedral museum represent the Adoration
of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, the Massacre of the Innocents, the
Flight into Egypt, and Christ among the Doctors from the front predella, and the
Temptation on the Temple and the Wedding at Cana from the rear predella. James


Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, around the mid-nineteenth

century, were only able to see six predella panels in the sacristy of the cathedral:
the much damaged Temptation on the Temple and the eighth panel of unknown
subject were no longer there. See Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista
Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth
Century, 3 vols., London, 1864: 2:44 n. 1. Curt H. Weigelt discovered Temptation on
the Temple in the storerooms of the Opera del Duomo in 1909, whereas the eighth
panel has so far not been identified. See Curt H. Weigelt, Contributo alla
ricostruzione della Maest di Duccio di Buoninsegna nel Museo della
Metropolitana di Siena, Bullettino senese di storia patria 16, no. 2 (1909): 191214.
The predella, its many panels now divided among various museums in the world,
was probably disposed of by the Opera del Duomo during the eighteenth century,
and was at first privately owned in Siena. [5] No source, as far as Mikls Boskovits
knows, claims that Fairfax Murray actually owned the painting; however, James
Stubblebine plausibly suggests this (Duccio di Buoninsegna and his school,
Princeton, 1979: 37). In fact, in 1883 the English painter-dealer sold two other
panels of the predella of the Maest to the National Gallery in London, those
representing the Annunciation and the Healing of the Man Born Blind (nos. 1139,
1140). In 1886 he sold four additional panels of the predella to Robert Benson in
London (one of these is NGA 1939.1.141). It seems that he initially had hoped to sell
them all to the Gemldegalerie in Berlin and had tried to convince the gallery to
purchase them, offering to give one of the panels as his gift. Significantly, Eduard
Dobbert (Duccios Bild 'Die Geburt Christi' in der Kniglichen Gemlde - Galerie zu
Berlin, Jakrbuch der Berliner Museen 6 (1885): 153-163) thanked Fairfax Murray for
having helped him with information in his hypothetical reconstruction of the
Maest. [6] Knigliche Museen zu Berlin, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der
Gemlde, Berlin, 1891: 77, as no. 1062A. The painting is mentioned as having been
relinquished by the Gemldegalerie ("1937 abgegeben") in the museum's
Gesamtverzeichnis, Berlin, 1996: 601. Helmut Ruhemann, The Cleaning of Painting
, London, 1968: 41, remembers that the painting was "exchanged [...] for an average
Holbein," and Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.,
Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:172 n. 12, quotes a letter of the same restorer to the
National Gallery of Art, according to which the Duccio predella panel "was
exchanged in the 1930s by the Gemldegalerie for a painting by Cranach." This
was evidently a slip of the pen; the exchanged picture was the Portrait of a Man
with Lute by Holbein, no. 2154 in the Berlin gallery, which came from an American
private collection and was acquired by the Gemldegalerie in 1937 (


Gesamtverzeichnis, Berlin, 1996: 60); see the following note. [7] Duveen Brothers
wrote to the director of the paintings department at the Berlin museum on 26
February 1937, offering the portrait by Holbein (then said to be . . . of Jean de
Dinteville, from Henry Goldmans collection) in exchange for two paintings in
Berlin, this painting by Duccio and the Fra Filippo Lippi Madonna and Child, also in
the National Gallery of Art (NGA 1939.1.290; Mikls Boskovits and David Alan
Brown, Italian paintings of the Fifteenth Century, Washington, D.C. and New York,
2003: 401-405). Bernard Berensons opinion about the painting came in a letter
dated 15 March 1937. By April, Duveens offices in Paris and New York were
exchanging messages concerning conservation work on the painting, and David
Finley had seen the painting for Andrew Mellon by early May. Duveen Brothers
Los Angeles: reel 48, box 139, folder 4; reel 92, box 237, folder 23; reel 189, box
334, folder 2; reel 192, box 237, folder 23; copies in NGA curatorial files. See also
Duveen Brothers, Inc., Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America, New York,
1941: 6. [8] The Mellon Trust purchase date is according to Mellon collection
records in NGA curatorial files and David Finley's notebook (donated to the
National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in Gallery Archives).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1885 Dobbert, Eduard. "Duccios Bild Die Geburt Christi in der Kniglichen
Gemlde-Galerie zu Berlin." Jahrbuch der Preuischen
Kunstsammlungen 6 (1885): 153-163.
1885 "Fragment von Duccios Dombilde." Kunstfreund 1 (1885): 75.
1885 Thode, Henry. Franz von Assisi und die Anfnge der Kunst der
Renaissance in Italien. Berlin, 1885: 75.
1890 Schubring, Paul. Moderner Cicerone, vol. 1, das Kaiser Friedrich-
Museum, Berlin. Stuttgart [u.a.], 1890: 81, repro. 83.
1891 Meyer, Julius, Hugo von Tschudi, and Wilhelm von Bode.
Beschreibendes Verzeichniss der Gemlde. Knigliche Museen, Berlin .
3rd ed. Berlin, 1891: 72, repro.
1893 Prat, Andr. "tudes sur la peinture Siennoise. Duccio, 1." Gazette des
Beaux-Arts S. 3, v. 9 (1893): 89.
1893 Prat, Andr. "tudes sur la peinture Siennoise. Duccio, 2." Gazette
des Beaux-Arts S. 3, v. 10 (1893): 178, 200.
1898 Lisini, Alessandro. "Notizie di Duccio pittore e della sua celebre ancona."
Bollettino senese di storia paria 5 (1898): 25, 27.
1909 Posse, Hans. Die Gemldegalerie des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums:


vollstndiger beschreibender Katalog mit Abbildungen smtlicher

Gemlde, vol. 1, die romanischen Lnder. Berlin, 1909: 15 (repro.), 16.
1911 Lusini, Vittorio. Il Duomo di Siena. Siena, 1911: 128, 148 n. 115.
1913 Posse, Hans, ed. Die Gemldegalerie des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums:
vollstndiger beschreibender Katalog mit Abbildungen smtlicher
Gemlde. Berlin, 1913: 15 (repro.), 16.
1916 Millet, Gabriel. Recherches sur liconographie de lvangile aux XIVe,
XVe et XVIe sicles, daprs les monuments de Mistra, de la Macdoine
et du Mont-Athos. Bibliothque des coles franaises dAthnes et de
Rome ... fasc 109. Paris, 1916: 110.
1918 Pladan, Josphin. "Au Louvre. Les maitres qui manquent." Les Arts 169
(1918): repro. 6.
1919 Schottmller, Frieda. "Italienische Schulen." In Das Kaiser Friedrich
Museum. Fhrer durch die Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. 4th ed. Berlin,
1919: 146 (repro.). 147-148.
1930 Staatliche Museen Berlin. Die Gemldegalerie, vol. 2, die italienischen
Meister 13. bis 15. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1930: repro. 44.
1934 Kunze, Irene. Fhrer durch die Gemldegalerie: die italienischen
Meister. Berlin, 1934: 4.
1937 Cecchi, Emilio. Giotto. Milan, 1937: 117-122.
New York, 1941: no. 6, repro.
(repro.), 233.
repro. 100.
1946 Carli, Enzo. Vetrata duccesca. Florence, 1946: 39.
Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 4, repro.
Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 5.
Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 14, color repro.
(undated, 1960s): 10, as Nativity with Two Prophets.
1962 Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Treasures from the National
Gallery of Art. Translated. New York, 1962: 10, color repro.



1968 Ruhemann, Helmut. The Cleaning of Paintings: Problems and
Potentialities. London, 1968: 41.
1979 Amico, Leonard N. "Reconstructing an Early Fourteenth Century
Pentaptych by Ugolino di Nerio: St. Catherine Finds Her Niche." Bulletin
Krannert Art Museum 5, no. 1 (1979): 13, repro. 14.
1992: 11, repro.
1996 Bock, Henning, and Rainald Grosshans, eds. Gemldegalerie Berlin:
Gesamtverzeichnis. Berlin, 1996: 601.
1997 Shaw-Eagle, Joanna. "Christ's Birth Gave Birth to Astounding Images:
Gallery Glitters with holy Masterpieces." Washington Times (21
December 1997): D5.
1998 Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. "Virgin/Virginity." In Encyclopedia of
Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by
Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:906.
Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 2-3, 6-7, no. 2, color
repros.
2006 Hartt, Frederick and David G. Wilkins. History of Italian Renaissance Art:
Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, 2006: 105-
107, color figs. 4.3, 4.8.
2010 Giorgi, Rosa. Liconografia della Nativit nella tradizione e la novit del
Lippi. In Filippo Lippi: La Nativit. Exh. cat. Museo Diocesano, Milan,
2010: 55-57, color figs. 2, 3.


Catalogues. London, 2011: 174-175, under no. NG1330, color fig. 1.
2013 Dunlop, Ann. "Carrying the Weight of Empire." in Matters of Weight:
Force, Gravity, and Aesthetics in the Early Modern Period. Edited by
David Young Kim. Emsdetten and Berlin, 2013: 87 n. 11.
2013 "Vasari and the National Gallery of Art." National Gallery of Art Bulletin
48 (Spring 2013): 10-11, repro.


Fei, Paolo di Giovanni

Also known as
Feo, Paolo di
Sienese, c. 1335/1345 - 1411
BIOGRAPHY
Documented on July 1, 1369, as a member of the General Council of the city of

Siena,[1] Paolo must have already reached his majority by then, so that he would
have been born sometime prior to 13441345. He must have been trained as an
artist in his hometown, perhaps in the shop of Bartolo di Fredi (with whom he
would collaborate on the frescoes in the Malavolti Chapel in San Domenico in
1397),[2] or in that of Francesco di Vannuccio, with whom his earliest works also
reveal affinities. Various documents cite the artist, but only for his civic duties.
Works of his that are recorded by the sources (such as the panel dated 1381 or 1391
formerly in the church of San Maurizio) or otherwise documented (some statues
that he colored, paintings executed for Siena Cathedral in 14021403 and in 1407
1408, and an altarpiece for the chapel of San Daniele there) have been lost. The
painter signed his last will and testament on June 1, 1411. By October of that year he
was dead.
Art historians have attempted to reconstruct Paolos oeuvre on the basis of the
only signed painting to have survived from his hand: polyptych no. 300 in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena. Despite the lack of chronological clues about his
artistic production, art historians have agreed in ascribing to his initial phase the
half-figure images of the Madonna and Child in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los
Angeles and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Madonna
and Child Enthroned with Saints in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. In these
paintings, the rather stereotyped rigidity of poses and the repetitiveness of the
facial masks reveal some uncertainty, characteristic of the production of artists at
the start of their careers. By contrast, the painter shows himself fully at his ease in
proposing an elaborate composition, rich in observations taken from daily life, in
the polyptych of the Birth of the Virgin, also in the Pinacoteca of Siena, probably
datable to the early or mid-1380s. The few fragments of fresco attributable to him,
found in the Accerigi Chapel in San Domenico in Siena, date to 1387.[3] Two
tavolette di Biccherna in the Archivio di Stato of Siena, also attributed to the artist,
Fei, Paolo di Giovanni 309


date respectively to 1388 and 1394.[4] An increasingly pronounced attempt to give

an individual characterization to the protagonists of his paintings, who now move
with ease and spontaneity and are happily immersed in the parts they are called to
play, can be noted in polyptych no. 300 in Siena, datable to the early 1390s, and in
that of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, executed in 13981399, of
which the central panel is now in the National Gallery of Art. The polyptych in the
oratory of San Bernardino al Prato and the Crucifixion recently rediscovered below
a clumsy late-sixteenth-century painting in the Museo Civico in Siena probably date
to the same years.[5]
To the concluding phase of Paolos career, characterized by considerable

originality and modernity in compositional schemes and an increasing richness of
realistic detail, we can assign some small but precious panels for private devotion,
such as the triptych in the Minutolo Chapel in Naples Cathedral, probably painted
c. 1408;[6] another triptych with the Crucifixion and stories of the Passion, which
recently appeared at a sale in Paris;[7] and the Assumption of the Virgin in the
Galleryworks that probably played an important role in stimulating the artists of
the first generation of Sienese painting in the fifteenth century.
[1] For this and other documentary information on the life of the painter, see Pleo
Bacci, Dipinti inediti e sconosciuti di Pietro Lorenzetti, Bernardo Daddi etc. in Siena
e nel contado (Siena, 1939), 165206. Sienese citizens attained their majority at
age twenty-five.
[2] Gaudenz Freuler, Die Malavolti-Kapelle des Bartolo di Fredi und Paolo di
Giovanni Fei in S. Domenico in Siena, Pantheon 45 (1987): 3953. In Laurence
Kanters opinion (kind personal communication), Naddo Ceccarelli must have been
Paolos master.
[3] Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1965),
104110; Peter Anselm Riedl and Max Seidel, eds., Die Kirchen von Siena, 3 vols.
(Munich, 19852006), vol. 2, bk. 1, pt. 2: 656; bk. 2, pt. 2: figs. 730731.
[4] Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1965),
143146, 234235, 242; Luigi Borgia and Enzo Carli, eds., Le Biccherne: Tavole
dipinte delle magistrature senesi (secoli xiiixviii) (Rome, 1984), 118119, 124125.
[5] Alessandro Bagnoli, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Randon, eds., Il Crocifisso con i
dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: Un capolavoro riscoperto (Siena, 2005).


[6] Michael Mallory, An Early Quattrocento Trinity, The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 85
89.
[7] Crucifixion (and the Blessing Christ above), Ascent to Calvary, and Deposition
(with the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin above), 69 53 cm, formerly Comte de
V. collection, tude Tajan, sale, Htel Drouot, Paris, March 30, 1998, lot. 1.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Perkins, F. Mason. Paolo di Giovanni Fei. In

1907-1950: 26(1932):211-212.
1932 Marle, Raimond van.

Le scuole della pittura italiana. Translated by Alba Buitoni. 2 vols. The
Hague and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):524-537.
1939 Bacci, Pleo.

Dipinti inediti e sconosciuti di Pietro Lorenzetti, Bernardo Daddi etc. in
Siena e nel contado. Siena, 1939: 165-206.
1960 Campolongo, Elizabetta. Fei, Paolo di Giovanni. In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 46(1996):14-18.
1966 Mallory, Michael. An Early Quattrocento Trinity.

The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 85-89.
1976 Mallory, Michael.

The Sienese painter Paolo di Giovanni Fei (c. 1345-1411). Originally
presented as a Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1965. New York,
1976.
1981 Carli, Enzo.

La pittura senese del Trecento. Milan, 1981: 235, 238, 240, 241, 244,
256, 264 n. 200, 265 n. 209, figs. 280-283.


1982 Guiducci, Anna Maria. In

Il Gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte. Exh. cat.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 295-298.
1984 Borgia, Luigi, and Enzo Carli, eds.

Le Biccherne: tavole dipinte delle Magistrature senesi (secoli XIII
XVIII). Rome, 1984: 118-119, 124-125.
1985 Riedl, Peter Anselm, and Max Seidel, eds.

Die Kirchen von Siena. 3 vols. Munich, 1985: 2, pt. 1.2:656; 2, pt. 2: figs.
730-731.
1987 Freuler, Gaudenz. Die Malavolti-Kapelle des Bartolo di Fredi und Paolo
di Giovanni Fei in S. Domenico in Siena.
Pantheon 45 (1987): 39-53.
2005 Bagnoli, Alessandro, Silvaia Colucci, and Veronica Radon, eds.

Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: un
capolavoro riscoperto. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca nationale, Siena, 2005.


Paolo di Giovanni Fei

Sienese, c. 1335/1345 - 1411
The Assumption of the

Virgin with Busts of the
Archangel Gabriel and the
Virgin of the Annunciation
c. 1400/1405
tempera on panel
painted surface: 66.5 38.1 cm (26 3/16 15 in.)
overall: 79.8 51 cm (31 7/16 20 1/16 in.)
ENTRY
Although the bodily Assumption of the Virgin did not officially become the dogma
of the Catholic Church until 1950,[1] it began to be represented in art in the
eleventh century (with some isolated examples even earlier than that).[2] In Italy,
one of the first large-scale images of the Assumption is found in Siena, in the great
rose window of the cathedral, based on a cartoon by Duccio di Buoninsegna
(Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319) and dating to c. 1288. Here Mary is sitting in a
mandorla of light, supported by angels in flight, with her hands joined in prayer, in
the pose in which she would be frequently portrayed in the following centuries.[3]
The image of Mary borne up to heaven by angels would then be enriched with
further details in the course of the fourteenth century. In particular, it would be
accompanied (as in the present panel) with a scene of the apostles with
expressions of wonder and awe gathered around the Virgins tomb, which is filled
with flowers only,[4] and with the figure of Saint Thomas, who is shown kneeling on
the Mount of Olives, separated from his companions and praying to Mary. He was
asking for a sign of her bodily Assumption, and the Virgin answered his prayer by
throwing down her girdle,[5] a relic that is now venerated in Prato Cathedral.
The panel in the National Gallery of Art might originally have been a self-sufficient
devotional image and not part of a larger complex. This is suggested by the two
The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of 313
the Annunciation

medallions with the Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate in its
upper spandrels; in polyptychs and portable triptychs, this extremely concise
narrative of the Annunciation usually appears on the two outer sides in the upper
tier [fig. 1].[6]
The attribution of the painting has never been in doubt: ever since Robert Langton
Douglas (1904) introduced it to the art historical literature, its ascription to the
Sienese master Paolo di Giovanni Fei has been unanimously accepted.[7] Greater
uncertainties surround its date, even though most art historians agree that it should
be ascribed to a relatively advanced phase in Paolos career. There is also
widespread recognition of its high artistic qualities.[8] Both opinions can be
confirmed, though it should be premised that the earliest of Paolos securely
datable paintings dates to 1387, and hence the first two decades of his career still
remain obscure. Nevertheless, research over the last half century, and in particular
the studies of Michael Mallory, have helped to establish the sequence of the
paintings dating to the painters maturity and offer sufficient evidence to confirm
that the present panel was painted within the first decade of the fifteenth century.
Paolo di Giovanni Feis stylistic development can be briefly summed up as follows.

In works presumably dating to the 1370s, the artist proposed solemn and static
compositions. The figures are virtually immobile and symmetrically distributed.
Reserved, even impassive, in expression, they are enveloped in thick starched
draperies with the consistency of leather, barely ruffled by a few broad folds. After
this phase, exemplified by such paintings as the versions of the Madonna in the
Atlanta Art Association and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or the
Saint Lawrence formerly in the Matthiesen Gallery in London,[9] Paolo modified his
style, while largely maintaining his spacious and symmetrical compositions. In such
paintings as the fragmentary polyptych in the Museo dArte Sacra in Asciano and
the portable triptych no. 137 and the diptych no. 146 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in
Siena, all dating to around 1380, the characterization of the protagonists becomes
more animated and the description of their gestures and reactions to the events
taking place more circumspect.[10] The paintings of this period are distinguished
by their very detailed narratives, and the scenes are more complex and crowded.
Although the faces remain almost impenetrable to human emotions, the
expressiveness of the gestures seems ever more meticulously observed and
effective. The artist also reveals a growing interest in the spatial setting of his
figures. Results of these developments, dating to the mid-1380s, can be seen in
such paintings as the altarpiece of the Birth of the Virgin in the Pinacoteca
the Annunciation

Nazionale in Siena and various other large-format works including a polyptych and
a painted crucifix executed for the hospital complex of Santa Maria della Scala in
Siena, the latter unfortunately the victim of a restorers excessive zeal.[11] The
painting discussed here can no doubt be placed in the last decades of Paolos
career, presumably in the intermediate years between The Presentation of the
Virgin in the Temple painted for Siena Cathedral (13981399) and now in the
Gallery and the triptych [fig. 2] in the Cathedral of Naples (14071408).[12]
As in other paintings dating to the first years of the fifteenth century, the artist
skillfully exploits the background of his compositions to enlarge the space of the
action and tries in various ways to give a realistic character to the episodes. In the
panel now in Washington, each of the figures reacts in his own personal way to the
miracle of the flowers that bloom in profusion in the sarcophagus in place of the
body of Mary [fig. 3]. In contrast to the version proposed by Taddeo di Bartolo in
his Montepulciano Cathedral polyptych (1401), which also shows the Assumption at
the center,[13] Paolo does not try to reunite the apostles in a compact group but
distributes them freely around the sarcophagus. His scene is striking both for its
spaciousness and for the realistic effects in characterizing the apostles reactions:
their gestures are spontaneous, not over-dramatic in expressing surprise. An
example of the artists pursuit of verisimilitude is the conduct of the youth at the
center, who thrusts himself forward between two companions. Supporting himself
with one hand on the shoulder of Saint Bartholomew [14] and with the other on the
edge of the sarcophagus, he leans forward eagerly, with head bowed, to see
better what is happening. His sharply foreshortened face is also typical of the
innovations associated with this phase in the painters career. An even bolder
effect of foreshortening is achieved in the backwards-bent head of Saint Thomas,
casting his gaze up to the Virgin. In contrast to other contemporary representations
of the theme, Saint Thomas is seen at some distance from the rest of the apostles
(his figure, indeed, is smaller); he kneels on a rock outcropping, evidently intended
to represent the Mount of Olives. The foreshortened sides of the sarcophagus also
help to accentuate his distance; not only do they measure the depth of the space
in which the action is taking place, but they lead the observers gaze backwards to
the apostle invoking the gift of the girdle. Also worth pointing out is the trouvaille
of depicting the Madonna of the Assumption not, as usual, in a mandorla of light or
in a similar oval form of seraphim, but surrounded only by the rays of light incised
in the gold ground and seated on a throne of clouds, whose step has the
consistency of cotton-wool and is supported with great delicacy by two fluttering
angels. These details suggest for the Gallerys Assumption, as Mallory already
the Annunciation

pointed out, a date more advanced than Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple,
datable to 13981399. On the other hand, Mallorys proposal that the date be
deferred to the last years in the artists life seems questionable.[15] The very
elongated proportions of the figures in the Neapolitan triptych, the accentuated
hanchement of their poses and the multiplication of the folds in their draperies that
introduce a more restless movement into these latter paintings, together with the
exaggerated pathos of their facial expressions, seem to me to indicate a further
development, a step in the direction of the artistic ideals of the International Gothic.
These developments had evidently not yet been made at the time of the painting
of our Assumption.
the Annunciation

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Paolo di Giovanni Fei, Triptych from the Minutolo

fig. 1 Paolo di Giovanni Fei, triptych, location unknown Chapel, 14071408, tempera on panel, Naples Cathedral.
Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY
the Annunciation

fig. 3 Detail of figures reacting to the miracle of the

flowers in place of Mary's body, Paolo di Giovanni Fei, The
Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel
Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation, c. 1400/1405,
Samuel H. Kress Collection
NOTES
[1] Anton Ziegenaus, Aufnahme: Leibliche Aufnahme Mariens in den Himmel,

in Marienlexikon, ed. Remigius Bumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St.
Ottilien, 1988), 1:276286.
[2] See Else Staedel, Ikonographie der Himmelfahrt Mariens (Strasbourg, 1935);
Ulriche Liebl, Himmelfahrt Mariae: Kunstgeschichte, in Marienlexikon, ed.
Remigius Bumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1991), 3:205208.
The Assumption (Koimesis) was celebrated in the Orthodox Church from a
very early date, but until the thirteenth century only the assumptio animae
and not the physical assumption of the body of Mary was represented in art.
See Klaus Wessel, Himmelfahrt Mariae, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen
Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1971), 2:12561262.
[3] For a useful summary of the iconographic development of the Assumption

in Tuscany in the fourteenth century, see Richard Offner, A Critical and
vol. 7, The Biadaiolo Illuminator, Master of the Dominican Effigies (New
York, 1957), 4849 n. 2.
the Annunciation

[4] In Sienese representations of the early Trecento, the sarcophagus of Mary

either does not appear at all or is shown empty. The sarcophagus full of
flowers would only begin to appear towards the end of the fourteenth
century in works by Francesco di Vannuccio, Bartolo di Fredi, and Taddeo di
Bartolo. See Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der
sienesischen Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), pl. 14, fig. 127, pl. 19. It
is in this last painting, belonging to the cathedral in Montepulciano and
dated 1401, that we see not only the flowers in the sarcophagus but also the
apostles gathered around the tomb with expressions of astonishment. Cf.
Os, Marias Demut, 157176.
[5] The legend of the girdle given to Saint Thomas appears for the first time in
the Liber de transitu Virginis Mariae, probably dating to the sixth century,
but its earliest representations in art are not found before the thirteenth
century; see Klaus Wessel, Himmelfahrt Mariae, in Reallexikon zur
byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart, 1971), 2:12591261;
and Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols. (Gtersloh,
19661990), 4, pt. 2: 87, 129131.
[6] Examples of triptychs or polyptychs in which the Annunciation appears at

the two outer sides of the gable zonethe Archangel on one side, the
Virgin on the otherare legion. In diptychs, the busts of the Angel and the
Virgin Annunciate usually appear respectively in the left and right leaf. It is
therefore unlikely that the National Gallery of Art panel originally belonged
to such a multipart altarpiece. In some cases, however, the Annunciation is
represented in the upper spandrels of the central panel of a portable
triptych, such as that by Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 -
1318/1319) in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena (no. 35). That this was not
the case here is argued by the treatment of the frame: not only is there no
evidence of hinges anywhere along the sides, but also the broad, decorated
frieze that encircles the composition precludes the existence of movable
shutters that might have closed over it. The presence of the Annunciation
roundels in our painting also argues against its being one of a class of
object not uncommonly found in Trecento Siena: independently framed
panels meant to be viewed as parts of a narrative complex but not
physically attached to one another. Examples by Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese,
active 1306 - 1345) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery,
London), Niccolo di Buonaccorso (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
National Gallery, London; Uffizi, Florence), and others are known.
[7] Robert Langton Douglas, The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena, The
Nineteenth Century and After 57 (1904): 763. Apart from the publications
cited in the Bibliography, it may be recalled that Alberto Riccoboni (1947), in
support of the attribution of the painting to Paolo, also cited expertises
conducted by himself and by Gino Calore, as well as a parere concorde
(corroborating opinion) by Roberto Longhi. Alberto Riccoboni, ed., Prima
the Annunciation

Mostra Nazionale Antiquaria: Quattrocento pitture inedite (Venice, 1947), x,

xxi, 5 repro.
[8] Robert Langton Douglas (1904, 1908) called the Washington Assumption
beautiful; he compared it with the panels by Paolo di Giovanni Fei now in
the Lehman Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in
the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg; the latter he believed to be a youthful
work. See Robert Langton Douglas, The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena,
The Nineteenth Century and After 57 (1904): 763; Robert Langton Douglas,
in Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of
Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, vol. 3, The
Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian Schools, ed. Robert Langton Douglas
(London, 1908), 131 n. 3. Raimond van Marle (1924) termed it charming,
though erroneously describing it as a triptych; he too placed it in the
earliest phase of the painters career; Raimond van Marle, The Development
of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th
Century (The Hague, 1924), 529. Michael Mallory (1964, 1973), by contrast,
placed it at the end of Paolos career; indeed, he assigned it the very last
place in his catalog of the master, observing that the figures crescendo of
emotions in this painting climaxes the trend toward expressionism that we
have traced in the latter stages of the masters development. Michael
Mallory, Towards a Chronology for Paolo di Giovanni Fei, The Art Bulletin
46 (1964): 530; Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia
University, 1965), 177191, 241. Fern Rusk Shapley (1966) said that the
superior technique and the serious facial expressions present in the
painting recall Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) and
conjectured a dating about 1385. Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the
Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966),
61. Bruce Cole (1980) confirmed a dating around 1400 and called the
painting one of Feis most genial altarpiece (sic); later publications
generally accepted this dating and placed the work in the first decade of the
fifteenth century. Bruce Cole, Sienese Painting from Its Origins to the
Fifteenth Century (New York, 1980), 194. Art historians of more recent years
have also rated the Washington Assumption highly: tra le espressioni pi
alte della sua arte (among the highest expressions of his art); Elizabetta
Campolongo, Fei, Paolo di Giovanni, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
82 vols. (Rome, 1996), 46:17.
[9] For the panel in Atlanta, see Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel
H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 62. The
date MCCCXXXIII inscribed at the foot of the painting seems to be at least
partially original, but the figure now legible (1333) cannot be right and is
presumably the result of a mistaken restoration of an illegible letter. It might
be conjectured that the original date was MCCCLXXIII. For the New York
Madonna, see Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings:
the Annunciation

Sienese and Central Italian Schools: A Catalogue of the Collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 5859. The formerly
Matthiesen Gallery Saint Lawrence is illustrated in Early Italian Paintings and
Works of Art 13001480 in Aid of the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum
(London, 1983), 34, no. 17.
[10] For the polyptych in the Museo dArte Sacra in Asciano, now deprived of its
central panel, see Cecilia Alessi, ed., Palazzo Corboli, Museo darte sacra,
Musei senesi (Siena, 2002), 120121; for the panels in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena, see Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena,
vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 181, 184.
[11] Apart from Birth of the Virgin (no. 117), two versions of the Crucifixion
probably belong to this phase as well: the frescoed version in Santa Maria
della Scala and the version on panel in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. See
Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV
secolo (Genoa, 1977), 179180; Alessandro Bagnoli, Silvia Colucci, and
Veronica Randon, eds., Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di
Giovanni Fei: Un capolavoro riscoperto (Siena, 2005), 1314. Of the
polyptych of Santa Maria della Scala only the central panel of the Madonna
and Child with Angels now remains; see Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures
of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3 vols.
(London, 1968), 2: fig. 419. The early fourteenth-century crucifix in Santa
Maria della Scala was entirely repainted by Paolo di Giovanni Fei, but his
version of the painting was canceled by a drastic restoration after the
Second World War, on which see Mikls Boskovits, Il gotico senese
rivisitato: Proposte e commenti su una mostra, Arte cristiana 71 (1983): 265,
fig. 19.
[12] See The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple in this catalog; for the
Neapolitan triptych, commissioned by Cardinal Enrico Minutolo, see Michael
Mallory, An Early Quattrocento Trinity, The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 8589.
Mallory rightly linked the altarpiece to the period that the cardinal spent in
Siena between September 1407 and January 1408; it cannot be excluded,
however, that the painting, commissioned during Minutolos residence in
Siena, was executed and delivered to him some time later. Other paintings
that, in my view, should be placed in the period around 1400 include the
polytych no. 300 in the Pinacoteca of Siena and the polyptych in the Oratory
of San Bernardino al Prato, for which see Alessandro Bagnoli, Silvia Colucci,
and Veronica Randon, eds., Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di
Giovanni Fei: Un capolavoro riscoperto (Siena, 2005), 5859.
[13] See Hendrik W. van Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der
sienesischen Malerei: 13001450 (The Hague, 1969), 172173, figs. 19, 113,
and the catalog entry in Gail E. Solberg, Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and
Work (PhD diss., New York University, 1991), 477547.
the Annunciation

[14] Bartholomew is identifiable by his light-blue mantle and conspicuously

brocaded garment and by his facial type, characterized by curly hair and
long dark beard: George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of
the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 137; Gregor Martin Lechner,
Bartolomus Ap. u. Mart, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed.
Engelbert Kirschbaum and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, 1973), 5:320
334.
[15] Michael Mallory wrote, The Assumption of the Virgin...appears to be the

latest of his works to have survived, in Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni
Fei (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1965), 177178. This opinion was shared
by Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 244; Anna Maria
Guiducci, in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte
(Florence, 1982), 296; Giovanni Leoncini, Fei, Paolo di Giovanni, in La
Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols.
(Milan, 1986), 2:570; Simona Manacorda, Fei, Paolo di Giovanni, in
Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1995), 6:133; Veronica
Randon, Paolo di Giovanni Fei dipintore del Terzo di citt, in Il Crocifisso
con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: Un capolavoro riscoperto,
ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Randon (Siena, 2005),
51.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a single piece of wood with vertical grain, to which the engaged
frame is affixed.[1] The round arch springing from corbels by which the composition
is enclosed is enlivened on its inner side by a small pastiglia arcade. Further
pastiglia decoration surrounds the painted medallions in the spandrels between
the arch and the engaged frame. The painting was executed, as usual, on a white
gesso ground, and the areas to be gilded were prepared by a layer of red bole.
The outlines of some of the figures and all of the architecture were incised into the
wet gesso for preliminary placement on the panel. The paint was applied very
thinly, in minute striations. The frame, the border of the gold ground, and the halos
are decorated with punch marks, and incised lines simulate rays of light
surrounding the Virgin. The brocade fabrics were created using sgraffito.
The panel, which is now 2.5 cm thick, was cradled and probably thinned slightly by
Stephen Pichetto in 1948. As the x-radiographs show, it has suffered from worm
tunneling in the past. The painted surface is well preserved, apart from some
scratches in the lower figure group. In 1949, Mario Modestini removed a discolored
the Annunciation

varnish, inpainted the scattered small paint losses, and applied a coating of
varnish, now somewhat discolored.[2]
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] On the typology of the important, original frame, see Timothy J. Newbery,
George Bisacca, and Laurence B. Kanter, Italian Renaissance Frames (New
York, 1990), 3435.
[2] For essential information about the 19481949 treatment, see Fern Rusk
1:177. A Reali photograph, probably made for Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi
shortly after he acquired the painting (copy in the photo archive of the
Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), shows the painted surface somewhat
darkened, with small paint losses in the group of the apostles as well as
some scratches, one crossing the face of the third apostle from the left and
others around the chest of the third apostle from the right. The gold of the
engaged frame appears damaged by various checks, small losses, and
tenting here and there. These damages no longer appear on the photo
taken after the treatments by Pichetto and Modestini.
PROVENANCE
Marchese Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari [1841-1908], Siena, by 1904;[1] his heirs;

(Alberto Riccoboni, Italy), by 1947 or 1948;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi,
Florence); sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to
NGA. [1] Robert Langton Douglas (The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena, The
Nineteenth Century and After 57 [1904]: 763; James Archer Crowe and Giovanni
Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy, ed. Robert Langton Douglas, 6
vols., London, 1903-1914: 3(1908): 131 n. 3) and F. Mason Perkins (Dipinti senesi
sconosciuti o inediti, Rassegna dArte antica e moderna 1 (1914): 99) confirm his
ownership. Various authors, through Bernard Berenson (Pitture italiane del
Rinascimento, Milan, 1936: 159), continued to mention that the painting belonged
to the Chigi Zondadari family. [2] The dealer Alberto Riccoboni (Quattrocento
Pitture Inedite, exh. cat., Venice, 1947: 5) gives no ownership; presumably the
painting still belonged to the Chigi Zondadari family at the time and was only
entrusted to Riccoboni for sale in the following year. [3] The Kress Foundation
made an offer to Contini-Bonacossi on 7 June 1948 for a group of twenty-eight
the Annunciation

paintings, including this one; the offer was accepted on 11 July 1948 (see copies of
correspondence in NGA curatorial files).
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1947 Prima mostra Nazionale Antiquaria. Quattrocento Pitturi inedite,

Organizzazione Manifestazioni Artistiche, Venice, 1947, no. 23, fig. 12.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1914: 3(1908):125 n. 2, 131 n. 3.
1904 Douglas, Robert Langton. "The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena." The
Nineteenth Century and After 57 (1904): 763.
1907 Perkins, Frederick Mason. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In Allgemeines
Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart.
Edited by Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker and Hans Vollmer. 37 vols.
Leipzig, 1907-1950: 26(1932):211.
York, 1908-1909: 2(1909):74.
ed. New York, 1909: 167.
1914 Perkins, F. Mason. "Depinti senesi sconosciuti o inediti." Rassenga
d'Arte 1 (1914): 99.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):529, 531.
184.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):578, 581.
the Annunciation

1947 Riccoboni, Alberto, ed. Prima Mostra Nazionale Antiquaria.

Quattrocento pitture Inedite. Exh. cat. Venice, 1947: x, xxi, repro. 5.
no. 8, repro.
1952 Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. London and
New York, 1952: fig. 267.
York, 1955: pl. 26.
1960 Campolongo, Elizabetta. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Dizionario
biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 82+ vols.
Rome, 1960+: 46(1996):17.
1964 Mallory, Michael. "Towards a Chronology for Paolo di Giovanni Fei." The
Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 530.
1965 Mallory, Michael. Paolo di Giovanni Fei. PhD diss. Columbia University,
1965. Ann Arbor, MI, 1973: 177-191, 241, fig. 84.
1966 Mallory, Michael. "An Early Quattrocento Trinity." The Art Bulletin 48
(1966): 86, fig. 1.
Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 61, fig. 160.
1968 Degenhart, Bernhard, and Annegrit Schmitt. Corpus der italienischen
Zeichnungen 1300-1450, 1: Sud- und Mittelitalien. 4 vols. Berlin, 1968: 1,
pt. 1:200, fig. 281.
1969 Mallory, Michael. "A Lost Madonna del Latte by Ambrogio Lorenzetti."
The Art Bulletin 51 (1969): 42, n. 14.
sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 164, 166, 208, fig.
112.
in Virginia 2 (1971): 10, 11, fig. 13.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 60, 307, 647.
the Annunciation

1972 "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e

degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto Bolaffi and
Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols. Turin, 1972-1976: 8(1975):315.
1978 Grimm, Claus. Alte Bilderrahmen: Epochen, Typen, Material. Munich,
1978: 46, fig. 22.
123.
1979 Sutton, Denys. "Robert Langton Douglas. Part I." Apollo 109 (April 1979):
314 [68] fig. 42, 315 [69].
1980 Cole, Bruce. Sienese Painting from Its Origins to the Fifteenth Century.
New York, 1980: 194, 195, fig. 103.
283.
Musical Subject Matter, pt. 2." Imago Musicae 2 (1985): 196, 197.
National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York 1986: 1.
1986 Leoncini, Giovanni. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In La Pittura in Italia. Il
1986: 2:570.
1990 Newbery, Timothy J., George Bisacca, and Laurence B. Kanter. Italian
Renaissance Frames. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Musem of Art. New York,
1990: 35.
1991 Manacorda, Simona. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 6(1995):133.
1996 Thomas, Anabel. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 24:28.
1997: 198, 200-201, repro.
Angelini and Bernardina Sani. 1st ed. Milan, 1997: repro. 200.
the Annunciation


Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 47, 70, 73, 94, 296, 318, 350, 379.
2003 "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Dictionnaire de la peinture. Edited by Michel
Laclotte and Jean Pierre Cuzin. Paris, 2003: 315.
2005 Bagnoli, Alessandro, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Radon, eds. Il
Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: un capolavoro
riscoperto. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, 2005: 34 n. 18, 51, 60.
2008 Boskovits, Mikls, and Johannes Tripps, eds. Maestri senesi e toscani
nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg. Exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala,
Siena, 2008: 82, 84, 85, 90, 129.
the Annunciation

Paolo di Giovanni Fei

Sienese, c. 1335/1345 - 1411
The Presentation of the

Virgin in the Temple
1398-1399
tempera on wood transferred to hardboard
overall: 147.2 140.3 cm (57 15/16 55 1/4 in.)
ENTRY
The legend of the childhood of Mary, mother of Jesus, had been formed at a very
early date, as shown by the apocryphal Gospel of James, or Protoevangelium of
James (secondthird century), which for the first time recounted events in the life
of Mary before the Annunciation. The iconography of the presentation of the Virgin
that spread in Byzantine art was based on this source. In the West, the episodes of
the birth and childhood of the Virgin were known instead through another, later
apocryphal source of the eighthninth century, attributed to the Evangelist
Matthew.[1] According to this account of her childhood, Mary, on reaching the age
of three, was taken by her parents, together with offerings, to the Temple of
Jerusalem, so that she could be educated there. The child ascended the flight of
fifteen steps of the temple to enter the sacred building, where she would continue
to live, fed by an angel, until she reached the age of fourteen.[2] The legend linked
the childs ascent to the temple and the flight of fifteen steps in front of it with the
number of Gradual Psalms.[3] The image of so long a flight of steps does not in
general appear in fourteenth-century Sienese painting, which instead follows other
details of the narrative of the Pseudo-Matthew: it describes the surprise of those
present on seeing the infant girl spontaneously ascend the steps on her own and
shows the high priest Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist (haloed), welcoming
the child.[4] The other girls who are being brought up in the temple are
represented in a separate zone. One endeavor to which Sienese painters, on the
other hand, paid constant attention was that of expressing the splendor of
Solomons Temple, generally represented as a grand and complex building. The


importance of the event was further underlined by the presence of ever more
numerous onlookers.
The painting now in the National Gallery of Art appeared in the London exhibition
in 1928 as a work by Bartolo di Fredi, an attribution perhaps proposed by Bernard
Berenson, who privately confirmed it in 1951.[5] William Suida and Fern Rusk
Shapley accepted this opinion in their catalog of the Kress Collection (NGA 1956),
commenting that the attribution to Bartolo...is not likely to be doubted.[6] That
attribution was reaffirmed in the 1959 catalog of the Gallery and by Jaqueline
Lafontaine-Dosogne (1965).[7] As early as 1951, however, Millard Meiss broke ranks,
identifying the hand of Paolo di Giovanni Fei in the painting.[8] All the more recent
literature, apart from the above-cited exceptions, recognizes Meisss proposal as
correct, including Berensons own posthumous edition of Italian Pictures (1968).[9]
Confirmation of the attribution came with the discovery that the panel now in
Washington comes from Siena Cathedral; documents of 13981399 record
payments made to Paolo di Giovanni Fei that undoubtedly refer to this painting.[10]
The various inventories of the cathedral later described it as tauola dipenta colla
Ripresentationi al Tempio di Nostra Donna et di sancto Pietro et di sancto Pauolo
et di pi altri sancti e sancte (a painted panel with the Presentation of Our Lady
and with Saint Peter and Saint Paul and many other saints).[11] It remained on the
altar of the chapel of San Pietro at least until 1482 and probably until the early
1580s (see Provenance).
The composition of Paolos altarpiece would have followed the scheme prescribed
for the altarpieces of the various chapels in the cathedral, a church dedicated to
the Virgin: namely, a scene representing a Marian feast at the center, flanked by
full-length, standing saints in the lateral panels, including the titular of the altar. As
we know from the example of other polyptychs with a provenance from the
cathedral, the saints were portrayed one on each side. Moreover, the polyptychs,
in contrast to the present appearance of The Presentation of the Virgin in the
Temple, were always enriched with gables comprising half-figure images of other
saints above the main register. Though none of these components of Paolos
altarpiece have yet been identified, there seems no reason to doubt their
existence.[12]
The documents, therefore, not only confirm the attribution of the panel in the
National Gallery of Art to Paolo di Giovanni Fei but also reveal that it is the
fragment of a larger complex. It remains uncertain, however, whether Paolo was
the sole author of the dispersed polyptych. According to another piece of


documentary evidence dating to 1393, in fact, another painter, Bartolo di Fredi,

received a payment per la tavola daltare di San Pietro che fa.[13] According to
some, this means that the execution of the polyptych had already begun in 1392
1393, but for some reason Bartolos work was not completed. So the commission
was then apparently transferred to Paolo. It was believed in the past that the lost
laterals of our Presentation could be identified in two panels by Bartolo di Fredi
representing Saint Peter and Saint Paul, but the hypothesis was then shown to be
mistaken.[14] So, in this case, the problem of the collaboration between the two
Sienese painters still remains open.[15]
Paolos painting in Washington has always met with a flattering reception from art
historians. Millard Meiss (1951) hailed it as an important panel; Enzo Carli (1979),
as one of the masterpieces of late-fourteenth-century Sienese painting (uno dei
capolavori della pittura senese del tardo Trecento); while the Dutch expert on
Sienese painting, Henk van Os (1990), described it as a magnificent painting.[16]
Michael Mallory (1965) was the first to recognize its identity with the documented
panel by Paolo di Giovanni Fei in Siena Cathedral. He also subjected it to a
meticulous stylistic and iconographic analysis. He observed inter alia that the
series of spaces that the artist has opened up beyond the figures is more complex
than anything that he attempted in the Nativity [that is, in the other polyptych by the
artist similarly having a scene thronged with figures at the center, now in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena] or in the Visitation [that is, in the scene frescoed by
Paolo in the church of San Francesco, also in Siena], and at the same time the
architecture is rendered accurately enough so that we can understand the plan of
this church with its polygonal apse and vaulted chapels. The Washington
Presentation, Mallory concluded, is the most ambitious and successful Sienese
painting of the late Trecento as regards interior setting.[17]
To illustrate the scene of the entry of the child Mary into the temple, Paolo must
have followed an illustrious model, now lost: the one painted by Pietro and
Ambrogio Lorenzetti as part of a Marian sequence on the facade of the Ospedale
della Scala, opposite the cathedral, in 1335.[18] We do not know whether Paolo had
been contractually obligedas Sano di Pietro would be a half-century later [19]to
reproduce the Lorenzettian composition in his panel. Many elements that it holds in
common with Sano di Pietros version of the Presentation of the Virgin in the
Temple (now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana),[20] and with the many other variations
on the theme produced by Sienese painters in the second half of the fourteenth
century and early fifteenth century,[21] do suggest that he followed the same


prototype, albeit with some liberties. The model in question showed Mary at the
top of the flight of stairs within an elaborate architectural structure, frontally placed,
with one or two priests welcoming her. The childs arms were humbly crossed over
her breast, but she was shown looking backward towards her mother. Behind the
priests, at the center, an altar with a golden ciborium (presumably intended to
represent the Ark of the Covenant) could be glimpsed in the background, while
further to the right was placed the group of girls who would be Marys companions
during her years in the temple. Placed in the foreground to the left were Marys
mother and a group of women, and on the other side a group of men including two
elderly bearded Jews disputing with each other.[22] Another model that the artist
must have had in mind in his work was The Presentation of Christ in the Temple
[fig. 1] painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti for the altar of San Crescenzio in Siena
Cathedral (now in the Uffizi, Florence).[23] In conformity with this latter work, Paolo
gives the Temple of Jerusalem a different appearance from that seen in the various
versions of the theme painted by other Sienese painters. Following the lost fresco
on the hospital facade, those painters describe the temple as a circular-plan
building, whereas Paolo shows it as an imposing Gothic church with a nave and
two aisles: an innovative feature that shows his intentionand capacityto
renovate the tradition.
Perhaps the most original aspect of his composition, however, is its color: in
contrast to the mainly dark colors enlivened by large splashes of deep red
proposed by his predecessors, Paolo has adopted an altogether brighter, sunnier
palette to represent the light-flooded interior of the temple, its polygonal apse
pierced by a ring of double-lancet windows, its blue-gray stonework articulated
with pink stringcourses. The colors of the architecture are matched by those of the
various groups of onlookers that throng the interior, almost all of them wearing
light-colored clothing: salmon pink, light blue, sage green. On the other hand,
Paolo is parsimonious in his use of brilliant colors such as cinnabar red. It should
also be pointed out that in his scene the middle distance is as densely inhabited as
the foreground; it contains not only the principal group of Mary and Zacharias but
also the crowd of girls assembled in a kind of raised singing gallery at the right [fig.
2]. Other innovative features of Paolos scene are some apparently minor
inventions, such as the two foreshortened heads closing off the back of the
composition at either sidethe heads of young women standing in the background
and craning their necks in order to better view the sacred eventthus emphasizing
the spaciousness of the scene. The detailas spontaneous as a snapshotof the
kneeling woman seen from the back in the foreground to the left, half-hidden by


the pillar against which the Solomonic column of the lost original frame would have
been superimposed, develops a motif with which the painter had already
experimented, for example in The Birth of the Virgin in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in
Siena.[24] The trouvaille of placing two children in the foreground, silhouetted
against the light-flooded flight of steps, with the evident function of providing a
kind of repoussoir, also anticipated a motif of which the International Gothic
painters of the following generation would be fond. Not even in this phase of his
full maturity, however, was the painter apparently willing to forego the solemn,
dreamy, and in general impenetrable facial masks that usually characterize his
paintings. Yet he skillfully exploits the expressive potential of the large and
nervous hands of his figures to express the resolution, wonder, or doubt of his
protagonists. In conclusion, it can be said that the scene proposed by the painter
epitomizes and at the same time renews the experiences of a whole century of
Sienese figurative culture, projecting them towards what was about to be born in
the new century.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Detail of girls in the singing gallery, Paolo di

Giovanni Fei, The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple,
13981399, tempera on panel transferred to hardboard,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress
Collection
fig. 1 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Presentation of Christ in

the Temple, 1342, tempera on panel, Uffizi, Florence.
Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY
NOTES
[1] The apocryphal text has the title De Ortu Beatae Mariae et Infantia
Salvatoris; on the origin of the legend and on its sources see Jacqueline
Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de lenfance de la Vierge dans lEmpire
byzantin et en Occident, 2 vols. (Brussels, 19641965), 2:112128.
[2] Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne, Iconographie de lenfance de la Vierge

dans lEmpire byzantin et en Occident, 2 vols. (Brussels, 19641965),
2:128134.
[3] Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols. (Gtersloh,


19661990), 4, pt. 2: 68. On the fifteen Gradual Psalms (Psalms 120134),

see Frank L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
(London and New York, 1958), 578.
[4] Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols. (Gtersloh,

19661990), 4, pt. 2:6768.
DC, 1979), 1:176.
[6] National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection
(Washington, DC, 1956), 28.
[7] National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection (Washington, DC, 1959), 35; Jacqueline Lafontaine-Dosogne,
Iconographie de lenfance de la Vierge dans lEmpire byzantin et en
Occident, 2 vols. (Brussels, 19641965), 2:30 n. 1.
(Princeton, 1951), 28.
[9] Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and
North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2:130.
[10] Vittorio Lusini, Il Duomo di Siena (Siena, 1911), 321 n. 2, and Provenance,
note 1.
[11] Quoted by Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia
University, 1965), 124.
[12] On the compositional scheme prescribed for altarpieces in Siena Cathedral,

beginning with that of SantAnsano painted by Simone Martini (Sienese,
active from 1315; died 1344) and Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) in
1333 (now in the Uffizi, Florence) and continuing through the fourteenth
century, see Kavin Frederick, A Program of Altarpieces for the Siena
Cathedral, The Rutgers Art Review 4 (1983): 1838; Hendrik W. van Os,
Sienese Altarpieces 12151460: Form, Content, Function, vol. 2, 13441460
(Groningen, 1990), 99139. The only one of these altarpieces to retain the
paintings of its upper register (except for the one originally at its center) is
that for the altar of SantAnsano, with busts of prophets in its gable panels,
but it does not seem justified to suppose that in this respect the polyptychs
of the cathedral were any different from the altarpieces of the main Sienese
churches. In fact, in recent times the existence of gable panels has been
conjectured both for the polyptych of San Vittore painted by Bartolomeo
Bulgarini (Italian, c. 1300 - 1378) around 1351 and now divided among the
Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Statens Museum for Kunst
in Copenhagen; and other collections. See Elisabeth H. Beatson, Norman E.
Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff, The St. Victor Altarpiece in Siena Cathedral:
A Reconstruction, The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 610631; Judith Steinhoff-
Morrison, Bartolomeo Bulgarini and Sienese Painting of the Mid-Fourteenth


Century, 2 vols. (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1990), 2: fig. 20h. For that of
San Crescenzio, painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1342, of which the main
panel is now in the Uffizi, Florence, see Sonia Chiodo, Attorno a un dipinto
inedito di Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Arte cristiana 91 (2003): 16; Erling S.
Skaug, Two New Paintings by Ambrogio Lorenzetti: Technical Criteria and
the Complexity of Chronology, Arte cristiana 91 (2003): 717. Andrea De
Marchi made the point that the carpenter Paolo Bindi, having realized the
wooden structure for the polyptych that Ambrogio Lorenzetti had been
commissioned to paint, was paid for constructing not only the predella but
also the cholonne and the civori (possibly to be interpreted as gables);
Andrea De Marchi, La tavola daltare, in Storia delle arti in Toscana: Il
Trecento, ed. Max Seidel (Florence, 2004), 29.
[13] Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte senese, 3 vols. (Siena,
18541856), 2:37; Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur
sienesischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Disentis, 1994), 428; Monica
Butzek, Chronologie, in Die Kirchen von Siena, vol. 3, Der Dom S. Maria
Assunta, bk. 1, Architektur, pt. 1, ed. Walter Haas and Dethard von Winterfeld
(Munich, 2006), 98. Commenting on this information, Michael Mallory
observed, probably the document...is designating a panel depicting St.
Peter rather than one made for the chapel of S. Pietro, or possibly it refers to
an altarpiece for the chapel that [Bartolo di] Fredi did actually execute, but
which was moved or destroyed, and he added, it is even possible that
[Bartolo di] Fredi did begin the triptych from which the Presentation of the
Virgin remains, but that his work was executed on one of the missing
panels. See Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia
University, 1965), 128. In the view of the present writer, this latter hypothesis
seems the more plausible; in any case, it should be recalled that only one of
the chapels in the cathedral was dedicated to Saint Peter.
[14] Hendrik W. van Os, Tradition and Innovation in Some Altarpieces by

Bartolo di Fredi, The Art Bulletin 67 (1985): 5066; Gaudenz Freuler,
Bartolo di Fredis Altar fr die Annunziata-Kapelle in S. Francesco in
Montalcino, Pantheon 43 (1985): 21. For a correction of the proposal, see
Gaudenz Freuler, Bartolo di Fredi Cini: Ein Beitrag zur sienesischen Malerei
[15] Recently it was conjectured that the payment to Bartolo referred not to the
altarpiece but to the tabernacle commissioned in 1380 to hold the statue of
the saint, and destined for the same altar; Monica Butzek, Chronologie, in
Die Kirchen von Siena, vol. 3, Der Dom S. Maria Assunta, bk. 1, Architektur,
pt. 1, ed. Walter Haas and Dethard von Winterfeld (Munich, 2006), 99
n. 1285 and 1286. However, as Monica Butzek verbally advised me, she
excluded this eventuality.


(Princeton, 1951), 28 n. 58; Enzo Carli, Il Duomo di Siena (Genoa, 1979), 85;
Hendrik W. van Os, Sienese Altarpieces 12151460: Form, Content,
Function, vol. 2, 13441460 (Groningen, 1990), 136.
[17] Michael Mallory, Paolo di Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia University,
1965), 119.
[18] Daniela Gallavotti Cavallero, Lo Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in

Siena: Vicenda di una committenza artistica (Pisa, 1985), 7073. The
frescoes represented the Birth of the Virgin, the Presentation of the Virgin in
the Temple, the Betrothal, the Return of Mary to the House of Her Parents,
and, probably, the Assumption.
[19] In 1448 it was decided to add a predella to the altarpiece of the cappella
de Signori in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, and it was specified that vi si
debba fare cinque storie di nostra donna alla similitudine di quelle che
sonno a capo le porti dello spedale della scala (five stories of Our Lady
should be made copying those that are above the doors of the Hospital of
the Scala). See Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte senese,
3 vols. (Siena, 18541856), 2:256257. The panels of the predella, now
dispersed among various collections, were painted by Sano di Pietro and
are to be considered simplified reproductions but substantially faithful to the
frescoes of Lorenzetti on the facade of the Ospedale della Scala. See Keith
Christiansen, The Cappella de Signori Predella, in Painting in
Renaissance Siena, 14201500, ed. Keith Christiansen, Laurence B. Kanter,
and Carl Brandon Strehlke (New York, 1988), 146148.
[20] Wolgang Fritz Volbach, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 2, Il

Trecento. Firenze e Siena (Vatican City, 1987), 48, fig. 99.
[21] Mallory listed the variants of the compositions. Michael Mallory, Paolo di
Giovanni Fei (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1965), 135141.
[22] This motif is less clearly evident in the panel of Sano di Pietro and in the
other derivations from the Lorenzettian prototype, where the two old men,
busily conversing with each other and in some cases with other figures, are
also flanked by Saint Joachim, who dominates the group. Presumably this
also was so in the lost fresco of Santa Maria della Scala. The motif of the
disputation is particularly conspicuous in Lippo Vannis fresco of the
Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple in the church of San Leonardo al
Lago, and in this respect recalls the National Gallery of Art panel.
[23] Uffizi, Florence, no. 8346; see Hayden B.J. Maginnis, Ambrogio Lorenzettis
Presentation in the Temple, Studi di storia dellarte 2 (1991): 3350, and on
the position of this important painting in the history of the representation of
space in fourteenth-century painting see Miriam Schild Bunim, Space in
Medieval Painting and the Forerunners of Perspective (New York, 1940), 145
151.


[24] No. 116; cf. Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal
XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 179180, and Veronica Randon, in Il
Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: Un capolavoro
riscoperto, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Randon
(Siena, 2005), 5557.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The original wooden support, of an undetermined number of planks with vertical

grain, was removed by William Suhr when the painting was transferred to
hardboard and cradled in 1954.[1] Photographs taken before this treatment [fig.
1] show the painting in a nineteenth-century frame that follows the shape of the
upper edge; since this format would have been most uncommon in a fourteenth-
century altarpiece, it seems likely that the panel was cut out of a larger one of
different shape, presumably provided with gables above. The wooden support may
have been slightly cropped along all the edges. The panel was prepared with
gesso followed by red bole in areas to be gilded. The brocade fabrics were
created using sgraffito. The gilded areas were elaborately tooled with twelve
different punch marks. Incised lines were used to indicate the contours of the
architecture and the placement of the figures. Infrared reflectography at 1.5 to 2.0
microns shows underdrawing, which reveals that both the figures and the
architecture were sketched in freely.[2] Paint was applied in the small, discrete
brushstrokes typical of tempera, with green underpaint in the flesh areas.
When the panel was stripped of its original frame, the two wooden columns that
would have divided the composition into three parts were dismantled and lost;
during their removal, the painted columns of the architectural setting, which the
framing columns had partially covered, suffered damage in the areas of the bases
and capitals [fig. 2]. The paint layer in the areas beneath the two lateral arches is
generally well preserved; that beneath the central arch is abraded, and scattered
small losses there have been inpainted. There are additional paint losses along the
lower edge and to the right side of the left inner column. Lacunae are also present
along a crack extending from the center of the lower edge to the left hand of the
high priest. Suhr removed a discolored varnish and inpainted the panel when he
transferred it in 1954. By 1996, the varnish and inpainting applied by Suhr had
discolored. The painting was treated again between 1996 and 1998 to remove this
discolored varnish and inpainting.




fig. 2 Photograph during treatment, before inpainting,

fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 1950, Paolo di Giovanni Fei,
Paolo di Giovanni Fei, The Presentation of the Virgin in the
The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 13981399,
Temple, 13981399, tempera on panel transferred to
tempera on panel transferred to hardboard, National
hardboard, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
Kress Collection
TECHNICAL NOTES
DC, 1979), 1:177.
[2] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Kodak 310-21X focal plane
array PtSi camera.
PROVENANCE
Commissioned in 1398[1] for the chapel of San Pietro in Siena Cathedral,[2] where it
remained at least until 1482.[3] It is probable, however, that the altarpiece was
removed only between 1580 (when a new, richly decorated marble altar was


commissioned for the chapel) and 1582 (when the decoration of the new altar was
completed). At this time it was then either consigned to the cathedrals storerooms
or sold.[4] H.M. Clark, London, by 1928.[5] Edward Hutton [1874-1969], London.[6]
(Wildenstein & Co., New York), by 1950;[7] sold February 1954 to the Samuel H.
Kress Foundation, New York;[8] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti
per la storia dell'arte senese, 3 vols., Siena, 1854: 2:37; Scipione Borghesi and
Luciano Banchi, Nuovi documenti per la storia dell'arte senese 1, Siena, 1898: 62;
Monica Butzek, "Chronologie," In Die Kirchen von Siena, multi-vol., ed. Waltee
Haas and Dethard von Winterfeld, vol. 3, part 1.1.2, Munich, 2006: 102. Payments to
Paolo di Giovanni Fei per la tavola di sancto Piero et sancto Pavolo, per sua fatiga
e colori were made, specifies Monica Butzek (2006), between 1398 and April
1399. [2] Pietro Lorenzettis altarpiece of the Birth of the Virgin, also painted for the
Cathedral of Siena in 1342 (see Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Marco Lucco,
Milan, 1989: 152-154), is surmounted, like The Presentation of the Virgin discussed
here, by three arches included in a heavy frame. The present appearance of these
paintings is misleading, however. Fourteenth-century altarpieces were generally
realized on rectangular panels, not silhouetted like these, and integrated above by
triangular or trapezoidal gables partially overlapped by the integral frame. See
Monika Cmmerer George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder in Trecento
, Strasbourg,1966: 144-165; Christoph Merzenich, Vom Schreinerwerk zum
Gemlde. Florentiner Altarwerke der ersten Hlfe des Quattrocento, Berlin, 2001:
43-56. [3] Enzo Carli, Il Duomo di Siena, Genoa, 1979: 85-86. [4] On 9 September
1579, the Congrega di San Pietro, patron since 1513 of the chapel dedicated to this
saint (the second altar from the entrance in the north aisle), commissioned the
stonecutters Girolamo del Turco and Pietro di Benedetto da Prato to realize a new
marble structure around the altar. This sculptural decoration was completed in April
1582. It is presumed that between the two dates Paolos panel, considered
antiquated, was removed. See Butzek 2006, 197. [5] Daily Telegraph Exhibition
1928, 162. Concerning the unknown whereabouts of the painting between 1582
and 1928, a handwritten note on a photograph of the painting, formerly owned by
Bernard Berenson (now in the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti, Florence),
suggests a provenance from the collection at Corsham Court, Wiltshire, which the
British diplomat Sir Paul Methuen (16721757) had formed in the eighteenth
century, and which, by the mid-nineteenth century, had been enriched with
paintings from the collection of the Rev. John Sanford (1777-1855) through the 1844
marriage of Sanfords daughter and sole heir, Anna Horatia Caroline Sanford
(18241899), to Frederick H.P. Methuen, 2nd baron Methuen (1818-1891). See


Benedict Nicolson, "The Sanford Collection," The Burlington Magazine 98 (1955):

207214. However, this suggestion appears to be in error. James Methuen-
Campbell, who inherited Corsham Court in 1994 and has extensively researched
the family collections, kindly reviewed the manuscript material for both the Sanford
and Methuen collections, and found no reference to the painting (see his e-mail to
Anne Halpern, of 15 February 2012, in NGA curatorial files). The painting also does
not appear among those disposed of by Sanford on the occasion of two London
sales: a sale by private contract under the auspices of George Yates (24 April 1838,
and days following), and a sale at Christie & Manson (9 March 1839). [6] Information
given in Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C., 1956. [7] According to the handwritten note on the photograph
referenced above (see note 5), the painting was with Wildenstein by October 1950.
[8] The bill of sale (copy in NGA curatorial files) is dated 10 February 1954, and was
for fourteen paintings, including Presentation of the Virgin by Bartolo di Fredi;
payments by the foundation continued to March 1957.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1928 Daily Telegraph Exhibition of Antiques and Works of Art, Olympia, London,
1928, no. X1, as by Bartolo di Fredi.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1928 The Daily Telegraph at Olympia, ed. The Daily Telegraph Exhibition of
Antiques and Works of Art. Exh. cat., Olympia, London, 1928: 162.
Princeton, 1951: 28, fig. 165.
1956 Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Colllection Acquired by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text
by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art.
Washington, 1956: 28, repro., as by Bartolo di Fredi.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 35, repro., as by Bartolo di Fredi.
1960 Campolongo, Elizabetta. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Dizionario
Rome, 1960+: 46(1996):15, 16.
1964 Lafontaine-Dosogne, Jacqueline. Iconographie de lenfance de la


Vierge dans lEmpire byzantin et en Occident. 2 vols. Bruxelles, 1964-

1965: 2:30 n. 1.
1964 Mallory, Michael. "Towards a Chronology for Paolo di Giovanni Fei." The
Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 529-535, figs. 1, 3, 4.
1965 Mallory, Michael. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia
University, New York, 1965. Ann Arbor, MI, 1973: 3, 116-141, 237, fig. 50.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 49
1966 Mallory, Michael. "An Early Quattrocento Trinity." The Art Bulletin 48
(1966): 86, fig. 2.
1966 Schiller, Gertrud. Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst. 6 vols. Gtersloh,
1966-1990: 4, pt. 2:71.
1967 Denny, Don. "Simone Martinis The Holy Family." Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institute 30 (1967): 139 n. 4.
Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 250.
and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 2:130, fig. 418.
1969 Mallory, Michael. "A Lost Madonna del Latte by Ambrogio Lorenzetti."
The Art Bulletin 51 (1969): 42 n. 14.
sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 6, fig. 4.
1971 Carli, Enzo. I pittori senesi. Siena, 1971: 22, 133, fig. 115.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 69, 300, 647.
1972 "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e
degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto Bolaffi and
1977 Bennett, Bonnie Apgar. Lippo Memmi, Simone Martinis fratello in arte:
The Image Revealed by His Documented Works. PhD diss. University of
Pittsburgh, 1977. Ann Arbor, MI, 1979: 136, 143, 250 n. 24, fig. 76.
1977 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. "The Literature of Sienese Trecento Painting
1945-1975." Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 40 (1977): 300.
secolo. Genoa, 1977: 179, 180, 202.
1979 Carli, Enzo. Il Duomo di Siena. Genoa, 1979: 85-86.



282.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 295, 296, 298, 317.
1983 Carli, Enzo. Sienese Painting. New York, 1983: 48.
1983 Early Italian Paintings and Works of Art 1300-1480 in Aid of the Friends
of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Exh. cat. Matthiesen Fine Art, London, 1983:
34.
1983 Frederick, Kavin. "A Program of Altarpieces for the Siena Cathedral." The
Rutgers Art Review 4 (1983): 26-29, fig. 4.
cat. Musee du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 277, 278, 284.
Function. 2 vols. Groningen, 1984-1990: 2(1990):135-137, repro.
1984 Torriti, Piero. "Unaggiunta a Paolo di Giovanni Fei." in Scritti di storia
dellarte in onore di Roberto Salvini. Florence, 1984: 211-212.
1985 Boskovits, Mikls. The Martello Collection: Paintings, Drawings and
Miniatures from the XIVth to the XVIIIth Centuries. Florence, 1985: 128.
1985 Cole, Bruce. Sienese Painting in the Age of the Renaissance.
Bloomington, 1985: 13, 14, fig. 8.
1985 Freuler, Gaudenz. "Bartolo di Fredis Altar fr die Annunziata-Kapelle in
S. Francesco in Montalcino." Pantheon 43 (1985): 26.
1985 Os, Hendrik W. van. "Tradition and Innovation in Some Altarpieces by
Bartolo di Fredi." The Art Bulletin 67 (1985): 52-54, fig. 3.
1985 Riedl, Peter Anselm, and Max Seidel, eds. Die Kirchen von Siena. 3 vols.
Munich, 1985-2006: 1(1985), pt. 1:123, 124.
1986 Leoncini, Giovanni. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In La Pittura in Italia. Il
Duecento e il Trecento. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols.
Milan,1986: 2:570, repro.
1987 Christiansen, Keith. "The S. Vittorio Altarpiece in Siena Cathedral." The
Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 467.
1987 Pope-Hennessy, John, and Laurence B. Kanter. The Robert Lehman
Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987: 38.
1988 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. "The Lost Facade Frescoes from Sienas
Ospedale di S. Maria della Scala." Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 51
(1988): 190.
1991 Manacorda, Simona. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 6(1995):133.
1992 Landi, Alfonso, and Enzo Carli (commentary). Racconto del Duomo di
Siena (1655). Florence, 1992: 120-121, n. 30.


1993 Csfalvay, Pl, ed. Keresztny Mzeum (Christian Museum Esztergom).

Budapest, 1993: 222.
1993 Harpring, Patricia. The Sienese Trecento Painter Bartolo di Fredi.
London and Toronto, 1993: repro. 112.
1994 Freuler, Gaudenz. Bartolo di Fredi Cini: ein Beitrag zur sienesischen
Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts. Disentis, 1994: 341, 382.
1996 Freuler, Gaudenz. "Bartolo di Fredi Cini." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
1996 Gold Backs: 1250-1480. Exh. cat. Matthiesen Fine Art, London. Turin,
1996: 116, fig. 3.
1997:198, 200-201.
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 70, 98, 358, 379, 428.
1999 Norman, Diana. Siena and the Virgin: Art and Politics in a Late Medieval
City State. New Haven and London, 1999: 225, nos. 28, 43.
Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Physical Examination in
Art Historical Studies, vol. 1. New Haven, 2000: 88, 90-91, figs. 89-90,
color fig. 91.
2002 Tomei, Alessandro, ed. Le Biccherne di Siena: arte e finanza allalba
delleconomia moderna. Exh. cat. Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome. Azzano
San Paolo [u.a.], 2002: 174.
2003 Norman, Diana. Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena (1260-
1555). New Haven and London, 2003: 143 (repro.), 145.
2004 Hiller von Gaertringen, Rudolf. Italienische Gemlde im Stdel 1300-
1550: Toskana und Umbrien. Kataloge der Gemlde im Stdelschen
Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main. Mainz, 2004: 140, 149, 151.
2005 Bagnoli, Alessandro, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Radon, eds. Il
Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: un capolavoro
riscoperto. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, 2005: 11, 12, 32, 34
nos. 18 and 21, 49, 51, 53, 60, 62.
2006 Butzek, Monica. Chronologie. In Die Kirchen von Siena, 3: Der Dom S.
Maria Assunta, 1: Architektur, pt. 1. Edited by Walter Haas and Dethard
von Winterfeld. Munich, 2006: 102, 103 n. 1347.
Siena, 2008: 81, 84, 90.


2008 Fattorini, Gabriele. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei: una proposta per la pala
Mannelli (con una nota sulliconografia di San Maurizio a Siena)."
Prospettiva 130/131 (2008): 176, 182 n. 40.


Gaddi, Agnolo
Florentine, c. 1350 - 1396
BIOGRAPHY
Grandson of the painter Gaddo di Zanobi, and son of Taddeo Gaddidisciple of

Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) and one of the leading exponents of Florentine
painting in the mid-fourteenth centuryAgnolo probably was trained in his fathers
shop, and by 1369 he must already have emerged as a recognized master in his
own right. In that year he received payments together with a group of artists
including Giovanni da Milano, Giottino, and his own brother Giovanni (also a painter
but one whose works have not survived) for the now lost decoration in the palace
of Pope Urban V in the Vatican.[1] His earliest works, including the triptych dated
1375 now in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma and the fresco fragments in the former
monastery of San Domenico del Maglio in Florence, executed according to the
documents in 1376,[2] are characterized by harsh color and rather crowded
compositions; they are populated by figures of ponderous movement and massive
physique, accentuated by the chiaroscuro by which they are modeled. In the early
1380s, evidently by then a well-affirmed artist, Agnolo obtained commissions of
particular prestige in his native city: the designs for the sculptures to adorn the
faade of the Loggia dei Lanzi; the frescoing of the Castellani Chapel in Santa
Croce (stories of Saints Anthony Abbot, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, and
Nicholas); and the painting of an altarpiece probably intended for the church of San
Miniato al Monte, now divided between the Contini-Bonacossi bequest in the Uffizi,
Florence, and the Kisters collection in Kreuzlingen. Other major commissions
followed, including further designs for sculptures, this time for Florence Cathedral
(1387, 1391);[3] the polyptychs now in the National Gallery of Art and in the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin (the latter datable to 1387); and the decoration of the
choir of Santa Croce (stories of the legend of the Cross), the most extensive
pictorial cycle produced in Florence in the later fourteenth century. In particular the
frescoes of stories of the Cross, with their representation of this complex subject in
a narrative cycle enriched with numerous secondary episodes and a series of vivid
observations taken from everyday life, and, not least, their peculiarly sober,
nervous, and incisive pictorial style, dominated by the linear component, would
exert a decisive and enduring influence on the following generation of Florentine
painters.
Gaddi, Agnolo 346


In the early 1390s Agnolo was active in Prato (frescoes of the Cappella della
Cintola and the now lost decoration of the facade of the Duomo, and the fresco
now in the Museo di Pittura Murale in the former Convent of San Domenico); these
works were completed with the involvement of a large bottega.[4] But he also
painted a crucifix for San Martino at Sesto Fiorentino and continued to obtain
prestigious commissions from his hometown (designs for the stained glass of
Florence Cathedral, 13941395; another altarpiece for San Miniato al Monte).[5] In
this final phase of his career, likely stimulated by the neo-Giottesque current
expressed in the work of various Florentine painters of the period, his
compositions show a tendency toward simplification in form and a growing
propensityin conformity with the late-Gothic style of the timeto emphasize
refinement in his protagonists actions. His figures are also modeled now with
greater softness and reveal the artists ability to express inner emotions.
Though his contemporaries considered him the heir of the art of Giotto,[6] Agnolo
sought to renew the figurative tradition of that great master and his late followers
by proposing more varied and animated forms and compositions, and by trying to
enliven his images with more dynamic curvilinear contours, new expressive
formulae, and an original palette. His art indeed laid the foundation for the late-
Gothic renewal of Florentine painting accomplished by his disciples, in particular
Gherardo Starnina and Lorenzo Monaco (Florentine, c. 1370 - c. 1425).
[1] Documents published by Alessio Monciatti, Il Palazzo Vaticano nel medioevo

(Florence, 2005), 317329.
[2] Ada Labriola, La decorazione pittorica, in LOratorio di Santa Caterina:

Osservazioni storico-critiche in occasione del restauro, ed. Maurizio De Vita
(Florence, 1998), 5758 n. 33.
[3] Karl Frey, Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florenz: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung
(Berlin, 1885), 3639.
[4] For the documentation relating to the frescoes of the Cappella della Cintola, see
Giuseppe Poggi, Appunti darchivio: La Cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel Duomo di
Prato e gli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi, Rivista darte 14 (1932): 363369; Marco
Ciatti, Gli affreschi della Cappella della Cintola, in La Sacra Cintola nel Duomo di
Prato (Prato, 1995), 163223. As Margherita Romagnoli recently showed, it was not
Agnolo Gaddi, as generally asserted, but a namesake who painted the walls of
Palazzo Datini in Prato. See Margherita Romagnoli, La dimora di un mercante
Gaddi, Agnolo 347


pratese nel XIV secolo (parte 2): La decorazione interna di Palazzo Datini, Arte
cristiana 97 (2009): 2224.
[5] For the documents relating to the sculptures and stained-glass windows, see
Giuseppe Poggi and Margaret Haines, eds., Il Duomo di Firenze: Documenti sulla
decorazione della chiesa e del campanile, tratti dallArchivio dellOpera, 2 vols.
(Florence, 1909; repr. 1988), 1:19 (doc. 112), 93 (doc. 484); for those of the San
Miniato altarpiece see Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 67.
[6] In the first chapter of his primer on the art of painting, Il libro dellarte, Cennino
Cennini attempted to prove the authoritativeness of his text by declaring that he
had learned the art of painting from Agnolo Gaddi and was thus in some sense an
heir, by direct lineage, of Giotto himself: fui informato nella detta arte XII anni da
Agnolo di Taddeo da Firenze, mio maestro, il quale impar la detta arte da Taddeo
suo padre; il suo padre fu battezzato da Giotto e fu suo discepolo anni
ventiquattro (I was trained in this profession [of painting] for twelve years by
Agnolo di Taddeo of Florence, my master; he learned this profession from Taddeo
his father; [and] his father was christened by Giotto and was his disciple for twenty-
four years). See Cennino Cennini, Il libro dellarte, ed. Fabio Frezzato (Vicenza,
2003), 6263.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1885 Frey, Karl.

Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florenz: eine quellenkritische Untersuchung.
Berlin, 1885: 36-39.
1932 Poggi, Giuseppe. Appunti darchivio: la Cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel
Duomo di Prato e gli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi.
Rivista darte 14 (1932): 355-376.
1936 Salvini, Roberto.

Larte di Agnolo Gaddi. Florence, 1936.
1960 Labriola, Ada. Gaddi, Agnolo. In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 51(1998):144-148.
Gaddi, Agnolo 348



Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-1400. Florence,
1975: 46-47, 65-67, 117-124, 295-304.
1988 Poggi, Giuseppe, and Margaret Haines, eds.

Il Duomo di Firenze: documenti sulla decorazione della chiesa e del
campanile, tratti dallArchivio dellOpera. 2 vols. Florence, 1988 (reprint,
originally published Berlin, 1909): 1:19 (doc. 112), 93 (doc. 484).
1992 Chiodo, Sonia. Gaddi, Agnolo. In

Vlker. Edited by Gnter Meissner. 83+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1983+:
47(2005):112-115.
1995 Ciatti, Marco. Gli affreschi della Cappella della Cintola. In

La sacra cintola nel Duomo di Prato. Prato, 1995: 163-223.
1998 Labriola, Ada. La decorazione pittorica. In

LOratorio di Santa Caterina: osservazioni storico-critiche in occasione
del restauro. Edited by Maurizio De Vita. Florence, 1998: 51-59.
2003 Cennini, Cennino, and Fabio Frezzato.

Il libro dellarte. Vicenza, 2003: 62-63.
2005 Monciatti, Alessio.

Il Palazzo Vaticano nel Medioevo. Florence, 2005: 317-329.
2009 Romagnoli, Margherita. La dimora di un mercante pratese nel XIV

secolo (parte 2): la decorazione interna di Palazzo Datini.
Arte Cristiana 97 (2009): 19-30.
Gaddi, Agnolo 349


Agnolo Gaddi
The Coronation of the

Virgin with Six Angels
c. 1390
tempera on panel
painted surface: 161 79 cm (63 3/8 31 1/8 in.)
overall: 163.2 79.2 0.7 cm (64 1/4 31 3/16 1/4 in.)
framed: 172.1 x 87.3 x 7.9 cm (67 3/4 x 34 3/8 x 3 1/8 in.)
ENTRY
The iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin, the concluding stage of the
glorification of the mother of Christ, developed relatively late in Italian art. The
iconographic theme of Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven by her son
developed from the concept of her bodily Assumption, recalled in ancient Christian
literature from the fourth century onward,[1] but first appearing in pictorial
representations no earlier than the twelfth century. The iconography began to
spread in Italy from the late thirteenth century, in tandem with the development of
theological trends that considered Mary the personification of the Church, mystic
bride of Christ.[2] In the following centuries, it is often encountered as the main
subject of altarpieces. In Florence, the model most frequently followed was that
established by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) in the Baroncelli chapel polyptych
in Santa Croce,[3] but a throng of saints was not always placed at the sides of the
central representation of the Coronation, as in Giottos altarpiece. What remained
constant in the iconography was the presence of a group of angels, often playing
musical instruments,[4] in the foreground of the central panel, and of at least two
pairs of saints in the lateral panels.[5]
The Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels 350


There seems no reason to doubt that Agnolo Gaddi likewise followed this
scheme,[6] even if attempts to identify other panels of the multipart altarpiece of
which the Washington painting would have formed the center thus far have not led
to convincing results. The present writer previously had argued (Boskovits 1975)
that the polyptych of which the Washington Coronation of the Virgin formed the
central panel also comprised three small gable panels representing the Blessing
God the Father, the archangel Gabriel, and the Virgin Annunciate, formerly in the
Cook collection in Richmond.[7] Erling Skaug (2004) rightly rejected this
hypothesis,[8] suggesting instead that these three panels formed part of Agnolo
Gaddis Nobili triptych from Santa Maria degli Angeli, now in the Gemldegalerie in
Berlin (no. 1039). More recently, Sonia Chiodo (2005) suggested that a figure of
Saint Bartholomew (private collection) and two predella panels respectively
representing stories of Saint Andrew (Richard L. Feigen collection) and stories of
Saint Sylvester (Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art) were originally
the companion panels of the Washington Coronation.[9] The stories of Saints
Andrew and Sylvester undoubtedly were parts of the same predella and are
securely attributed to Agnolo Gaddi, but given their size (respectively, 31.8 40
and 28 37.5 cm) they could hardly have been placed in a predella below a lateral
panel that had the same dimensions as Saint Bartholomew (92.2 28.9 cm without
its frame). This latter panel would seem rather too small to have fitted alongside the
Washington Coronation, bearing in mind the customary proportional relation
between central and lateral panels in other polyptychs by Agnolo Gaddi.[10] It may
now be conjectured, albeit cautiously, that Gaddis panel representing Saints
Julian, James, and Michael now in Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven [fig. 1],
might have belonged to the same altarpiece, both on account of its close stylistic
affinity and the presence of no less than three saints in a single panel. The
presence of more than two saints in a lateral panel that has a width less than that
of the central panel is rare, but this does occur in the laterals of Coronation scenes;
see, for example, the four saints on each side in a triptych by Giovanni dal Ponte
(Muse Cond, Chantilly).[11] Admittedly, the hypothesis is difficult to verify because
of the Yale panels fragmentary nature and poor state of conservation.[12]
As for the artist who painted The Coronation of the Virgin, scholars have been
unanimous, with the exception of an attribution to Orcagna in the sale catalog of
1934, in identifying the master as Agnolo Gaddi ever since Carlo Ludovico
Ragghianti first published it in 1937.[13] On the other hand, views differ concerning
the panels dating. It is placed in the period c. 13701380 by the older literature
and, with the exception of Fern Rusk Shapley (1979), by the catalogs of the


National Gallery of Art.[14] Beginning with Mikls Boskovits (1968), the date now
generally accepted is somewhat later than this, c. 13801390; Bruce Cole, in turn,
suggested the period c. 13881393, pessimistically adding, There is no way to
make further or finer positional distinctions.[15] Despite such misgivings, some
attempt to clarify the sequence of works produced in Gaddis bottega in the last
years of his life will perhaps not be entirely futile.
We may begin by examining the composition that Gaddi adopted for the groups of
angels that appear in the foreground in front of the throne of Mary in various
altarpieces. In Agnolos Berlin triptych, datable to 1387,[16] as in the triptych in
Washington (see Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the Archangel Gabriel [left
panel]; Madonna and Child Enthroned with Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing
Christ [middle panel]; Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the
Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel]), the three music-making angels on the left
side seem virtually mirror images of the group facing them on the opposite sidein
composition, pose, gesture, and details; the only variation is in the musical
instruments in the hands of the pair of angels in the foreground. As it can be
argued that the Berlin and Washington paintings are chronologically close, we can
perhaps infer that this trait is characteristic of a moment in Gaddis career. The
Coronation discussed here, however, differs from this scheme in various respects.
Though the number of angels remains the same, their arrangement and pose
differ, each reacting in a different way to the scene of the Coronation [fig. 2]. Even
their physique is different: their bodies are longer and more slender; the oval of
their faces is more elongated; and their aristocratic features and ecstatic
expressions are wholly attuned to and absorbed in the music they play. In
comparison with the two above-cited triptychs, their garments, moreover, seem
more simplified in design, their draperies less minutely ruffled than before;
articulated with deep folds, they confer a certain grandeur on these secondary
eyewitnesses of the scene.
In the Gallerys panel, not only the groups of music-making and chorister angels
but also the central protagonists themselves, and the very composition of the
scene, display innovative features in comparison with the triptych of 1387. The
bodies of Christ and his mother [fig. 3], enthroned side by side in close
juxtaposition and bowing their heads to each other, form a single monolithic bloc,
integrated below by the two choirs of angels. The closely interwoven group of
Mary and Christ recalls the Coronation frescoed by Agnolo Gaddi in the chapel of
the Sacro Cingolo in Prato Cathedral,[17] at least with respect to their close


proximity and the arrangement of the wide, undulating folds that furrow their
mantles. However, comparison to the cycle of frescoes in Prato, realized with the
participation of many studio assistants and, apparently, completed in considerable
haste,[18] does not do justice to the far higher quality of the panel being discussed
here [19]the delicate chiaroscuro that models its forms; the subtlety of its color
combinations; or the elegance of its facial features, characterized by high
cheekbones, elongated pointed noses, and narrow almond eyes. These are
characteristics that recall works of the artists final phase, in particular such
passages as that of the mourning saint John the Evangelist in the crucifix of the
Pieve di San Martino at Sesto Fiorentino [20] or the two full-length panels of Saints
Giovanni Gualberto and Miniato in the Cappella del Crocifisso in San Miniato al
Monte in Florence.[21] The latter comparison is especially telling, since that
altarpiece was begun in 1394 and probably completed only in the immediate
aftermath of the artists death in 1396.
To judge from the stylistic evidence, The Coronation of the Virgin in Washington
ought to be placed in the phase of Gaddis career in which he embarked with ever
greater determination on the pursuit of the elegance of form, preciousness of
color, and decorative richness typical of the late-Gothic style that was becoming
increasingly fashionable in Florence; the panels surface patterning and elaborate
tooling are also indicative of this. Yet the Washington panel shows that Agnolo
Gaddi cannot have remained unaware of the alternative current of Florentine
painting headed by Niccol Gerini, which in the years 13851400 tried to revive
motifs and forms associated with painters of the school of Giotto in the first half of
the century.[22] It seems to me reasonable, therefore, to suggest that the
Washington Coronation is close in date to the San Miniato altarpiece, dating to
c. 1390 or shortly after.
Mikls Boskovits (19352011)


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Detail of angels, Agnolo Gaddi, The Coronation of

the Virgin with Six Angels, c. 1390, tempera on panel,
Collection
fig. 1 Agnolo Gaddi, Saints Julian, James, and Michael, c.

1390, tempera on panel, Yale University Art Gallery,
University Purchase from James Jackson Jarves. Image:
Yale University Art Gallery


fig. 3 Detail of Christ and Mary, Agnolo Gaddi, The

Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels, c. 1390, tempera
on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
Kress Collection
NOTES
[1] Frank L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London
and New York, 1958), 9697.
[2] On the iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin in general, see Philippe
Verdier, Le couronnement de la Vierge: Les origines et les premiers
dveloppements dun thme iconographique (Montral and Paris, 1980);
Ulriche Liebl, Krnung Mariens, in Marienlexikon, ed. Remigius Bumer
and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1991), 3:680683; and, especially as
regards Italian painting, Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi
and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay


Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 531539.
[3] Giovanni Previtali and Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua bottega, ed.
Alessandro Conti, 3rd ed. (Milan, 1993), pls. 114115, fig. 354.
[4] According to Terence Ford, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Inventory

of Music Iconography 1 (New York, 1986), 1, no. 4, the angels in the Gallery
painting are playing a lute and a gittern, respectively.
[5] While Giottos composition prescribed the presence of far more numerous
groups of saints to the sides of the Coronation depicted in the central panel,
Florentine triptychs and polyptychs of the fourteenth century often show
only two saints to the sides of the scene; cf. the polyptych by Puccio di
Simone now divided between the museums of Ghent and Berlin, in Richard
2001), 421429, or that by Giovanni di Tano Fei, dated 1394, now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, no. 50.229.2.
[6] Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 90, wrote that the Gallery
Coronation may have originally had side wings, but this is by no means
certain. In fact, no panel of the Coronation of the Virgin that has the form
and proportions of the one discussed here can be shown to have been a
self-standing, single-panel painting.
[7] Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400
(Florence, 1975), 303.
[8] Erling S. Skaug, Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli
Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco? Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48 (2004): 245257.
[9] Sonia Chiodo, Gaddi, Agnolo, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die

(Munich, 2005), 47:113. See also Gaudenz Freuler, ed., Manifestatori delle
cose miracolose: Arte italiana del 300 e 400 da collezioni in Svizzera e nel
Liechtenstein (Einsiedeln, 1991), 202203; and Laurence B. Kanter and John
Marciari, Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection (New Haven,
2010), 2628.
[10] For this panel, see Ada Labriola, in The Alana Collection, vol. 1, Italian
Paintings from the 13th to 15th Century, ed. Miks Boskovits (Florence,
2009), 811.
[11] Cf. Richard Fremantle, Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: A
Guide to Painting in and near Florence, 1300 to 1450 (London, 1975),
fig. 739. On the other hand, three saints appear to the sides of subjects
other than the Coronation of the Virgin, as in the case of a triptych by
Niccol Gerini with the Crucifixion in the center, now in the Galleria


dellAccademia in Florence (no. 3152).
[12] The Yale panel of Saints Julian, James, and Michael (no. 1871.20) measures
86.8 74.6 cm but has been slightly cropped along the sides and more
substantially cut along the top and bottom; originally it must have measured
between c. 110 and 130 cm in height, thus achieving dimensions that would
be consistent with a triptych having the Washington Coronation at its center.
The Yale panel is not easy to assess, however, given its present state of
conservation. After a nineteenth-century restoration had completely
regilded the heavily worn gold ground, including new halos with inscriptions
bearing the names of the saints, the painting was subjected to a rather
brutal cleaning in 1959, which stripped it of its previous additions and
retouches and left visible a heavily abraded paint surface with all its
lacunae. Cf. Charles Seymour, Early Italian Paintings in the Yale University
Art Gallery (New Haven and London, 1970), 3738.
[13] Christies, Pictures and Drawings by Old Masters (London, June 29, 1934),
no. 58; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Su Agnolo Gaddi, Critica darte 2
(1937): 185189. Apart from the authors cited in the Bibliography, the
attribution to Agnolo Gaddi was also confirmed in manuscript opinions by
Bernard Berenson, Giuseppe Fiocco, Roberto Longhi, F. Mason Perkins,
Wilhelm Suida, Raimond van Marle, and Adolfo Venturi. Fern Rusk Shapley,
Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:194195,
reported as the only dissenting voices the hypothesis of Hans Dietrich
Gronau, A Dispersed Florentine Altarpiece and Its Possible Origin,
Proporzioni 3 (1950): 42, in favor of an anonymous companion of Agnolo,
and the one formulated by the present writer in the early days of his studies
on Trecento painting, in 1964, and communicated to the Gallery (letter to
Perry Cott, January 14, 1964, in NGA curatorial files). I had at that time
proposed to unite the Washington Coronation with a group of paintings
isolated by Roberto Salvini, but I have long since come to the conclusion
that this group represents paintings belonging to the final phase of activity
of Gaddi himself. Cf. Roberto Salvini, Per la cronologia e per il catalogo di
un discepolo di Agnolo Gaddi, Bollettino darte 29 (19351936): 279294;
and Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370
1400 (Florence, 1975), 295304.
[14] Cf. Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:194195.
[15] Cf. Mikls Boskovits, Some Early Works of Agnolo Gaddi, The Burlington
Magazine 110 (1968): 210 n. 5; and Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977),
31.
[16] Erling S. Skaug, in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al

Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006),
106110; Erling S. Skaug, Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria


degli Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco?

[17] Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 3239; Giuseppe Marchini, La
Cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel Duomo di Prato (Prato, [1975]); Marco Ciatti,
Gli affreschi della Cappella della Cintola, in La Sacra Cintola nel Duomo di
Prato (Prato, 1995), 163223.
[18] Though he admitted the participation of assistants in some scenes, Bruce

Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 39, was highly positive in his evaluation
of the frescoes of the Cappella del Sacro Cingolo: At Prato there is a
harmony between fresco and frame, narrative and background, and figure
and architecture.... The style of the Cappella...is, in a word, mature. Yet the
crowded compositions of the Sacro Cingolo frescoes often seem somewhat
confused, and the individual passages, repetitive in kind and perfunctory in
technique, rarely achieve in this cycle the quality of the frescoes in the
cappella maggiore of Santa Croce, not to mention Gaddis most important
panel paintings.
[19] Although the quality of execution is generally high, details like the
foreshortened arms of the angels playing their instruments reveal some
weaknesses in design.
[20] Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 1617, 89, pl. 80, though he
erroneously cited the painting among Gaddis first recognizable works.
See also, following its recent restoration, Maria Matilde Simari, ed., La Croce
di Agnolo Gaddi della Pieve di San Martino a Sesto Fiorentino (Florence,
1995).
(Florence, 1975), 123124; Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 5156,
72, pls. 8796; Angelo Tartuferi, Le opere darte e la decorazione pittorica
della chiesa, in La Basilica di San Miniato al Monte a Firenze, ed.
Francesco Gurrieri, Luciano Berti, and Claudio Leonardi (Florence, 1988),
1986. In contrast to most art historians, Cole did not believe that the
documents of 13941396 referred to this work and considered it a product
of Gaddis followers.
[22] On the neo-Giottesque current in Florence that influenced many painters

between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, cf. Mikls Boskovits,
8788, 100, 223 n. 37.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY


The wooden support is a three-member, vertically grained wood panel that

Stephen Pichetto cradled in 19351936.[1] It was probably thinned to its present
thickness of 0.7 cm at that time. Traces of the original barbe still remain along the
pointed arch above, indicating the painting would have had an engaged frame.
The barbe is not present along the vertical sides and bottom, signifying that the
painting was probably cropped slightly in these areas. Originally, the panel may
have been of rectangular shape and only later obtained its present form. Evidence
of two nail holes at the top of the center board supports this theory, because they
most likely corresponded to a batten. A batten would not be necessary in this area,
where the arched panel consists of only one board, unless the panel was
rectangular and all three boards extended to this height. The panels shape
probably was altered when it was inserted into the nineteenth-century frame still
visible in the earlier photo of the painting, taken c. 1934; at the same time, no
doubt, the painted surface was cropped slightly along its vertical and horizontal
edges. Fine woven fabric, visible in the x-radiographs, was applied between panel
and gesso as an interleaf. Lines were incised in the gesso to mark the boundaries
between the gilding and paint, and areas to be gilded were prepared with red bole.
The crowns and halos were decorated with punched and incised designs. The
brocade was created using sgraffito technique. The paint is applied with small,
discrete brushstrokes, with green undermodeling in the flesh areas.[2] The gold
decoration on the drapery is mordant gilded.
The panel has been damaged by woodworm, requiring the replacement of lost
wood and strengthening of the joins. Stephen Pichetto removed discolored varnish
and inpainted the losses when he applied the cradle in 19351936.[3] Twenty years
later, in 1955, Mario Modestini removed discolored varnish and inpainted the
losses again.[4] Photographs taken before the inpainting process [fig. 1] show
considerable damage along the right side join, obliterating the features of the
second angel at this side and resulting in narrow losses along that join from the
bottom edge to the elbow of Christ. There are also losses in the shoulder and
nearer wing of the angel on the extreme right and small inpainted lacunae in the
draperies and in the gold ground. The red lake pigments have faded significantly.
The varnish is somewhat yellowed, and some of the inpainting has discolored.


fig. 1 Archival photograph, 1955, after cleaning but before

inpainting, Agnolo Gaddi, The Coronation of the Virgin
with Six Angels, c. 1390, tempera on panel, National
TECHNICAL NOTES


[1] Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 40. A Cooper photograph (W. 8161)
shows the state of the painting at the time of the 1934 auction. The rather
rough retouching, evident especially in Christs tunic and in the profile of the
second angel on the right side, proves that the panel had been restored
sometime earlier, probably in the late nineteenth century.
[2] The pigments were analyzed using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF).
The analysis was performed by the NGA scientific research department (see
report dated February 13, 1988, in NGA conservation files).
[4] See Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:195, and several photographs in the NGA
curatorial files, taken either during or after Modestinis treatment.
PROVENANCE
The Hon. William Keith Rous [1907-1983], Worstead House, Norfolk; (sale, Christie,
Manson & Woods, London, 29 June 1934, no. 58, as by Orcagna); purchased by
(Giuseppe Bellesi, London)[1] for (Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence);
sold October 1935 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to
NGA. [1] Bellesi worked in London as Contini-Bonacossis agent in the 1930s. [2]
The bill of sale for several paintings, including the Gaddi, is dated 10 October 1935
(copy in NGA curatorial files). The name of the British owner is incorrectly given as
the Hon. Keith Bons.
EXHIBITION HISTORY

New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 128.
1940 Arts of the Middle Ages: A Loan Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
1940, no. 59.
BIBLIOGRAPHY


1934 Christie, Manson, & Woods. Pictures and Drawings by Old Masters.
London, 29 June 1934: no. 58.
1937 Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico. "Su Agnolo Gaddi." Critica darte 2 (1937):
188, pl. 134, fig. 1.
1939 Valentiner, Wilhelm R., and Alfred M. Frankfurter. Masterpieces of Art.
Exhibition at the New York Worlds Fair, 1939. Official Souvenir Guide
and Picture Book. New York, 1939: no. 8, pl. 6.
(repro.), 240.
repro. 107.
1950 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. "A Dispersed Florentine Altarpiece and its
Possible Origin." Proporzioni 3 (1950): 42.
York, 1955: pl. 27.
1960 Labriola, Ada. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani.
Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 82+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 51(1998):146.
School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 2:69, pl. 350.
Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 39-40, fig. 98-99.
1968 Boskovits, Mikls. "Some Early Works of Agnolo Gaddi." The Burlington
Magazine 110 (1968): 210 n. 5.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 77, 308, 645, 661.
1400. Florence, 1975: 118, 303, 304, fig. 267.



1977 Cole, Bruce. Agnolo Gaddi. Oxford, 1977: 28-30, 35, 36, 89, 90, pls. 83-
85.
1978 Boskovits, Mikls. "Review of Agnolo Gaddi by Bruce Cole." The Art
Bulletin 60 (1978): 708, 709.
New York, 1980: 14-16, fig. 8.
National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York 1986: 1, no. 4.
1986 Ricci, Stefania. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il
Trecento. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:572.
Earlier Italian Schools. Rev. ed. London, 1988: 28.
1989 Bellosi, Luciano. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori.
Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-
1994: 2(1990):471.
1989 Eisenberg, Marvin. Lorenzo Monaco. Princeton, 1989: 56 n. 56.
New York, 1991: 179, color repro.
1991 Petrocchi, Stefano. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale.
Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002:
6(1995):426, 427.
1992 Chiodo, Sonia. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die
87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 47(2005):113
1:262, 263; 2:punch chart 8.2.
1996: 74, repro. 76.
1996 Ladis, Andrew. "Agnolo Gaddi." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane
Italian Paintings, 1300-1800. Kansas City, MO, 1996: repro. 63.
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 132, 481.


2004 Skaug, Erling S. "Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli

Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco?"
2005 Splendeurs de la peinture italienne, 1250-1510. Exh. cat. Galerie G. Sarti.
Paris, 2005: 62, 64, repro. 66.


Agnolo Gaddi
Madonna and Child

Enthroned with Twelve
Angels, and with the
Blessing Christ [middle
panel]
shortly before 1387
overall: 204 80 cm (80 5/16 31 1/2 in.)
Inscription: across the bottom: AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS [TECUM]
(Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; from Luke 1:28); on the book held by
the Redeemer in the gable: EGO SUM / A[ET] O PRINCI / PIU[M] [ET] FINIS / EGO
SUM VI / A. VERITAS / [ET] VITA (I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
end, I am the way, the truth, and the life; from John 14:6; Revelations 22:13)
Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1937.1.4.b
ENTRY
This panel is the central part of a triptych flanked by two laterals with paired saints (
Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the Archangel Gabriel [left panel] and Saint
Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the Virgin of the Annunciation
[right panel]). All three panels are topped with similar triangular gables with a
painted medallion in the center. The reduction of a five-part altarpiece into a
simplified format with the external profile of a triptych may have been suggested
to Florentine masters as a consequence of trends that appeared towards the end
of the fourteenth century: a greater simplification in composition and a revival of
elements of painting from the first half of the Trecento.[1] Agnolo Gaddi followed
this trend in several of his works. He demonstrates this in the three panels being
discussed here by his deliberate revival of motifs that had been abandoned by
most Florentine painters since the mid-fourteenth century. To present the
Madonna seated on a throne of Giottesque type,[2] instead of concealing the
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing Christ 365
[middle panel]

structure of the throne with a gold-embroidered cloth of honor as in most paintings

realized by masters in the circle of Orcagna, was a sort of archaism at this time.
Agnolo scrupulously describes this seat and at the same time exploits its form to
create three-dimensional effects. Yet these archaizing motifs are combined with
more forward-looking features. Gaddis progressive adjustment to the innovative
late-Gothic taste of his time is thus attested by various aspects of the triptych, such
as the pastiglia decoration in the gables, the now lost decoration of the
frame,[3] the rich orientalizing carpet that covers the floor,[4] and even the crowded
composition of the central panel.
Lionello Venturi published this triptych in 1931 under the name of Gherardo
Starnina.[5] This attribution was based on the now discarded theory of scholars
who had tried in the first three decades of the century to reconstruct the oeuvre of
a putative disciple of Agnolo Gaddi, to whom the conventional name
Madonnenmeister or Compagno d Agnolo was given and who was later
identified with Gherardo Starnina.[6] However, Bernard Berenson recognized that a
good part of the work given to the Compagno dAgnolo belongs to Agnolo
himself. The studies of Ugo Procacci [7] on Starnina finally put the proposed
identification to rest, though it continued to enjoy residual credit for some time to
come.[8] In the National Gallery of Art, the altarpiece was cataloged as a work by
Agnolo Gaddi, and since the 1960s, art historians have unanimously accepted this
attribution.
The present writer proposed that Agnolo Gaddis altarpiece might have been
executed for the sacristy of the church of San Miniato al Monte (Florence),[9] of
which the Alberti were patrons and for whose decoration Benedetto di Nerozzo
Alberti left funds in his will of 1387.[10] The reasons adduced at that time in support
of such a hypothesis were, it must be admitted, not quite convincing: referring to
the inscription in Saint Benedicts book to the admonition (an administrative
sanction by the Florentine government) against Alberti in 1387 and his subsequent
exile is open to question. Furthermore, I erroneously asserted that Saint Giovanni
Gualberto was represented in the painting. The saint to the right of the Virgin is, in
fact, Bernard of Clairvaux, but the presence of this saint in the altarpiece is actually
a further argument in support of a provenance from the sacristy of San Miniato.
Saint Bernard was the patron Saint of Benedetto Albertis son Bernardo, who in his
will dated 1389 left money for masses to be celebrated annually pro anima dicti
testatoris (for the soul of the said testator) in the family chapel in San Miniato,
which had evidently already by that date been consecrated.[11] The representation
[middle panel]

of Saint Andrew, who was the patron saint of a predeceased son of Benedetto
Alberti, also links the altarpiece to the sacristy of San Miniato. As to the fourth saint,
Catherine of Alexandria (standing on a broken wheel), she was evidently much
venerated in Benedettos family. This is proved by the fact that, in his will of 1387,
he bequeathed money for the decoration of an oratory near Florence (Santa
Caterina dellAntella) dedicated to the martyr saint of Alexandria (and decorated by
a cycle of frescoes illustrating scenes from her life by Spinello Aretino); additionally,
his son Bernardo wished to build a monastery and a church in her honor.[12] The
Alberti familys veneration of Saint Catherine may have been based on the popular
etymology of her name (catherine=catenula) diffused by Jacopo da Varazze in
Legenda aurea,[13] with reference to the chain represented in the Alberti coats of
arms.
Although the provenance from San Miniato remains a hypothesis, it still seems to
me a quite plausible one that, if correct, would give us the certainty that by 1830
the triptych was still on the altar of the sacristy. An altarpiece can apparently be
seen still in situ in a sketch of the sacristys altar wall [fig. 1] made in that year by
architect Christoph Robert August Roller (18051858), in his Tagebuch einer
italienischen Reise (Castle Museum Burgdorf, Burgdorf, Switzerland).
Unfortunately, the sketch, to which Stefan Weppelmann kindly drew my attention,
is very small and certainly not sufficient for the identification of the triptych in the
Gallery. What may be said for certain is only that an altarpiece composed of five
panels stood on the altar of the sacristy of San Miniato in 1830, but by 1836 this
altarpiece was no longer there, as Stefan Weppelmann rightly observed. It was
removed and sold presumably by the Pia Opera degli Esercizi Spirituali, which had
owned the furniture and decorations of the church since 1820.[14]
As for its date, the Gallerys first catalog (1941) cautiously suggested the last
quarter of the XIVth century, while the volume devoted to the Duveen
Pictures (1941) proposed an approximate date of c. 1380.[15] More recent
publications in general support a time frame within the 1380s, although without
explaining the reasons for this proposal. Arguing for a provenance from the
sacristy of the Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, Mikls Boskovits (1975)
attempted a more precise dating shortly after the codicil dated 1387 was appended
to the testament of Benedetto di Nerozzo degli Alberti, its putative patron.[16] For
his part, Bruce Cole (1979) stylistically linked the Gallery triptych with the cycle of
frescoes in the choir of Santa Croce in Florence, for which he proposed a date of
execution in the years c. 13881393.[17] Given the lack of securely datable panels
[middle panel]

by Gaddi, with the exception of the composite altarpiece of the Cappella del
Crocifisso, still in the church of San Miniato,[18] various scholars have attempted to
construct a chronology for the artist based on an analysis of the punched
decoration of his work; however, this effort has failed to yield any precise
indication for the Washington altarpiece other than a vague association with a
relatively late phase in the painters activity.[19]
In the course of his career, especially between the 1380s and the early 1390s,
Agnolo Gaddi produced a number of polyptychs, now in part dismantled and
dispersed, of which at least the surviving central panels propose a composition
close to that of the triptych discussed here. I refer in particular to Madonna and
Child with Eight Angels (now united with laterals that did not originally belong to it)
in the Contini-Bonacossi bequest to the Uffizi, Florence;[20] Madonna and Child
Surrounded by Eight Angels in the church of San Lorenzo at Borgo San
Lorenzo;[21] the triptych in the Staatliche Museen of Berlin, in which six angels are
placed around the throne and a further pair are in the gable;[22] and Madonna and
Child Flanked by Twelve Angels, now in a private collection in Milan.[23] None of
these is securely dated, but the Berlin triptych can in all probability be identified
with that formerly on the altar of the Nobili chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli,
which bore the inscription An D 1387 Bernardus Cini de Nobilibus fecit fieri hanc
cappellam.[24] This gives us a useful point of reference not only for defining a
chronological sequence of the paintings in question but also, as we shall see, for
the dating of Gaddis great cycles of Florentine frescoes. Another chronological
point of reference, albeit an approximate one, is 1383, the date of the testament of
Michele di Vanni Castellani, in which he made bequests for the construction and
decoration of a family chapel in Santa Croce, the chapel that would later be
frescoed by Agnolo Gaddi.[25] The style of this decoration suggests a period of
execution not much later than the will; indeed, most art historians tend to place the
execution of the cycle in the years immediately following 1383.
Although successive restorations have now made it difficult to assess, the Borgo
San Lorenzo panel [26] seems the earliest of the group. It was perhaps painted
even before the frescoes in the Castellani chapel, with which it has affinities in its
use of dense shadows in modeling, in the rigid profiles of the angels, and in the
deeply channeled and brittle-looking folds of their garments. Between that work
and the Nobili triptych now in Berlin can be placed both the Madonna of the
Contini-Bonacossi bequest (it too now altered by retouches) and the triptych in the
Gallery. In contrast to these latter two, the animated composition of the panel
[middle panel]

destined for the Nobili chapel seems to represent a further step forward, in the
direction of the more dynamic compositions and the more delicate modeling that
characterize the painters final phase, to which the above-mentioned Madonna
surrounded by twelve angels now in a private collection can, I believe, be
ascribed.[27]
If such a chronological sequence of the altarpieces executed by Agnolo in the

1380s is plausible, the Gallery triptych ought to date to a period slightly preceding
1387that is, slightly preceding the execution of the other and more important
enterprise promoted by Benedetto di Nerozzo Alberti, the frescoing of the choir in
Santa Croce.[28] Various similarities can be identified between passages of that
cycle and the Washington triptych, in confirmation of the chronological proximity of
the two works: the bust of Saint Andrew [fig. 2] recurs, in similar form, in the scene
of the Making of the Cross [fig. 3], in the group of spectators to the extreme right of
the fresco, while analogies can also be identified between the other saints of the
triptych and the busts of the prophets inserted in the ornamental friezes that
articulate the chapels decoration. Close similarities have also been observed
between the lateral saints of the Gallery triptych and the fragments of an altarpiece
now in Indianapolis.[29] We have no secure evidence to help us date these
fragments, probably the remains of the decoration of the lateral pilasters of a
polyptych roughly contemporary with, or perhaps slightly later than, the triptych
being discussed here. In conclusion, therefore, the Washington altarpiece
exemplifies a stage in the artists career in which he embarked on the gradual
discovery of the innovative features of late-Gothic art. This led him to develop
greater elegance in poses, more delicate and harmonious arrangement of
draperies, and more spontaneous vitality in the conduct of the angels thronged
around the sides of the throne as if drawn magnetically to the child. A clear sign of
the innovations of the phase in which Agnolo painted the frescoes in the choir of
Santa Croce is also the artists polychromy: abandoning the somber palette of
previous works, he now prefers or utilizes combinations of delicate pastel colors.
[middle panel]

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Detail of Saint Andrew (left), Agnolo Gaddi,

fig. 1 C. A. R. Roller, ""Design of the east wall of the
Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict,
sacristy of San Miniato in Florence,"" from Tagebuch einer
Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, shortly
italienischen Reise (Journal of My Trip to Italy in the Years
before 1387, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art,
1829 and 1830), 1:7, June 1830, Rittersaalverein Castle
Museum, Burgdorf, Switzerland
fig. 3 Detail of spectators, Agnolo Gaddi, The Making of

the Cross, 13851390, fresco, Cappella Maggiore, Santa
Croce, Florence. Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY
[middle panel]

NOTES
[1] A similar solutiona five-part polyptych reduced to triptych formatin fact

appears on the main side of Giottos Stefaneschi altarpiece (Pinacoteca
Vaticana, no. 40.120) and later (probably at a date close to 1340) in the
fragment of a triptych by Jacopo del Casentino now in a private collection;
see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting:
The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 7, The Biadaiolo Illuminator, Master of
the Dominican Effigies (New York, 1957), pl. xlix. About 1365, Matteo di
Pacino revived this scheme in an altarpiece of similar structure now in the
Galleria dellAccademia in Florence (no. 8463); see Michela
Palmeri, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi
della Galleria dellAccademia di Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo
Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 174181. Perhaps a few years later in date is
another triptych of similar format, attributed to the Master of San Lucchese
near Poggibonsi, destroyed in 1944; reproduced in Bernard Berenson,
Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 2, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 1050,
as a work by Jacopo di Cione. Another altarpiece of the same format is the
triptych painted by the Master of the Misericordia and Niccol Gerini in
collaboration, now in the church of SantAndrea at Montespertoli near
Florence; reproduced in Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and
vol. 5, Giovanni del Biondo, pt. 2 (New York, 1969), pl. xliv, as workshop of
Giovanni del Biondo, probably executed around 1380.
[2] The throne is similar to the one that appears in the polyptych signed by
Giotto now in the Museo Civico Nazionale in Bologna (no. 284). Thrones of
this type, with a high, triangular-topped backrest but of simple structure and
convincingly drawn in perspective, appear in the early 1360s in Giovanni da
Milanos polyptych now in the Museo Civico at Prato; in the fragmentary
polyptych by Cenni di Francesco, dated 1370, in the church of San
Cristofano a Perticaia near Florence; in the polyptych by Pietro Nelli and
Niccol Gerini in the pieve at Impruneta, dated 1375; and thereafter ever
more frequently in the last quarter of the century. Cf. Mikls
1400 (Florence, 1975), pls. 86 and 61.
[3] On the original decoration of the frame, cf. Mary B. Bustin, Recalling the
Past: Evidence for the Original Construction of Madonna Enthroned with
Saints and Angels by Agnolo Gaddi, Studies in the History of Art:
Conservation Research57 (19961997): 5064. The fashion of covering the
gable zones of altarpieces with pastiglia ornamental motifs in relief before
they were gilded began to spread from Orcagnas shop in the second half
of the Trecento.
[4] The sumptuous decoration, with pairs of facing animals, of the brocaded
[middle panel]

fabrics used to cover the throne of the Madonna or the floor on which the
saints stand is a phenomenon characteristic of Florentine painting in the
second half of the fourteenth century, especially in paintings of the circle of
Orcagna, but also in panels produced in the bottega of Agnolo Gaddi. Cf.
Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 283, 316, 341.
[5] Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 52.
[6] Oskar Wulff (1907) coined this unfortunate conventional name. Osvald Sirn
(19141915) later altered it to Compagno dAgnolo, and shortly thereafter
he formulated a hypothesis identifying this artist with Gherardo Starnina
(1916, 5153). See Oskar Wulff, Der Madonnenmeister: Ein sienesisch
florentinische Trecentist, Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 20 (1907): 195210,
227236; Osvald Sirn, Early Italian Pictures, the University Museum,
Gttingen (Conclusion), The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 26
(1914): 107114; Osvald Sirn, ed., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in
the Jarves Collection Belonging to Yale University (New Haven and London,
1916), 5153.
The proposal was accepted by Raimond van Marle, The Development of the
Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th
Century(The Hague, 1924), 565573, and some other authors in the
following decade.
[7] Referring to the group of paintings usually cited under the name
Compagno dAgnolo, Bernard Berenson wrote: Una delle pi singolari
aberrazioni della critica recente stata quella di attribuire tutte queste
Madonne allo Starnina; ma non necessario perdere il tempo a dissipare
errori che il tempo stesso disperder (One of the most singular aberrations
of modern criticism is that of attributing all these Madonnas to Starnina; but
it is not necessary to waste time dissipating errors that time itself will
dissipate). See Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento
fiorentino, 3, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 1303. After the discovery of the remains
of the cycle of Starninas documented frescoes in the church of the Carmine
in Florence, the hypothesis of the anonymous masters identification with
Starnina was gradually abandoned. See Ugo Procacci, Gherardo
Starnina, Rivista darte 15 (1933): 151190; Ugo Procacci, Gherardo
Starnina, Rivista darte 17 (1935): 331384.
[8] The triptych now in the National Gallery of Art evidently came to Duveen
Brothers accompanied by expertises from Robert Langton Douglas and
Osvald Sirn, both supporting the attribution to Starnina; see Duveen
Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941),
nos. 2425. Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933), Wilhelm R. Valentiner (1933), and
Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca (1951) also accepted that attribution.
Roberto Salvini (19351936), not accepting the identification Gherardo
Starnina=Compagno dAgnolo, attributed the painting to the latter. Cf.
[middle panel]

Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 52; Lionello
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 63; Wilhelm R.
Valentiner, ed., The Sixteenth Loan Exhibition of Old Masters: Italian
Paintings of the XIV to XVI Century (Detroit, 1933), no. 11; Ugo Galetti and
Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951),
3:2351; and Roberto Salvini, Per la cronologia e per il catalogo di un
discepolo di Agnolo Gaddi, Bollettino darte 29 (19351936): 287.
(Florence, 1975), 118121.
[10] On Benedetto Albertis will, see Luigi Passerini, ed., Gli Alberti di Firenze:
Genealogia, storia e documenti, 2 vols. (Florence, 1869), 2:187. The codicil in
question was attached to the will drawn up in 1377 (now lost and known only
from a seventeenth-century abstract). In it the testator already instructed
that si facessi dipignere la Sagrestia di San Miniato al Monte con gli Armadi
et Finestra et af[freschi] (that the sacristy of San Miniato al Monte should be
painted [and provided] with cupboards, [stained glass] window, and
frescoes); Giovanni Felice Berti, Cenni storico-artistici per servire di guida
ed illustrazione alla insigne Basilica di S. Minato al Monte e di alcuni
dintorni presso Firenze (Florence, 1850), 156. So, when Alberti ten years
later made testamentary provision that the sacrestia ecclesiae sancti
Miniatis ad Montem de prope Florentiam compleatur et compleri et perfici
debeant picturis, armariis, coro, fenestra vitrea, altari et aliis necessariis (the
sacristy of San Miniato al Monte of Florence should be completed and
perfected with paintings, cupboards, a choir stall, stained glass window, an
altar, and all other necessary things), this decoration might already have
been planned and perhaps even in part realized. Ada Labriola and Federica
Baldini accepted the provenance of the Gallery's panels from the sacristy of
San Miniato in Ada Labriola, La decorazione pittorica, in LOratorio di
Santa Caterina: Osservazioni storico-critiche in occasione del restauro, ed.
Maurizio De Vita (Florence, 1998), 52; Federica Baldini, in LOratorio di
Santa Caterina allAntella e i suoi pittori, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence,
2009), 159.
[11] See Stefan Weppelmann, Spinello Aretino und die toskanische Malerei des
14. Jahrhunderts (Florence, 2003), 381.
[13] Jacopo da Varazze, Legenda aurea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, 2 vols.
(Florence, 1998), 2:1205.
[14] See Regesto dellAbbazia fiorentina di San Miniato, La Graticola 4 (1976):

117135. See Stefan Weppelmann, Spinello Aretino und die toskanische
Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Florence, 2003), 381.
[middle panel]


Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 69; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in
Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), nos. 2425.
(Florence, 1975), 118.
[17] Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 2126.
[18] Even the dating of this work, for the most part identified with the altarpiece
for which Agnolo was paid between 1394 and 1396, has been questioned.
What is certain is that payments were made to Agnolo during those years
for la tavola di San Miniato a Monte. In 1396, however, because the artist
had died in the meantime, his brother Zanobi received the balance; see
Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 65, 67. No doubt correctly, art
historians generally have assumed that the documents refer to the
altarpiece placed on the altar of the crucifix of Saint Giovanni Gualberto in
San Miniato, which has come down to us with its components rearranged.
Originally, the panels of the polyptych representing the stories of Christ and
full-length figures of Saint Giovanni Gualberto and Saint Minias formed an
ensemble that must have contained at the center the much-venerated
crucifix, which, according to legend, had spoken to Saint Giovanni
Gualberto. When the crucifix was transferred to the Vallombrosans of Santa
Trinita in Florence in 1671, the painted panels were rearranged in such a way
as to fill the gap created by its removal. Though Cole (1977, 5156)
contested the identification of the existing altarpiece of the crucifix of Saint
Giovanni Gualberto with that cited in the documents, his opinion met with
little support. Cole argued instead that the documented painting should be
identified with the triptych of the Contini-Bonacossi bequest now in the
Uffizi, Florence. But this latter painting has existed in its present form only
since the 1930s, when the dispersed panels of two different altarpieces
were arbitrarily cobbled together during an unscrupulous restoration; cf.
Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 5156; Mikls Boskovits, Pittura
n. 85, 298; Gaudenz Freuler, ed., Manifestatori delle cose miracolose: Arte
italiana del 300 e 400 da collezioni in Svizzera e nel
Liechtenstein (Einsiedeln, 1991), 204; Christoph Merzenich, Vom
Quattrocento (Berlin, 2001), 228. Freuler, however, believed that at least the
two laterals of the Contini-Bonacossi polyptych formed part of the altarpiece
documented in 13941396.
[19] Among the punch marks used by Agnolo, Erling Skaug (1994) especially
observed two that can be identified in Taddeo Gaddis triptych dated 1334,
now in the Staatlichen Museen of Berlin. Skaug inserted the National Gallery
of Art painting in the late phase of Agnolo Gaddi. Both the investigations of
Mojmir S. Frinta (1998) and the later analysis of Skaug himself (2004) largely
[middle panel]

concurred, however, in suggesting that the very same punches were used
throughout the artists career. See Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto
to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in
Tuscan Panel Painting with Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 1330
1430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:260264; 2: punch chart 8.2; Mojmir Svatopluk
Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature
Painting (Prague, 1998), 100, 244, 283, 290, 322, 481; Erling S. Skaug,
Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Altarpiece of
1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco? Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48 (2004): 245, 254255. Some of
the punch marks found in the Washington triptych also appear in the later
San Miniato altarpiece, documented in 13941396 (on which see note 18
above), while others had already been used in Coronation of the Virgin in
the London National Gallery, generally considered an early work by the
artist.
[20] Osvald Sirn, Addenda und Errata in meinem Giottino-Buch, Monatshefte

fr Kunstwissenschaft 1 (1908): 11221123, published the central panel with
an attribution to Agnolo Gaddi and stated its present whereabouts as the
Masi collection in Capannoli (Pisa). It is very probable, therefore, that the
painting has a provenance either from Pisa or from Capannoli itself, a spa (at
present a resort) in the district of Pisa that used to belong to Piero
Gambacorti, the governor of Pisa, who owned a castle there; see Emanuele
Repetti, Dizionario geografico, fisico, storico della Toscana, contenente la
descrizione di tutti i luoghi del Granducato, Ducato di Lucca, Garfagnana e
Lunigiana, 11 vols. (Florence, 18331849), 1:452. The provenance of the
laterals now attached to this painting is unknown; all we know is that in 1952
they were the property of Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, who, according to
Cole, had purchased them in Rome prior to 1931. Cf. George Kaftal, Saints in
1952), 747748; Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 76. Contini then
commissioned special frames to be made for them, similar to the original
frame of the Madonna from Capannoli. Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina
alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 298, dated the
latter to c. 13801385, while Cole, as we have seen, considered the
recomposed triptych to be genuine and associated it with the two
documents of 13941396. Caterina Caneva, in Gli Uffizi: Catalogo generale,
2nd ed. (Florence, 1980), 277, dated the execution of the whole altarpiece to
13751380; Ada Labriola, Gaddi, Agnolo, in Dizionario biografico degli
italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 1998), 51:146, to the 1380s; while Sonia Chiodo,
Gaddi, Agnolo, inAllgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler
aller Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols. (Munich, 2005), 47:113,
mentioned it as a late work.
[21] Boskovitss proposal (1975, 117, 296) to attribute the Borgo San Lorenzo
[middle panel]

Madonna to Agnolo and to date it to 13801385 has in substance been

accepted by the more recent literature; cf. Mikls Boskovits, Pittura
fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 117, 296;
Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution,
Particular Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994),
1:261; Maria Matilde Simari, Il Mugello, in Il Mugello, la Valdisieve e la
Romagna fiorentina, ed. Cristina Acidini and Anna Benvenuti Papi (Milan,
2000), 56. A modern (nineteenth- or twentieth-century) copy of this painting,
attributed to Agnolo himself, was with Wildenstein & Co. in New York in
1954; see Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy
during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 114.
[22] The predella of the painting, now in the Louvre, Paris, has been recognized
as that formerly in the Nobili chapel at Santa Maria degli Angeli and dated to
13871388 on the basis of information derived from the sources by Hans
Dietrich Gronau, The Earliest Works of Lorenzo Monaco, 2, The Burlington
Magazine 92, no. 569 (1950): 217222. Federico Zeri cautiously conjectured
that the predella belonged to the triptych now in the Gemldegalerie in
Berlin, and Bruce Cole more firmly accepted this proposal. See Federico
Zeri, Investigations into the Early Period of Lorenzo Monaco, 1, The
Burlington Magazine 106 (1964): 554558; Bruce Cole, Agnolo
Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 75, 8487. For a recent rsum of the problems
relating to a reconstruction of the altarpiece, see Erling S. Skaug, Note sulle
decorazione a punzone e i dipinti su tavola di Lorenzo Monaco, in Lorenzo
Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi
and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 106110; see also note 23 below.
[23] The painting, which measures 150 87 cm, was illustrated in Servizio per le
ricerche delle opere rubate, Bollettino 17 (1994): 60, published by the
special police unit of the Carabinieri devoted to the recovery of stolen
works of art, formerly with an attribution to Agnolo Gaddi. Later, the
reported theft of the painting was shown to be mistaken, and the work was
republished by Gaudenz Freuler, Gli inizi di Lorenzo Monaco miniatore,
in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo
Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 80, with the same attribution.
The variety of the angels poses, the softness of the modeling, and the motif
of angels supporting the crown over Marys head (which recurs in paintings
of Gaddis late phase) in any case suggest a late dating, probably in the last
decade of the century.
[24] Gemldegalerie, Berlin, no. 1039; see Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford,
1977), 76, 8487. Attributed to the school of Agnolo Gaddi by Osvald
Sirn,Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strasbourg, 1905), 41, it was reinstated as an
autograph work by Gaddi himself by Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of
the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and their Works with an
[middle panel]

Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 213. For the lost inscriptions, see Dillian
Gordon, The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, National Gallery
Catalogues (London, 2003), 197 n. 3.
[25] See Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 7879, and, concerning the
will of Michele Castellani, 61, doc. 7. Attributed by Vasari and by much of the
later art-historical literature to Gherardo Starnina, the mural paintings in the
chapel were attributed by Berenson to Agnolo Gaddi, at least in great part.
See Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the
Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 213.
More recent studies have in general accepted this view, though some art
historians believe that they detect the hand of various assistants of Agnolo
in the cycle. Cole (1977, 1415) thought that three masters worked in the
chapel with some degree of autonomy: the anonymous master of the stories
of Saints Nicholas and Anthony, the equally anonymous master of the
scenes from the life of the Baptist, and Agnolo Gaddi himself, who, Cole
argued, executed part of the lunette of Zacharias and the stories of Saint
John the Evangelist.
[26] The Borgo San Lorenzo panel was extensively retouched in 1864 and then
restored c. 1920; see Francesco Niccolai, Mugello e Val di Sieve: Guida
topografica storico-artistica illustrata (Borgo S. Lorenzo, 1914), 430. Since
then it has been subjected to at least two other restorations. The alterations
in the appearance of the painting following these treatments are
documented in photographs nos. 886, 68589, and 93950 of the
Soprintendenza in Florence.
[27] The close resemblance between the passage with the blessing Christ child
seated on his mothers lap and the fresco by Agnolo Gaddi now in the
Museo di Pittura Murale in Prato suggests that the two paintings are close in
date, presumably contemporary with the painters documented activity in
Prato in the years 13911394. For the fresco in Prato, see Mikls
Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,
13701400 (Florence, 1975), fig. 260; for the documents in question, see
Giuseppe Poggi, Appunti darchivio: La Cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel
Duomo di Prato e gli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi,Rivista darte 14 (1932):
355376; Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 6365.
[28] We have no secure documentary evidence for the dating of the frescoes in
question. Roberto Salvini, Larte di Agnolo Gaddi(Florence, 1936), 3185,
considered them to predate the decoration of the Castellani chapel, but the
more recent art historical literature in general indicates 1387 as the terminus
ante quem for the execution of the cycle; Sonia Chiodo, Gaddi, Agnolo,
inAllgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und
Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols. (Munich, 2005), 47:113. The fact is that
while Benedetto degli Alberti in his testament dictated in 1377 indicated
Santa Croce (where his family had the patronage of the cappella maggiore)
[middle panel]

as the place where he wished to be buried, he made no mention of the

realization of the frescoes in this chapel in the codicil added to his will ten
years later, when he made testamentary provision for the funding of other
artistic enterprises; for the text of the codicil, which also cites the relevant
passage from the testament of 1377, see Luigi Passerini, ed., Gli Alberti di
Firenze: Genealogia, storia e documenti, 2 vols. (Florence, 1869), 2:186194.
It seems logical to infer from this evidence that at the time the codicil was
added the mural decoration of the chapel had already been finished and
that everything was ready for Benedettos burial. In my view, however, the
stylistic evidence suggests a later, or more protracted, date for the very
demanding enterprise of frescoing the chapel, which could have begun
c. 1385 but could well have been prolonged for years due to the political
setbacks that struck the family. Accordingly, the present writer suggests the
date 13851390; Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del
Rinascimento, 13701400 (Florence, 1975), 297; and Bruce Cole, Agnolo
Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 2127, c. 13881393. In dating the frescoes in the
choir, various stylistic features should be borne in mind: the more complex
and crowded compositions; the more elaborate language of gesture; the
numerous genre details; and the tendency towards a softening of the forms,
modeled with light tonal passages of chiaroscuro. These features all
suggest that the cycle of the cappella maggiore in Santa Croce is
stylistically more advanced than the decoration of the Castellani chapel
(executed, as we have seen, sometime after 1383), but no doubt antecedent
to the frescoes in the Cappella della Cintola in Prato Cathedral, for which
the painter received payments in 13921394. See Giuseppe Poggi, Appunti
darchivio: La Cappella del Sacro Cingolo nel Duomo di Prato e gli affreschi
di Agnolo Gaddi, Rivista darte 14 (1932): 363369.
[29] Clowes collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art: Ian Fraser et al., A Catalogue
of the Clowes Collection, Indianapolis Museum of Art Bulletin (Indianapolis,
1973), 6. Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 27, rightly observed the
very close stylistic and positional relationship with the Washington saints,
deducing from this affinity that both works were in the artists shop at the
same time. Perhaps it would be permissible to speak of the reuse of the
same model employed for the Washington triptych in another similar and
slightly later triptych, of which the panels now in Indianapolis formed part. I
suspect, however, that the Indianapolis panels belonged to the triptych of
the Nobili chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Florentine church of the
Camaldolese order (see notes 21 and 23 above). In fact, the lost framing
pilasters of the triptych now in Berlin could have contained, to judge from
their measurements, two of the Indianapolis panels superimposed on each
side. It is also worth pointing out that the paintings in the American museum
comelike the Berlin triptychfrom the Solly collection, and that the white
habit with which Saint Benedict and the other monk immersed in reading
are portrayed would have been very suitable to adorn a chapel in a church
[middle panel]

belonging to the Camaldolese order (a reformed branch of the

Benedictines). Laurence Kanter informs me that he is about to publish
further evidence for identifying the Indianapolis saints and their
counterparts at the University of Gottingen as the front and lateral faces of
the framing pilasters of the Nobili altarpiece, together with the missing
pilaster base from the altarpiece predella.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel, along with its companions Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the
Archangel Gabriel [left panel] and Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria
with the Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel], are formed from vertically oriented
poplar planks.[1] Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict and Madonna and Child
Enthroned are formed of three vertical planks each, with narrower strips of wood
flanking the central plank, while Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine is formed of
two boards of equal width, joined vertically between the two saints. The main
panels of the altarpiece are 4 to 4.5 cm thick; the frame supplies an additional
thickness of 2.7 to 2.9 cm for the flat molding and 2.3 cm for the dentil molding. On
the reverse, the panels are reinforced with modern horizontal battens set into
grooves. The two absent original battens, spanning all three panels, were placed
along the bottom and just below the base of the gabled tops of each panel, as is
clear from the remains of large nails used to attach them that are visible in the x-
radiographs. The frame, which consists of an additional plank of wood that
completely covers the gable portion of the panels, contains pastiglia decoration.
The columns dividing the central and lateral panels and flanking the outer edge of
the laterals are missing, as well as the freestanding cusped arches originally lining
the ogival arches of the panels. The wooden support is covered by a gesso ground
spread over a fabric interlayer. Incised lines in the gesso outline the figures and the
fold lines in the drapery. The gold ground was applied over a red bole preparation.
The halos are decorated by stamped and engraved motifs as well as stippling.
Outlines of areas to be painted and drapery fold lines were further delineated with
brushed underdrawing, which is visible with infrared reflectography.[2] The paint is
mostly egg tempera, but select pigments are bound with glue.[3] Flesh areas are
painted with the traditional underlayer of green. The pattern of the orientalizing
carpet on which the figures stand was transferred from a stencil to the paint
applied over burnished gold.[4] The wings of the seraphim are decorated using
[middle panel]

sgraffito to reveal the gold underlayer. The edges of the figures robes are
decorated with mordant gilding.
All three panels retain their original thickness. This one has two major splits, one
running from the lower edge into the mantle of the Virgin, the other diagonally
across the wing of the uppermost right-hand angel. Saint Andrew and Saint
Benedict has cracks caused by the removal of the original intermediate frame.
Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine has a split at the lower edge and another in the
frame to the left of and above the Virgin Annunciate in the gable medallion. Worm
tunneling is present in all three panels, but it is most extensive in the side planks of
Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict and Madonna and Child Enthroned as well as in
the gables of all three panels. There is minor abrasion of the paint film in the faces
and hands, but otherwise the painted surface is in fine condition. The red lakes of
the robes of Saint Catherine, the kneeling angels, and the Christ child have faded
slightly, and the Virgins blue robe is worn. The altarpiece underwent conservation
treatment between 1988 and 1991,[5] in the course of which the now lost
intermediate columns between the three panels were reconstructed.[6] Also during
this treatment, some of the fold lines in the Virgins robe were recreated.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed cross-sections of the

panel. The wood of the panel was identified as poplar and the integral frame
as linden (tiglio). A nonoriginal strip along the bottom was identified as
spruce (see report dated November 22, 1990, in NGA conservation files).
[2] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Kodak 310-21X PtSi camera.
[3] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the paint using amino
acid analysis in conjunction with high-performance liquid chromatography,
cross-sections, and gas chromatography in conjunction with mass
spectrometry, and identified both egg and glue binders (see reports dated
August 23, 1989, and November 22, 1991, in NGA conservation files).
[4] Report dated January 9, 1989, in NGA conservation files. Brigitte Klesse
pointed out that the same pattern, with minor modifications, was also used
in Gaddis triptych now in the Berlin gallery (no. 1039); see Brigitte
Klesse,Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern,
1967), 316.
[5] At the time of this treatment, the NGA scientific research department
analyzed the painting using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), amino
[middle panel]

acid analysis in conjunction with high performance liquid chromatography,

gas chromatography in conjunction with mass-spectrometry, x-ray
diffraction, and microscopy of cross-sections (see reports dated February 13,
1989; January 23, 1990; November 22, 1991; August 6, 1990; August 22,
1990; October 17, 1990; August 2, 1991; August 23, 1989; and November 22,
1990, in NGA conservation files).
[6] The reconstruction was based on marks on the panel as well as research
into comparable structures still intact. See Mary B. Bustin, Recalling the
Conservation Research57 (19961997): 3565. The altarpiece must have
been treated prior to 1988, probably in the first half of the twentieth century,
because the crockets on the top side of the frame, which are visible in
Lionello Venturis reproduction, had already disappeared prior to the 1988
treatment. Cf. Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931),
no. 52; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess
Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1:
no. 63.
PROVENANCE
Probably in the sacristy of the church of San Miniato al Monte, Florence, from
whence the triptych may have been removed shortly after 1830.[1] Bertram
Ashburnham [1797-1878], 4th earl of Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place, Battle,
Sussex;[2] by inheritance to his son, Bertram Ashburnham [1840-1913], 5th earl of
Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place; by inheritance to his daughter, Lady Mary
Catherine Charlotte Ashburnham [1890-1953], Ashburnham Place; (Robert Langton
Douglas, London);[3] purchased 19 June 1919 by(Duveen Brothers, Inc., London,
New York, and Paris);[4] sold 15 December 1936 to The A.W. Mellon Educational
and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[5] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] Mikls Boskovits, Pittura
fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-1400, Florence, 1975: 118-121,
proposed this provenance. The Alberti family were patrons of the church, and
Benedetto di Nerozzo Alberti left funds for its decoration in a codicil dated 1387
that was appended to his will of 1377 (now lost and known only from a
seventeenth-century abstract); see Luigi Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze.
Genealogia, storia e documenti, Florence, 1869: 2:187. Three of the four saints
depicted in the side panels are associated with the Alberti family, providing further
argument in support of the proposed provenance. Although in 1975 Boskovits
[middle panel]

erroneously asserted that Saint John Gualbert was represented in the altarpiece to
the right of the Virgin, he corrected this in the NGA systematic catalogue by
identifying the saint instead as Bernard of Clairvaux, the patron saint of Benedetto
Alberti's son Bernardo, who in his will dated 1389 left money for masses to be
celebrated annually for his soul in the family chapel in San Miniato, which had
evidently already been consecrated (see Stefan Weppelmann, Spinello Aretino,
Florence, 2003: 381). The representation of Saint Andrew, who was the patron
saint of a predeceased son of Benedetto Albert also links the altarpiece to the
sacristy of San Miniato, and Catherine of Alexandria, shown standing on a broken
wheel, was evidently much venerated in the Alberti family. In Benedetto's will he
bequeathed money for the decoration of an oratory near Florence (Santa Caterina
dell'Antella) dedicated to Catherine, and his son, Bernardo, wished to build a
monastery and a church in her honor (see Weppelmann 2003). Although this
provenance remains a hypothesis, it still seems a quite plausible one that, if
correct, would provide the certainty that by 1830 the altarpiece was still on the altar
of the sacristy. An altarpiece can apparently be seen still in place in a sketch of the
sacristy's altar wall made in that year by Christoph Roller (1805-1858), in his
Tagebuch einer italienschen Reise (Burgdorfer Heimatsmuseum, Burgdorf,
Switzerland). Unfortunately, the sketch, kindly brought to the attention of Mikls
Boskovits by Stefan Weppelmann, is very small and not sufficient for identifying the
Gallery's painting. What may be said for certain is only that an altarpiece composed
of five panels stood on the altar of the sacristy of San Miniato in 1830, but by 1836
this altarpiece was no longer there (Weppelmann 2003, 184). It was removed and
sold, presumably by the Pia Opera degli Esercizi Spirituali, which had owned the
furniture and decorations of the church since 1820; see "Regesto dell' Abbazia
florentina di S. Miniato," La Graticola 4 (1976): 117-135. [2] The collection, formed
originally by George, 3rd earl of Ashburnham, was enlarged by his son, Bertram,
after whose death no further paintings were added. See The Ashburnham
Collections. Part I. Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings ..., Sothebys, London,
sale of 24 June 1953: 3-4. [3] According to Denis Sutton (Robert Langton Douglas.
Part III, Apollo 109 (1979): 452, Douglas was in contact with the Ashburnham
family around 1919. See also letter from Douglas to Fowles dated 1 May 1941,
Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles: box 244, reel 299. [4] Duveen Brothers Records,
Angeles: reel 422. The painting was first entered in the Duveen "X-Book" (number
X 149) as by Starnina, but this was crossed out and replaced with the attribution
[middle panel]

"Agnelo [sic] Gaddi." [5] The original Duveen Brothers invoice is in the Records of
The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Subject Files, Box 2, Gallery
Archives, NGA; copy in NGA curatorial files. The painting is listed as by Gherardo
Starnina, influenced by Agnolo Gaddi, with the additional note that Bernard
Berenson gave the painting to Gaddi.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1933 Italian Paintings of the XIV to XVI Century, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1933, no.
11, repro., as Altarpiece by Gherardo Starnina.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1933 Procacci, Ugo. "Gherardo Starnina." Rivista darte 15 (1933): 160.
Detroit." Pantheon 12 (1933): 238.
1933 Valentiner, Wilhelm R., ed. The Sixteenth Loan Exhibition of Old Masters:
Italian Paintings of the XIV to XVI Century. Exh. cat. Detroit Institute of
Arts. Detroit, 1933: no. 11, repro.
1:no. 63, repro.
1935 Salvini, Roberto. "Per la cronologia e per il catalogo di un discepolo di
Agnolo Gaddi." Bollettino darte 29 (1935-1936): 287.
New York, 1941: nos. 24-25, repro., as by Gherardo Starnina.
(repro.), 233.
repro. 106.
[middle panel]

3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:2351 repro.
Magazine 110 (1968): 210 n. 9.
1969 Cole, Bruce. Agnolo Gaddi. Ph.D. diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1969. Ann
Arbor, MI, 1977: 73-75, 85, 208, 209.
1972 Boskovits, Mikls. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi
dei pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo . Edited by Alberto
Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols. Turin, 1972-1976: 5(1974)186.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 77, 301, 315, 369, 378, 381, 645.
1973 Fraser, Ian, Edith Whitehill Clowes, George Henry Alexander Clowes,
and Carl J. Weinhardt. A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection.
Indianapolis Museum of Art Bulletin. Indianapolis, 1973: 6.
1400. Florence, 1975: 118-121, 123, 216 n. 84, 234 n. 140, 304, pl. 127.
271, fig. 553.
1976 Cole, Bruce. Giotto and Florentine Painting, 1280-1375. Icon Editions. 1st
ed. New York, 1976: 140, 141, pl. 52.
1977 Cole, Bruce. Agnolo Gaddi. Oxford, 1977: 26-30, 40, 41, 89, pls. 81, 82.
Bulletin 60 (1978): 708.
1979 Sutton, Denys. "Robert Langton Douglas. Part III." Apollo 109 (June 1979):
447 [165] fig. 1, 452 [170].
Function. 2 vols. Groningen, 1984-1990: 2(1990):66, fig. 48.
[middle panel]

1984: 73, no 16, color repro.

1988 Causa, Stefano. "La Sagrestia." in La Basilica di San Miniato al Monte a
Firenze. Edited by Francesco Gurrieri, Luciano Berti and Claudio
Leonardi. Florence, 1988: 228, 229.
1994: 2(1990):471.
Collection: Early Italian Painting 1290-1470. London, 1990: 116 n. 1.
87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 47(2005):113, 114.
1:262, 263; 2:punch chart 8.2
1995 Frosinini, Cecilia. "Agnolo Gaddi." in La Sacra Cintola nel Duomo di
Prato. Prato, 1995: 226.
1995 Halpine, Susana M. "An Investigation of Artists' Materials Using Amino
Acid Analysis: Introduction of the One-Hour Extraction Method." Studies
in the History of Art 51 (1995): 41-48, 61, repro. no. 7, 64-65 nn. 41-55.
1995 Skerl Del Conte, Serena. Antonio Veneziano e Taddeo Gaddi nella
Toscana della seconda met del Trecento. Pasian di Prato (Udine),
1995: 52-54, 56, 62, 65 n. 13, 66 n. 23, repro.
1996: 80.
1996 Symposium, Early Italian Paintings Techniques and Analysis, Maastricht,
1996: 81, repro.
1997 Bakkenist, Tonnie, Ren Hoppenbrouwers, and Hlne Dubois, eds.
Early Italian Paintings: Techniques and Analysis. Maastricht,
Netherlands, 1997: 81, repro.
1997 Bustin, Mary. "Recalling the Past: Evidence for the Original Construction
of Madonna Enthroned with Saints and Angels by Agnolo Gaddi."
Studies in the History of Art 57 (1997): 35-64, repro. no. 2.
1997 Halpine, Susana M. "Analysis of Artists Materials Using High-
Performance Liquid Chromatography." In Early Italian Paintings:
[middle panel]

Techniques and Analysis. Edited by Tonnie Bakkenist, Ren

Hoppenbrouwers and Hlne Dubois. Maastricht, Netherlands, 1997: 22,
23.
1998 Labriola, Ada. La decorazione pittorica. In LOratorio di Santa Caterina:
osservazioni storico-critiche in occasione del restauro. Edited by
Maurizio De Vita. Florence, 1998: 52.
Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. New Haven, 2000: 108-
109, color fig. 102, 103.
2001 Merzenich, Christoph. Vom Schreinerwerk zum Gemlde: Florentiner
Altarwerke der ersten Hlfte des Quattrocento. Berlin, 2001: 89, 189, fig.
49.
2003 Weppelmann, Stefan. Spinello Aretino und die toskanische Malerei des
14. Jahrhunderts. Florence, 2003: 184.
2004 Medicus, Gustav. "Gaddi, Agnolo." In Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia. 2
vols. Edited by Christopher Kleinhenz. New York, 2004: 1:393
2006 Sander, Jochen. "The Standard Altarpiece of the Gothic Period: The
Polyptych." In Kult Bild: das Altar- und Andachtsbild von Duccio bis
Petersberg, 2006: 95, 96.
2008 Lhr, Wolf-Dietrich, and Stefan Weppelmann, eds. Fantasie und
Handwerk: Cennino Cennini und die Tradition der toskanischen Malerei
von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco. Exh. cat. Gemldegalerie, Berlin.
Munich, 2008: 291.
2009: 1:4, repro. 10.
2009 Damiani, Giovanna, ed. Le arti a Firenze tra gotico e Rinascimento. Exh.
cat. Museo Archeologico, Aosta. Florence, 2009: 76.
2009 Tartuferi, Angelo, ed. LOratorio di Santa Caterina allAntella e i suoi
pittori. Exh. cat. Santa Caterina dellAntella, Bagno a Ripoli-Ponte a Ema.
Florence, 2009: 159.
[middle panel]


2010: 16.
Catalogues. London, 2011: under 220, no. NG568.
[middle panel]

Agnolo Gaddi
Madonna and Child with Saints

Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and
Catherine of Alexandria with Angels
[entire triptych]
shortly before 1387
left panel (overall): 197 80 cm (77 9/16 31 1/2 in.)
middle panel (overall): 204 80 cm (80 5/16 31 1/2 in.)
right panel (overall): 194.6 80 cm (76 5/8 31 1/2 in.)
Inscription: left panel, across the bottom below the saints: S. ANDREAS AP[OSTO]L[U]S; S. BENEDICTUS ABBAS; left
panel, on the book held by St. Benedict: AUSCU / LTA.O/ FILI.PR / ECEPTA / .MAGIS / [T]RI.ET.IN / CLINA.AUREM /
CORDIS.T / UI[ET]A[D]MONITIONE / M.PII.PA / TRIS.LI / BENTE / R.EXCIP / E.ET.EF[FICACITER COMPLE] (Harken, O son, to
the precepts of the master and incline the ear of your heart and willingly receive the admonition of the pious father and
efficiently);[1] middle panel, across the bottom: AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS [TECUM] (Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee; from Luke 1:28); middle panel, on the book held by the Redeemer in the gable: EGO SUM / A[ET] O
PRINCI / PIU[M] [ET] FINIS / EGO SUM VI / A. VERITAS / [ET] VITA (I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, I am
the way, the truth, and the life; from John 14:6; Revelations 22:13); right panel, across the bottom under the saints: S.
BERNARDUS DOCTOR; S. K[A]TERINA VIRGO
[1] This is the incipit of the Rule of the Benedictine Order; see Sancti Benedicti Regula, in Jacques-Paul Migne, ed.,
Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Latina, 221 vols., Paris, 1844-1864: 66:215-932.
Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1937.1.4.a-c
Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of 388
Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]

ENTRY
This triptych consists of two laterals with paired saints and a central panel with the
Madonna and Child. All three panels are topped with similar triangular gables with
a painted medallion in the center. The reduction of a five-part altarpiece into a
simplified format with the external profile of a triptych may have been suggested to
Florentine masters as a consequence of trends that appeared towards the end of
the fourteenth century: a greater simplification in composition and a revival of
late Gothic taste of his time is thus attested by various aspects of the triptych, such
as the pastiglia decoration in the gables, the now lost decoration of the frame,[3]
the rich orientalizing carpet that covers the floor,[4] and even the crowded
attribution.

arms.

quarter of the XIVth century, while the volume devoted to the Duveen Pictures
(1941) proposed an approximate date of c. 1380.[15] More recent publications in
general support a time frame within the 1380s, although without explaining the
reasons for this proposal. Arguing for a provenance from the sacristy of the
Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, Mikls Boskovits (1975) attempted a
more precise dating shortly after the codicil dated 1387 was appended to the
testament of Benedetto di Nerozzo degli Alberti, its putative patron.[16] For his part,
Bruce Cole (1979) stylistically linked the Gallery triptych with the cycle of frescoes
in the choir of Santa Croce in Florence, for which he proposed a date of execution
in the years c. 13881393.[17] Given the lack of securely datable panels by Gaddi,
with the exception of the composite altarpiece of the Cappella del Crocifisso, still in
the church of San Miniato,[18] various scholars have attempted to construct a
chronology for the artist based on an analysis of the punched decoration of his
work; however, this effort has failed to yield any precise indication for the
Washington altarpiece other than a vague association with a relatively late phase in
the painters activity.[19]


ascribed.[27]

discovery of the innovative features of late Gothic art. This led him to develop


COMPARATIVE FIGURES



NOTES

1400 (Florence, 1975), pls. 86 and 61.
Conservation Research 57 (19961997): 5064. The fashion of covering the
of the Trecento.

1916), 5153.
Century (The Hague, 1924), 565573, and some other authors in the
following decade.

[9] Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,

13701400 (Florence, 1975), 118121.
2009), 159.
(Florence, 1998), 2:1205.



[16] Mikls Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,

13701400 (Florence, 1975), 118.

artist.

Gaddi, Agnolo, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler


Sirn, Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strasbourg, 1905), 41, it was reinstated as an

Duomo di Prato e gli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi, Rivista darte 14 (1932):
question. Roberto Salvini, Larte di Agnolo Gaddi (Florence, 1936), 3185,
more recent art historical literature in general indicates 1387 as theterminus
in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und




TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This altarpiece is formed from vertically oriented poplar planks.[1] Saint Andrew
and Saint Benedict with the Archangel Gabriel [left panel] and Madonna and Child
Enthroned with Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing Christ [middle panel] are
formed of three vertical planks each, with narrower strips of wood flanking the
central plank, while Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the
Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel] is formed of two boards of equal width,
joined vertically between the two saints. The main panels of the altarpiece are 4 to
4.5 cm thick; the frame supplies an additional thickness of 2.7 to 2.9 cm for the flat
molding and 2.3 cm for the dentil molding. On the reverse, the panels are
reinforced with modern horizontal battens set into grooves. The two absent
original battens, spanning all three panels, were placed along the bottom and just
below the base of the gabled tops of each panel, as is clear from the remains of
large nails used to attach them that are visible in the x-radiographs. The frame,
which consists of an additional plank of wood that completely covers the gable
portion of the panels, contains pastiglia decoration. The columns dividing the
central and lateral panels and flanking the outer edge of the laterals are missing, as
well as the freestanding cusped arches originally lining the ogival arches of the
panels. The wooden support is covered by a gesso ground spread over a fabric
interlayer. Incised lines in the gesso outline the figures and the fold lines in the
drapery. The gold ground was applied over a red bole preparation. The halos are
decorated by stamped and engraved motifs as well as stippling.
applied over burnished gold.[4] The wings of the seraphim are decorated

using sgraffito to reveal the gold underlayer. The edges of the figures robes are
All three panels retain their original thickness. Madonna and Child Enthroned has
two major splits, one running from the lower edge into the mantle of the Virgin, the
other diagonally across the wing of the uppermost right-hand angel. This panel has
cracks caused by the removal of the original intermediate frame. Saint Bernard and
Saint Catherine has a split at the lower edge and another in the frame to the left of
and above the Virgin Annunciate in the gable medallion. Worm tunneling is present
in all three panels, but it is most extensive in the side planks of Saint Andrew and
Saint Benedict and Madonna and Child Enthroned, as well as in the gables of all
three panels. There is minor abrasion of the paint film in the faces and hands, but
otherwise the painted surface is in fine condition. The red lakes of the robes of
Saint Catherine, the kneeling angels, and the Christ child have faded slightly, and
the Virgins blue robe is worn. The altarpiece underwent conservation treatment
between 1988 and 1991,[5] in the course of which the now lost intermediate
columns between the three panels were reconstructed.[6] Also during this
treatment, some of the fold lines in the Virgins robe were recreated.
TECHNICAL NOTES

Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern,
1967), 316.


Conservation Research 57 (19961997): 3565. The altarpiece must have
no. 63.
PROVENANCE


EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1:no. 63, repro.
New York, 1941: no. 24, as by Gherardo Starnina.
(repro.), 233.
repro. 106.

Magazine 110 (1968): 210 n. 9.
1969 Cole, Bruce. Agnolo Gaddi. Ph.D. dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1969.
Ann Arbor, MI, 1977: 73-75, 85, 208, 209.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 77, 301, 315, 369, 378, 381, 645.
1400. Florence, 1975: 118-121, 123, 216 n. 84, 234 n. 140, 304, pl. 127.
271, fig. 553.
ed. New York, 1976: 140, 141, pl. 52.
Bulletin 60 (1978): 708.
447 [165] fig. 1, 452 [170].


1994: 2(1990):471.
1:262, 263; 2:punch chart 8.2.
1995: 52-54, 56, 62, 65 n. 13, 66 n. 23, repro.
1996: 80.
1996: 81, repro.


23.
49.
Munich, 2008: 291.
2009: 1:4, repro. 10.
2010: 16.


Agnolo Gaddi
Saint Andrew and Saint

Benedict with the
Archangel Gabriel [left
panel]
shortly before 1387
overall: 197 80 cm (77 9/16 31 1/2 in.)
Inscription: across the bottom below the saints: S. ANDREAS AP[OSTO]L[U]S; S.
BENEDICTUS ABBAS; on the book held by St. Benedict: AUSCU / LTA.O/ FILI.PR /
ECEPTA / .MAGIS / [T]RI.ET.IN / CLINA.AUREM / CORDIS.T / UI[ET]A[D]MONITIONE
/ M.PII.PA / TRIS.LI / BENTE / R.EXCIP / E.ET.EF[FICACITER COMPLE] (Harken, O
son, to the precepts of the master and incline the ear of your heart and willingly
receive the admonition of the pious father and efficiently) [1]
[1] This is the incipit of the Rule of the Benedictine Order; see Sancti Benedicti
Regula, in Jacques-Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus: Series Latina,
221 vols., Paris, 1844-1864: 66:215-932.
Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1937.1.4.a
ENTRY
This panel is part of a triptych that consists of two laterals with paired saints (this
panel and Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the Virgin of the
Annunciation [right panel]) and a central panel with the Madonna and Child (
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing Christ
[middle panel]). All three panels are topped with similar triangular gables with a
painted medallion in the center. The reduction of a five-part altarpiece into a
simplified format with the external profile of a triptych may have been suggested to
Florentine masters as a consequence of trends that appeared towards the end of
the fourteenth century: a greater simplification in composition and a revival of
Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the Archangel Gabriel [left panel] 412

late-Gothic taste of his time is thus attested by various aspects of the triptych, such
as the pastiglia decoration in the gables, the now lost decoration of the
frame,[3] the rich orientalizing carpet that covers the floor,[4] and even the crowded
attribution.


arms.
quarter of the XIVth century, while the volume devoted to the Duveen Pictures
(1941) proposed an approximate date of c. 1380.[15] More recent publications in
general support a time frame within the 1380s, although without explaining the
reasons for this proposal. Arguing for a provenance from the sacristy of the
Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, Mikls Boskovits (1975) attempted a

more precise dating shortly after the codicil dated 1387 was appended to the
testament of Benedetto di Nerozzo degli Alberti, its putative patron.[16] For his part,
Bruce Cole (1979) stylistically linked the Gallery triptych with the cycle of frescoes
in the choir of Santa Croce in Florence, for which he proposed a date of execution
in the years c. 13881393.[17] Given the lack of securely datable panels by Gaddi,
with the exception of the composite altarpiece of the Cappella del Crocifisso, still in
the church of San Miniato,[18] various scholars have attempted to construct a
chronology for the artist based on an analysis of the punched decoration of his
work; however, this effort has failed to yield any precise indication for the
Washington altarpiece other than a vague association with a relatively late phase in
the painters activity.[19]

ascribed.[27]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES



NOTES

Galleria dellAccademia in Florence (no. 8463); see Michela Palmeri, in
Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria
dellAccademia di Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi
(Florence, 2003), 174181. Perhaps a few years later in date is another
triptych of similar format, attributed to the Master of San Lucchese near
Poggibonsi, destroyed in 1944; reproduced in Bernard Berenson, Quadri
senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 2, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 1050, as a work
by Jacopo di Cione. Another altarpiece of the same format is the triptych
painted by the Master of the Misericordia and Niccol Gerini in
more frequently in the last quarter of the century. Cf. Mikls Boskovits,
pls. 86 and 61.
Conservation Research 57 (19961997): 5064. The fashion of covering the
of the Trecento.

1916), 5153.
Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century
(The Hague, 1924), 565573, and some other authors in the following
decade.
Starnina was gradually abandoned. See Ugo Procacci, Gherardo Starnina,
Rivista darte 15 (1933): 151190; Ugo Procacci, Gherardo Starnina, Rivista
darte 17 (1935): 331384.

(Florence, 1975), 118121.
2009), 159.
(Florence, 1998), 2:1205.



(Washington, DC, 1941), 69; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public
Collections of America (New York, 1941), nos. 2425.
(Florence, 1975), 118.
italiana del 300 e 400 da collezioni in Svizzera e nel Liechtenstein
(Einsiedeln, 1991), 204; Christoph Merzenich, Vom Schreinerwerk zum
Gemlde: Florentiner Altarwerke der ersten Hlfte des Quattrocento (Berlin,
2001), 228. Freuler, however, believed that at least the two laterals of the
Contini-Bonacossi polyptych formed part of the altarpiece documented in
13941396.

Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting
(Prague, 1998), 100, 244, 283, 290, 322, 481; Erling S. Skaug, Towards a
Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo
Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco? Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes
in Florenz 48 (2004): 245, 254255. Some of the punch marks found in the
Washington triptych also appear in the later San Miniato altarpiece,
documented in 13941396 (on which see note 18 above), while others had
already been used in Coronation of the Virgin in the London National
Gallery, generally considered an early work by the artist.

Gaddi, Agnolo, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler


Burlington Magazine 106 (1964): 554558; Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi
(Oxford, 1977), 75, 8487. For a recent rsum of the problems relating to a
reconstruction of the altarpiece, see Erling S. Skaug, Note sulle
republished by Gaudenz Freuler, Gli inizi di Lorenzo Monaco miniatore, in
Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo
1977), 76, 8487. Attributed to the school of Agnolo Gaddi by Osvald Sirn,
Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strasbourg, 1905), 41, it was reinstated as an


Prato in the years 13911394. For the fresco in Prato, see Mikls Boskovits,
fig. 260; for the documents in question, see Giuseppe Poggi, Appunti
di Agnolo Gaddi, Rivista darte 14 (1932): 355376; Bruce Cole, Agnolo
Gaddi (Oxford, 1977), 6365.
question. Roberto Salvini, Larte di Agnolo Gaddi (Florence, 1936), 3185,
ante quem for the execution of the cycle; Sonia Chiodo, Gaddi, Agnolo, in
Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel, along with its companions Madonna and Child Enthroned with Twelve
Angels, and with the Blessing Christ [middle panel] and Saint Bernard and Saint
Catherine of Alexandria with the Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel], are
formed from vertically oriented poplar planks.[1] Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict
and Madonna and Child Enthroned are formed of three vertical planks each, with
narrower strips of wood flanking the central plank, while Saint Bernard and Saint
Catherine is formed of two boards of equal width, joined vertically between the two
saints. The main panels of the altarpiece are 4 to 4.5 cm thick; the frame supplies
an additional thickness of 2.7 to 2.9 cm for the flat molding and 2.3 cm for the
dentil molding. On the reverse, the panels are reinforced with modern horizontal
battens set into grooves. The two absent original battens, spanning all three
panels, were placed along the bottom and just below the base of the gabled tops
of each panel, as is clear from the remains of large nails used to attach them that
are visible in the x-radiographs. The frame, which consists of an additional plank of
wood that completely covers the gable portion of the panels, contains pastiglia
decoration. The columns dividing the central and lateral panels and flanking the
outer edge of the laterals are missing, as well as the freestanding cusped arches
originally lining the ogival arches of the panels. The wooden support is covered by
a gesso ground spread over a fabric interlayer. Incised lines in the gesso outline
the figures and the fold lines in the drapery. The gold ground was applied over a
red bole preparation. The halos are decorated by stamped and engraved motifs as
well as stippling.

other diagonally across the wing of the uppermost right-hand angel. This panel has
cracks caused by the removal of the original intermediate frame. Saint Bernard and
Saint Catherine has a split at the lower edge and another in the frame to the left of
and above the Virgin Annunciate in the gable medallion. Worm tunneling is present
in all three panels, but it is most extensive in the side planks of Saint Andrew and
Saint Benedict and Madonna and Child Enthroned, as well as in the gables of all
three panels. There is minor abrasion of the paint film in the faces and hands, but
otherwise the painted surface is in fine condition. The red lakes of the robes of
Saint Catherine, the kneeling angels, and the Christ child have faded slightly, and
the Virgins blue robe is worn. The altarpiece underwent conservation treatment
between 1988 and 1991,[5] in the course of which the now lost intermediate
columns between the three panels were reconstructed.[6] Also during this
treatment, some of the fold lines in the Virgins robe were recreated.
TECHNICAL NOTES

in Gaddis triptych now in the Berlin gallery (no. 1039); see Brigitte Klesse,
Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967),
316.


Conservation Research 57 (19961997): 3565. The altarpiece must have
no. 63.
PROVENANCE


EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1:no. 63, repro.
(repro.), 233.
repro. 106.

Magazine 110 (1968): 210 n. 9.
1969 Cole, Bruce. Agnolo Gaddi. Ph.D. dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1969.
Ann Arbor, MI, 1977: 73-75, 85, 208, 209.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 77, 301, 315, 369, 378, 381, 645.
1400. Florence, 1975: 118-121, 123, 216 n. 84, 234 n. 140, 304, pl. 127.
271, fig. 553.
ed. New York, 1976: 140, 141, pl. 52.
Bulletin 60 (1978): 708.
447 [165] fig. 1, 452 [170].


1994: 2(1990):471.
1:262, 263; 2:punch chart 8.2.
1995: 52-54, 56, 62, 65 n. 13, 66 n. 23, repro.
1996: 80.
1996: 81, repro.


23.
49.
Munich, 2008: 291.
2009: 1:4, repro. 10.
2010: 16.


Agnolo Gaddi
Saint Bernard and Saint

Catherine of Alexandria
with the Virgin of the
Annunciation [right panel]
shortly before 1387
overall: 194.6 80 cm (76 5/8 31 1/2 in.)
Inscription: across the bottom under the saints: S. BERNARDUS DOCTOR; S.
K[A]TERINA VIRGO
Andrew W. Mellon Collection 1937.1.4.c
ENTRY
This panel is part of a triptych that consists of two laterals with paired saints (this
panel and Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the Archangel Gabriel [left panel]
) and a central panel with the Madonna and Child (Madonna and Child Enthroned
with Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing Christ [middle panel]). All three panels
are topped with similar triangular gables with a painted medallion in the center.
The reduction of a five-part Altarpiece into a simplified format with the external
profile of a triptych may have been suggested to Florentine masters as a
consequence of trends that appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century: a
greater simplification in composition and a revival of elements of painting from the
first half of the Trecento.[1] Agnolo Gaddi followed this trend in several of his works.
He demonstrates this in the three panels being discussed here by his deliberate
revival of motifs that had been abandoned by most Florentine painters since the
mid-fourteenth century. To present the Madonna seated on a throne of Giottesque
type,[2] instead of concealing the structure of the throne with a gold-embroidered
cloth of honor as in most paintings realized by masters in the circle of Orcagna,
was a sort of archaism at this time. Agnolo scrupulously describes this seat and at
the same time exploits its form to create three-dimensional effects. Yet these
Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the Virgin of the 435

archaizing motifs are combined with more forward-looking features. Gaddis

progressive adjustment to the innovative late-Gothic taste of his time is thus
attested by various aspects of the triptych, such as the pastiglia decoration in the
gables, the now lost decoration of the frame,[3] the rich orientalizing carpet that
covers the floor,[4] and even the crowded composition of the central panel.
attribution.


arms.
quarter of the XIVth century, while the volume devoted to the Duveen
Pictures (1941) proposed an approximate date of c. 1380.[15] More recent
publications in general support a time frame within the 1380s, although without
explaining the reasons for this proposal. Arguing for a provenance from the
sacristy of the Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, Mikls Boskovits (1975)
attempted a more precise dating shortly after the codicil dated 1387 was appended
to the testament of Benedetto di Nerozzo degli Alberti, its putative patron.[16] For
his part, Bruce Cole (1979) stylistically linked the Gallery triptych with the cycle of
frescoes in the choir of Santa Croce in Florence, for which he proposed a date of
execution in the years c. 13881393.[17] Given the lack of securely datable panels
by Gaddi, with the exception of the composite altarpiece of the Cappella del
Crocifisso, still in the church of San Miniato,[18] various scholars have attempted to
construct a chronology for the artist based on an analysis of the punched
decoration of his work; however, this effort has failed to yield any precise

indication for the Washington altarpiece other than a vague association with a
relatively late phase in the painters activity.[19]

ascribed.[27]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES



NOTES

1400 (Florence, 1975), pls. 86 and 61.
Conservation Research57 (19961997): 5064. The fashion of covering the
of the Trecento.

1916), 5153.
Century(The Hague, 1924), 565573, and some other authors in the
following decade.

(Florence, 1975), 118121.
2009), 159.
(Florence, 1998), 2:1205.



(Florence, 1975), 118.

artist.

Gaddi, Agnolo, inAllgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler


Sirn,Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strasbourg, 1905), 41, it was reinstated as an

Duomo di Prato e gli affreschi di Agnolo Gaddi,Rivista darte 14 (1932):
question. Roberto Salvini, Larte di Agnolo Gaddi(Florence, 1936), 3185,
inAllgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und




TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel, along with its companions Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with the
Archangel Gabriel [left panel] and Madonna and Child Enthroned with Twelve
Angels, and with the Blessing Christ [middle panel], are formed from vertically
oriented poplar planks.[1] The two companion panels are formed of three vertical
planks each, with narrower strips of wood flanking the central plank, while the
panel of this work is formed of two boards of equal width, joined vertically between
the two saints. The main panels of the altarpiece are 4 to 4.5 cm thick; the frame
supplies an additional thickness of 2.7 to 2.9 cm for the flat molding and 2.3 cm for
the dentil molding. On the reverse, the panels are reinforced with modern
horizontal battens set into grooves. The two absent original battens, spanning all
three panels, were placed along the bottom and just below the base of the gabled
tops of each panel, as is clear from the remains of large nails used to attach them
that are visible in the x-radiographs. The frame, which consists of an additional
plank of wood that completely covers the gable portion of the panels, contains
pastiglia decoration. The columns dividing the central and lateral panels and
flanking the outer edge of the laterals are missing, as well as the freestanding
cusped arches originally lining the ogival arches of the panels. The wooden
support is covered by a gesso ground spread over a fabric interlayer. Incised lines
in the gesso outline the figures and the fold lines in the drapery. The gold ground
was applied over a red bole preparation. The halos are decorated by stamped and
engraved motifs as well as stippling.

other diagonally across the wing of the uppermost right-hand angel. Saint Andrew
and Saint Benedict has cracks caused by the removal of the original intermediate
frame. Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine has a split at the lower edge and another
in the frame to the left of and above the Virgin Annunciate in the gable medallion.
Worm tunneling is present in all three panels, but it is most extensive in the side
planks of Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict and Madonna and Child Enthroned as
well as in the gables of all three panels. There is minor abrasion of the paint film in
the faces and hands, but otherwise the painted surface is in fine condition. The red
lakes of the robes of Saint Catherine, the kneeling angels, and the Christ child
have faded slightly, and the Virgins blue robe is worn. The altarpiece underwent
conservation treatment between 1988 and 1991,[5] in the course of which the now
lost intermediate columns between the three panels were reconstructed.[6] Also
during this treatment, some of the fold lines in the Virgins robe were recreated.
TECHNICAL NOTES

Klesse,Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern,
1967), 316.


Conservation Research57 (19961997): 3565. The altarpiece must have
no. 63.
PROVENANCE


EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1:no. 63, repro.
(repro.), 233.
repro. 106.

Magazine 110 (1968): 210 n. 9.
1969 Cole, Bruce. Agnolo Gaddi. Ph.D. diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1969. Ann
Arbor, MI, 1977: 73-75, 85, 208, 209.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 77, 301, 315, 369, 378, 381, 645.
1400. Florence, 1975: 118-121, 123, 216 n. 84, 234 n. 140, 304, pl. 127.
271, fig. 553.
ed. New York, 1976: 140, 141, pl. 52.
Bulletin 60 (1978): 708.
447 [165] fig. 1, 452 [170].

1984: 73, no 16, color repro.

1994: 2(1990):471.
1:262, 263; 2:punch chart 8.2
1995: 52-54, 56, 62, 65 n. 13, 66 n. 23, repro.
1996: 80.
1996: 81, repro.


23.
49.
Munich, 2008: 291.
2009: 1:4, repro. 10.
2010: 16.


Giotto
Also known as
Giotto di Bondone
BIOGRAPHY
An artist who played a decisive role in the development of Italian painting in his
century and beyond (his works were studied and copied by masters of the stature
of Masaccio and Michelangelo), Giotto was probably born in Florence c. 1265.[1]
According to the earlier sources, he was a disciple of Cimabue (c. 12401302). His
earliest works, such as the painted crucifix in Santa Maria Novella and the Maest
formerly in San Giorgio alla Costa and now in the Museo Diocesano, both in
Florence, and especially his biblical frescoes in the upper church of the basilica of
San Francesco at Assisi, reveal the strong influence of the Roman school, both
contemporary and classical.[2] It seems reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the
young Giotto, a well-established painter by the time he presumably executed the
abovementioned paintings (12901295), had spent a period of formation or
apprenticeship in Rome. By the mid-1290s (although some scholars believe it to be
somewhat earlier, and others later) he was commissioned to paint the cycle of
stories of Saint Francis, again in the basilica at Assisi, and then to compose the
great mosaic of the Navicella in the old Saint Peters at the Vatican. In c. 1300,
Giotto returned once again to Assisi to fresco the Saint Nicholas Chapel, in the
lower church of San Francesco. He then worked in the Franciscan church in Rimini,
where a painted crucifix by his hand still remains. Giotto was then called to Padua,
probably between 1303 and 1306, where he painted the famous cycle of frescoes
in the Scrovegni Chapel, and also paintings, now much ruined, in the Basilica del
Santo and in its adjoining chapter house. To this stylistic phase, in which the
strong, realistic charge of the frescoes in Assisi is ennobled and enriched with
elements of classical solemnity as well as a strong poetical vein, also belong the
great Maest now in the Uffizi, Florence, and the frescoes in the Magdalene
Chapel in the basilica of San Francesco at Assisi, probably to be connected with a
document that speaks of the artists presence in the Umbrian city just before
January 1309.[3] Presumably slightly later in date are the very famous but now
barely legible frescoes in the Peruzzi Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence.
Giotto 458

Toward the middle of the second decade, a change in the artists vision can be
discerned. Though not abandoning the ideals of classical solemnity and grandeur,
he now developed an interest in realistic details and began to enrich his scenes
with secondary episodes, emphasizing the elegance of posture and the eloquence
of gesture of his figures. So sweeping were the changes brought by this
development that many works of the period between c. 1315 and 1325, including
the important mural cycle in the right transept and in the ceiling vaults of the lower
church of San Francesco at Assisi and the Stefaneschi altarpiece for Saint Peters
(now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana), although identified as the artists work by
fourteenth-century sources, are instead denied to him and attributed to an
anonymous assistant by several scholars.[4] Much the same fate has befallen the
Baroncelli polyptych in Santa Croce, a work signed by Giotto and probably
executed in 1328, the year in which the artist began a long period of residence in
Naples. Of his Neapolitan works, only a few fragments of frescoes survive in the
church of Santa Chiara, but there are reasons for thinking that the polyptych signed
by the artist and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna was painted during
this period. On his return to Florence in 1334, the artist was commissioned to
design the campanile of the Duomo and its reliefs. He also painted the Bardi
Chapel in Santa Croce and began to fresco the chapel of the Palazzo del Bargello.
By 13351336 he was frescoing the chapel of the Castello di Galliera at Bologna
and the palazzo of the Visconti in Milan. Giotto was already gravely ill when he
returned to Florence. He died there in January 1337.
[1] According to traditionwhich Giorgio Vasari also followedGiotto was born at

Colle di Vespignano, in the territory of the Mugello; but see Michael Viktor Schwarz
and Pia Theis, Giottos Father: Old Stories and New Documents, The Burlington
Magazine 141 (1999): 676677.
[2] Some fourteenth-century sources, and then Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio
Vasari, asserted that Cimabue was the discoverer of the natural talent of the boy
Giotto, and some scholars even have conjectured the existence of a work
executed in collaboration between the aging master and his brilliant pupil. See
Luciano Bellosi, La pecora di Giotto (Turin, 1985), 177178; Luciano Bellosi, in
Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi
(Florence, 2000), 98100. For Giottos probable formative period in Rome, a
circumstance that explains the attribution of the frescoes of the nave of the upper
church of San Francesco at Assisi to Roman painters, cf. Mikls Boskovits, Giotto:
Un artista pococonosciuto? in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e
Giotto 459

ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 7595.
[3] Valentino Martinelli, Un documento per Giotto ad Assisi, Storia dellarte 19

(1973): 193208.
[4] The mysterious assistant sometimes called the Master of the Stefaneschi
Altarpiece is often designated by Italian art historians with the conventional name
of Parente di Giotto. For a discussion of the problem from different points of view,
cf. Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton,
1951), 114; Giorgio Bonsanti and Mikls Boskovits, Giotto o solo un parente? Una
discussione, Arte cristiana 81 (1994): 299310.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1938 Salvini, Roberto.

Giotto: bibliografia. Rome, 1938.
1951 Meiss, Millard.

Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death. Princeton, 1951.
1960 Boskovits, Mikls. Giotto di Bondone. In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 55(2000):401-423.
1967 Previtali, Giovanni.

Giotto e la sua bottega. Milan, 1967.
1973 Martinelli, Valentino. Un documento per Giotto ad Assisi.

Storia dellarte 19 (1973): 193-208.
1974 Previtali, Giovanni.

Giotto e la sua bottega. 2nd ed. Milan, 1974.
1985 Bellosi, Luciano.

La pecora di Giotto. Turin, 1985.
1993 Previtali, Giovanni, and Giovanna Ragionieri.

Giotto e la sua bottega. Edited by Alessandro Conti. 3rd ed. Milan, 1993.
Giotto 460

1994 Bonsanti, Giorgio, and Mikls Boskovits. Giotto o solo un parente? Una
discussione.
Arte Cristiana 81 (1994): 299-310.
1995 Flores dArcais, Francesca.

Giotto. Milan, 1995.
1996 Gilbert, Creighton E. Giotto di Bondone. In

London, 1996: 12:681-696.
1999 Schwarz, Michael Viktor, and Pia Theis. Giottos Father: Old Stories and
New Documents.
The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999): 676-677.
2000 Tartuferi, Angelo, ed.

Giotto: bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche. Exh. cat.
Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, 2000.
2004 Derbes, Anne, and Mark Sandona, eds.

The Cambridge Companion to Giotto. Cambridge Companions to the
History of Art. Cambridge, 2004.
2004 Schwarz, Michael Viktor, and Pia Theis.

Giottus pictor, 1: Giottos Leben. Vienna, 2004.
2008 Schwarz, Michael Viktor, and Michaela Zschg.

Giottus pictor, 2: Giottos Werke. Vienna, 2008.
Giotto 461

Giotto
Madonna and Child

c. 1310/1315
overall (including added strips): 87.7 63.2 1.3 cm (34 1/2 24 7/8 1/2 in.)
framed: 128.3 x 72.1 x 5.1 cm (50 1/2 x 28 3/8 x 2 in.)
ENTRY
The painting in the National Gallery of Art presents the Virgin and Child according
to a variant of the compositional scheme known as the Hodegetria Virgin, in which
Marys right hand, instead of indicating her Son, holds a rose that identifies her as
the rose of Sharon[1] and hence the Church, mystic bride of Christ.[2] The gesture
of the Christ child, his left hand extended to grasp his mothers forefinger, also
presumably has a symbolic as well as a playful or affectionate significance; in other
versions of the composition the child even pulls on his mothers hand with the
forefinger pointed towards him, as if actively soliciting her designation of him as a
lamb, sacrificial victim.[3]
Both the profile and shape of our painting, known to scholars as the Goldman
Madonna, suggest that it was the centerpiece of a dispersed polyptych [fig. 1] (see
also Reconstruction). The appearance of the multipart altarpiece to which our
Madonna and Child originally belonged remains uncertain due primarily to the
various restorations that have altered its appearance, especially by modifying its
external profile and eliminating the original surface of the back of its wooden
support. Despite these uncertainties, it seems probable that the polyptych in
question consisted of a series of rectangular panels topped by equilateral
triangular gablesan archaic type of altarpiece, but one represented in Florence
not only in works by Giotto but also in paintings by the circle of Pacino di
Bonaguida and Jacopo del Casentino,[4] and in those realized in the circle of
Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319) in Siena.[5] The
resemblance of our painting to the image of Saint Stephen in the Museo Horne in
Madonna and Child 462


Florence has long been noted:[6] affinities between them are evident in style, in
dimension, and in details of the ornamental repertoire.[7] However, the gold
ground in the Saint Stephen was laid over a preparation of green underpaint
instead of the usual red bole,[8] making their common origin unlikely. Many art
historians have also proposed that two panels depicting Saint John the Evangelist
and Saint Lawrence combined with busts of angels in the upper register [fig. 2][fig.
3], in the Jacquemart-Andr collection, Paris, and now displayed in the former
abbey of Chaalis, outside Paris, belong to the same polyptych as our Madonna.
This, in spite of some structural discrepancies between the Chaalis saints and the
Washington Madonna, is possible.[9]
The reception of the painting, of unknown Florentine provenance, was rather cold
when it suddenly appeared on the horizon of art historical studies in 1917, at a time
when research on Giottos style had led to an extreme limitation of works held to
be autograph. Bernard Berenson, evidently the first art historian to have had the
opportunity to examine it, attributed it at first to Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320,
died probably 1348), immediately followed by Edward Robinson (1920) and Wilhelm
R. Valentiner (1922, 1927).[10] A more exhaustive analysis of the painting soon led
Berenson to change his mind and to admit its close kinship to Giotto; he later
assigned it to one of the painters of the frescoes designed by Giotto in the lower
church of San Francesco in Assisi.[11] Like Berenson, Raimond van Marle (1924)
and Richard Offner (1924) also referred the panel to an assistant of Giotto,
identifying the hand of the same anonymous artist in other paintings now generally
recognized as the work of Giotto himself.[12] Similar opinions were then expressed
by Curt H. Weigelt (1925), Wolfgang Fritz Volbach (1926), Valentiner (1926), Pietro
Toesca (1929, 1933), Berenson (19301931, 1932, 1936), and Robert Oertel (1953,
1968).[13] Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (1925), however, began to speak of the panel
now in Washington as a fully autograph Giotto, and this recognition, reaffirmed by
such reputable scholars as Carlo Gamba (1930), Roberto Longhi (19301931),
Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933), and Mario Salmi (1937), was generally acceptedwith
a few exceptions [14]following the paintings entry into the Gallery.[15]
Opinions have differed in evaluating the date of the painting. A substantial body of
the art historical literature considers the panel the work of Giottos later maturity
and dates it to the years 13251330 (Mather 1925; Brandi 19381939; Carli 1951,
1955; Battisti 1960; Walker et al. 1961; Berenson 1963; Bologna 1969; Bellosi 1974,
1994; Laclotte 1978; Shapley 1979; Brandi 1983; Cavazzini 1996),[16] or, more
cautiously, within the third decade of the century (Toesca 1933; NGA 1985; Lunghi


1986; Bonsanti 1992, 2000; Tomei 1995).[17] The conviction that it should be dated
to c. 1320 or even earlier is equally widespread (Longhi 19301931; Salmi 1937;
Cecchi 1937; Duveen Pictures 1941; Frankfurter 1944; Florisoone 1950; Gamba 1961;
Walker 1963; Rossi 1966; De Benedictis 1967; Dal Poggetto 1967; Previtali 1967,
1990; Venturoli 1969; Tartuferi 1987, 2000, 2007; Bandera Bistoletti 1989; Flores
dArcais 1995; Boskovits 2000; Ragionieri 2002, 2007).[18] Supporters of such a
dating are in essence those who have placed it between the frescoes in the
Peruzzi and Bardi Chapels in Santa Croce in Florence, such as Federico Zeri (1957),
Cesare Gnudi (1958), Roberto Longhi (1968), Lamberto Busignani (1993), and Julian
Gardner (2002), but also those who have not accepted Giottos direct authorship
and have limited themselves to pointing out the paintings kinship with the
Christological cycle in the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi, such as
Berenson (19301931) and Tantillo Mignosi (1975).[19]
Various hypotheses have also been advanced about the presumed destination of
the polyptych of which the Washington Madonna formed part. The proposal, first
formulated by Mather (1925), that it was one of the four polyptychs that Ghiberti
mentioned in Santa Croce, met with wide support.[20] Later, observing that one of
the panels in Chaalis represented Saint Lawrence and that in the Museo Horne
Saint Stephen, Gnudi (1959), convinced like many others of the common origin of
these panels with the Goldman Madonna, cautiously suggested as its original site
the chapel dedicated to these saints in Santa Crocethat is, the chapel of the Pulci
and Berardi families.[21] Although many found the proposal convincing, Gardner
(1999, 2002)[22] placed it in doubt: according to this scholar, the original altar
blocks that survive in the family chapels in the east transept of Santa Croce were
too small ever to have supported an altarpiece some three meters in length, as the
polyptych in question must have been.[23]
An alternative hypothesis, formulated by Venturi (1931, 1933), identified the panel

now in Washington and its presumed companions as components of the lost
polyptych in the church of the Badia in Florence.[24] Ugo Procacci (1962), however,
refuted the proposal and succeeded in identifying the former Badia altarpiece with
the still intact polyptych that entered the Museo di Santa Croce in the nineteenth
century.[25] Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (1949) advanced yet another proposal,
according to which the panels now divided among the museums of Chaalis,
Florence, and Washington were components of the polyptych painted by Giotto for
the church of San Francesco in Borgo Sansepolcro,[26] but this hypothesis has
been found unconvincing.


If the problem of the destination of the polyptych remains unresolved, by observing

the characteristics of polyptychs by Giotto himself and by other Florentine painters
(for example, that by Jacopo del Casentino, now in New Orleans)[27] datable within
the first quarter of the fourteenth century, we can conclude that the altarpiece of
which the Goldman Madonna formed the center is unlikely to have been very
different in appearance from that conjectured by Longhi (19301931)[fig. 4]. By
flanking the panel in the Gallery with panels of saints of slightly smaller size, we
would obtain an ensemble similar in dimensions to those of the former Badia
polyptych (which we know was intended for the high altar of that church). It would
have considerably exceeded in width those polyptychs executed by Giotto for side
chapels or for long-established altars in older churches.[28] It would be futile,
based on current knowledge, to go any further in the field of conjecture; it will
suffice to point out that among the churches in which panels by Giotto are
mentioned by the earlier sources, the most probable provenances are likely to be
the Florentine churches of Santa Croce and Ognissanti.[29]
With regard to the chronological position of the panel being discussed here, some
features, such as the exclusive use of decorations incised freehand (hence the
absence of punched motifs), seem to offer firm clues.[30] In the Stefaneschi
altarpiece, which ought to date to the early 1320s,[31] the artist used at least one
punched motif, and this type of decoration is increasingly found in his later
paintings. The characteristics of the motifs incised freehand in the halos and the
pseudo-Kufic lettering in the broad ornamental border that runs around the
margins of the panel [fig. 5] seem recurrent in the works by Giotto since the end of
the thirteenth century [fig. 6], but perhaps it is not by chance that the practice of
surrounding the halos with a double row of dots appears no earlier than the
Maest in the Uffizi, Florence.[32] To these elements, which seem to indicate a
relatively early date in Giottos careerwithin the second decade of the fourteenth
centurywe can perhaps add an observation regarding the red coif that covers
Marys head and can be glimpsed, on either side of her face, below the pseudo-
Kufic hem of the mantle that covers her head. This is an archaic, byzantinizing motif
that would disappear from Giottos authenticated works in the course of the
1320s.[33] A relatively early date might also be suggested by the neckline of the
Virgins dress. Though this is admittedly an unreliable clue, it concurs with other
features in suggesting a date for the Washington painting no later than the early
1320s.[34]


A stylistic reading of the painting seems to confirm the chronological position

suggested by the abovementioned data. Its morphological features connect the
Goldman Madonna with the central phase of Giottos career, what might be
defined as his Peruzzi phase. Unfortunately, the frescoes of the Peruzzi Chapel
(in Santa Croce), much admired by the sources and by artists in the past, are now
reduced to almost total illegibility by the radical abrasion to which they have been
subjected. Other paintings have survived from the same phase, in which the artist
appears no longer satisfied with the serene classicism of his Paduan paintings.
Solemnity and monumentality were no longer enough: a more circumstantial,
naturalistic description of the events, and a deeper participation of the protagonists
in them, were needed. While further accentuating the physical stature and
presence of his figures, Giotto now strove to underline their active involvement in
the emotional climate of the scenes. These were also the years of the cycle of
frescoes in the Magdalene chapel in the lower church of San Francesco at Assisi
(for which there are good reasons for dating it to 1308).[35] The polyptych in the
North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh can be assumed to be only one or two
years later: it is stylistically close to the mural cycle in Assisi.[36] Apart from the
semidestroyed frescoes of the Peruzzi Chapel,[37] the surviving stained-glass
windows of the last bay of Santa Croce before the transept (now replaced by
copies: the original windows are housed in the Museo dellOpera)[38] must also
date to the early 1310s. The painted crucifix in the Florentine church of the
Ognissanti, together with the Dormitio Virginis painted for the same church (now in
the Gemldegalerie in Berlin), also should date to this phase.[39]
Between 1311 and 1315, Giotto seems to have been engaged in paintings especially
for his hometown.[40] In the years that followed, Giottos painting is dominated by
a gothicizing tendency, for example in the murals in the transept of the lower
church of Assisi, where we may note a greater pursuit of realistic effects and a
greater attention to the elegance of pose and expressiveness of gesture of his
figures. So novel are these developments that the paintings he executed during
these years have often been denied the status of autograph works; instead, art
historians have postulated the leading presence at the masters side of an
assistant, the so-called Parente di Giotto.[41] The features of the works belonging
to this phase are in any case different from those expressed in the Washington
Madonna. The painting being discussed here finds its most convincing parallels in
passages of the frescoes in the Magdalene chapel, for example with the bust of the
titular saint in the vault, and also in the image of the Virgin in the Raleigh
polyptych.[42] In the Goldman Madonna, however, the more slender proportions of


the protagonists, the more fluent calligraphy of the contours, and the greater
complexity of the draperies, in comparison with the abovementioned painting,
reveal a more advanced stage in Giottos development. The conduct of the
protagonists of our painting seems to confirm this: the child is presented by the
artist no longer as the infant pantocrator of the Maest in the Uffizi but with a more
human touch, with charm and infantile immediacy. The sternness is mitigated: the
childs little face is softened, its tenderness heightened by the smile that seems to
play on his lips. His gesturesright hand stretched out to touch the rose in his
mothers hand, left hand to grasp her forefingerare intimate and playful. As
already in the great Maest, the lips of the child and those of his mother are
parted, not for any solemn declaration but to engage in an affectionate and
intimate conversation.
Whatever our paintings destination, it ought to date to the years around 1310 to
1315, when the two panels of Chaalis (components, perhaps, of the same
polyptych) also saw the light of day.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Giotto: a.

Saint John the Evangelist (fig. 2); b. Madonna and Child; c.
Saint Lawrence (fig. 3)
fig. 2 Giotto, Saint John the Evangelist, c. 1310/1315,

tempera on panel, Muse Jacquemart-Andr, Abbaye
royale de Chaalis-Institute de France, Fontaine-Chaalis


fig. 4 Reconstruction of the Badia polyptych by Giotto as

proposed by Roberto Longhi, from left to right: Saint
Stephen, Museo Horne, Florence; Saint John the
Evangelist (fig. 2); Madonna and Child, NGA; Saint
Lawrence (fig. 3)
fig. 3 Giotto, Saint Lawrence, c. 1310/1315, tempera on

panel, Muse Jacquemart-Andr, Abbaye royale de
Chaalis-Institute de France, Fontaine-Chaalis


fig. 6 Graphic tracing of the decoration of the halo of

Christ, Giotto, Painted Crucifix, San Felice in Piazza,
Florence
fig. 5 Graphic tracing of the halos and pseudo-Kufic

lettering, Giotto, Madonna and Child, c. 1310/1315, tempera
on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
Kress Collection. (Joanna Dunn, National Gallery of Art,
Washington)


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Giotto:

a. Saint John the Evangelist (Entry fig. 2)
b. Madonna and Child
c. Saint Lawrence (Entry fig. 3)
NOTES
[1] Song of Solomon 2:1: I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. In
medieval religious thought, the rose is often linked to the figure of Mary,
who is praised as rosa speciosa or rosa gratiae divinae; cf. M. Schmidt and
S. Egbers, Rose, in Marienlexikon, ed. Remigius Bumer and Leo
Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1993), 5:548552. Eugenio Battistis
conjecture of a connection between flower and rosary, on the other hand, is


unfounded. See Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca, 2 vols. (Milan, 1971),
1:389, 528 n. 548. It cannot be excluded that the iconography of the Virgin
with a rose was influenced by transalpine models, for which see Julian
Gardner, Panel Paintings Attributed to Giotto in American Collections,
Center/National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts
19 (1999): 7172; Julian Gardner, Giotto in America (and Elsewhere), in
Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt,
Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002),
171176. However, the motif of the Madonna presenting the Christ child with
a rose predates Giotto and is attested in Tuscan painting since the
thirteenth century; cf. Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional
Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 114. It is also known
that an oratory was built around an image of the Madonna delle Rose at
Lucca in 1309; see Angela Protesti Faggi, Un episodio di protogiottismo a
Lucca: La Madonna della Rosa, Antichit viva 27 (1988): 39.
[2] Ever since the third century, the Canticles (the Song of Solomon) had been
considered an allegorical description of Gods relation with the Church and
hence in medieval exegesis an expression of Christs love for the Church.
See Frank L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
(London and New York, 1958), 1270.
[3] The isolated forefinger of the Virgins right hand would seem to possess a
variety of meanings, observed Dorothy C. Shorr in The Christ Child in
Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 168. In
the case of the painting being discussed here, since the right hand of Mary
is occupied in holding the symbolic rose, the artist used the other hand in a
Christological sense: the Christ child grasps his mothers forefinger as if to
point it towards himself, thus designating him as victim. Shorr also observed,
This pointing finger has already been seen in French sculpture of the late
thirteenth century, when the so-called Vierge dore of Amiens Cathedral
points to the Child seated on her arm.
[4] Even if it has perhaps been cropped below by c. 2.5 cm, as Monika
Cmmerer-George suggested, the panel in the National Gallery of Art has
the squat proportions of paintings dating to the first two decades of the
fourteenth century, in which the panels of the main tier, if of rectangular
format, often are or were surmounted by triangular gables. See Monika
Cmmerer-George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento
(Strasbourg, 1966), 71. Examples of this type, apart from the laterals in
Chaalis (cf. note 9 below), probably included Giottos panel of Saint Anthony
of Padua in the Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence; cf. Franco Russoli and
Nicky Mariano, La raccolta Berenson (Milan, 1962), no. 1. Though now shorn
of gables, the panels attributed to Pacino di Bonaguida from the polyptych
now divided between the Galleria dellAccademia in Florence (no. 6146) and


the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, or nos. 1961.1.2 and 1961.1.3 in the El

Paso Museum of Art attributed to Jacopo del Casentino, also exemplify the
same type of altarpiece. See, respectively, Richard Offner and Mikls
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 2, Elder Contemporaries of Bernardo Daddi,
new ed. (Florence, 1987), 155161; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Biadaiolo Illuminator, Master of the Dominican Effigies (New York, 1957),
100101.
[5] For example, cf. the polyptych no. 28 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena
attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319)
himself, and polyptych no. 33 in the same gallery, attributed to the Master of
Citt di Castello (Italian, active c. 1290 - 1320); the polyptych by the
Goodhart Duccesque Master in the church of Monterongriffoli; and that by
Ugolino da Siena in the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
See James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols.
(Princeton, 1979), 2: figs. 131, 188, 262, 450. According to Monika Cmmerer-
George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento
(Strasbourg, 1966), 71, the type of altarpiece in question is of Sienese origin;
but clearly altarpieces of this type, even if they have not survived intact,
must have been widespread both in Florence and in Arezzo, as suggested
inter alia by the example of the early fourteenth-century polyptych now
divided between the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (Loeser bequest) and the
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (nos. 1943.203, 1946.13).
[6] Richard Offner, A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings, The Arts 5

(1924): 244, was the first to note that a St. Stephen in the Horne collection
in Florence...happens to have originally stood to our Virgins right in the
same original polyptych. The hypothesis was immediately accepted by
Mather and by Curt H. Weigelt in 1925 and by practically all the subsequent
literature, at least until Dillian Gordon pointed out that the Washington
panel...has been gilded with orange bole while the St. Stephen...was
definitely gilded with green [earth]. From this observation she deduced not
that the panels belong to different altarpieces but instead that they probably
were executed by different artists. This hypothesis is rather improbable,
because while the realization of an altarpiece could have been entrusted to
more than one painter, it is unlikely they would each have been left the
freedom to choose their own techniques, including the kind of preparation
to be used before applying the gilding. Cf. Frank Jewett Mather, Two
Attributions to Giotto, Art Studies 3 (1925): 2527; Curt H. Weigelt, Giotto:
Des Meisters Gemlde (Stuttgart, 1925), 242; Dillian Gordon, A Dossal by
Giotto and His Workshop: Some Problems of Attribution, Provenance and
Patronage, The Burlington Magazine 131 (1989): 526. [Editors note: see
also Cecelia Frosinini, St Stephen" in Dominique Thiebaut, ed., Giotto e


compagni (Paris, 2013), 139140, for a discussion of the recent technical

examination of the painting. This examination revealed that St Stephen was
also gilded with a red bole on top of a green earth layer. Mikls Boskovits
did not survive to learn of these new findings.]
[7] Both paintings are surrounded by ornamental borders with decorative

motifs incised freehand into the gold ground. The ornamental borders are
framed in both panels by a double row of dots impressed into the gold
ground. The halos also have incised decoration freehand, hence without the
use of punched motifs, and are surrounded both inside and outside by
concentric circles formed of dots. The border of the childs halo is further
punctuated by three rosettes.
[8] See note 6 above. Gilding laid on a green underpaint foundation has also
been observed elsewhere in Giottos oeuvre, in particular in his stories of
Christ, now divided among the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston
(Presentation of Jesus in the Temple), the Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti,
The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence
(Entombment), the National Gallery in London (Descent of the Holy Spirit),
the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (Last Supper, Crucifixion, Descent to Limbo),
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Adoration of the Magi).
See also Dillian Gordon, A Dossal by Giotto and His Workshop: Some
Problems of Attribution, Provenance and Patronage, The Burlington
Magazine 131 (1989): 524531. [Editors note: see also Dominique Thibaut,
ed., Giotto e compagni (Paris, 2013), 130151, for a discussion of the results
of the cleaning of this painting, which Mikls Boskovits did not survive to
examine. The National Gallery of Art has preserved his manuscript as he
submitted it. In the case of these Giotto panels, it is important to point out
that Boskovits wrote about them before technical examination in advance of
exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum and at the Louvre revealed new
information about their construction.]
[9] Roberto Longhi, Progressi nella reintegrazione dun polittico di Giotto,

Dedalo 11 (19301931): 285291, was the first to propose the reconstruction
of a dispersed polyptych with the Washington Madonna at its center,
flanked to the left by the Saint John the Evangelist in Chaalis and the Saint
Stephen in the Museo Horne, and to the right by the Saint Lawrence in
Chaalis and a still unidentified panel. The hypothesis met with a generally
favorable reception among art historians, though Monika Cmmerer-George
(1966) contested it, noting incongruities between the presumed laterals of
the altarpiece in terms of both the decorative borders around the outer
edge of the gold ground and the respective size of the panels and the
proportions of the saints represented in them. See Monika Cmmerer-
George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento
(Strasbourg, 1966), 7174, 208 n. 233. Curiously, Francesca Flores dArcais,
though considering Longhis reconstruction valid, also adduced some


stylistic divergences between the panels in Chaalis and Florence, in

Francesca Flores dArcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 320, 324. Only in recent
years, however, were Cmmerer-Georges doubts accepted by Giovanna
Ragionieri, in Giovanni Previtali and Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua
bottega, ed. Alessandro Conti, 3rd ed. (Milan, 1993), 147 n. 217, 329, 348,
391; and Alessandro Tomei, Giotto, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12
vols. (Rome, 1995), 6:671. Mikls Boskovits (2000) and Angelo Tartuferi
(2000) firmly ruled out the common origin of the four panels in Mikls
Boskovits, Giotto: Un artista poco conosciuto? in Giotto: Bilancio critico di
sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000),
182186; Angelo Tartuferi, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e
ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 118. On the panels in
Chaalis, cf. Nicolas Sainte Fare Garnot, Brve histoire dune redcouverte,
in Primitifs italiens du Muse Jacquemart-Andr (Paris, 2000), 104105, who
still seemed to accept Longhis reconstruction.
[10] Bernard Berenson, Italian Paintings, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum

of Art 15 (1920): 160161; Edward Robinson, The Fiftieth Anniversary
Celebration, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 15 (1920): 75;
Wilhelm R. Valentiner, The Henry Goldman Collection (New York, 1922), n.p.,
no. 1; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, The Henry Goldman Collection, Art News
(1927): 910.
[11] See Provenance, note 2. Commenting on the work many years later,
Bernard Berenson observed: si cita ancora la mia attribuzione...al Daddi,
sebbene io rammenti daver scritto al Dr. Valentiner molto tempo prima che
pubblicasse il catalogo di quella collezione [i.e., that of Henry Goldman] per
informarlo che io ritenevo opera di uno dei pittori che eseguirono gli
affreschi disegnati da Giotto nella chiesa inferiore di San Francesco ad
Assisi (My attribution to Daddi is still cited, even though I recall having
written to Dr. Valentiner long before he published the catalog of the
Goldman collection to inform him that I considered [it] the work of one of the
painters who executed the frescoes designed by Giotto in the lower church
of San Franceso in Assisi). See Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza casa: Il
Trecento fiorentino, 1, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 988 n. 1. In fact, Wilhelm R.
Valentiner, though maintaining the attribution to Daddi, also noted that the
panel is so closely related to the work of Giotto that one who is not
professional would immediately think of the master himself. Wilhelm R.
Valentiner, The Henry Goldman Collection (New York, 1922), n.p.,
Introduction.
vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924),
185190, tried to reconstruct the catalog of an Assistant of Giottos whom
he dubbed the Master of the Six Scenes from the Life of Christ. This name
referred to the series of panels cited in note 8 above (without the scene of


the Descent of the Holy Spirit, now in the National Gallery in London). The
Dutch scholar attributed both this group of paintings and the small
versions of the Crucifixion in the Gemldegalerie in Berlin and in the
Museum of Fine Arts in Strasbourg to the same hand, but they are now
generally recognized as autograph works by Giotto. Van Marle also added
to the catalog of the Master of the Six Scenes the painted crucifix in the
Florentine church of San Felice in Piazza, a panel still disputed between
those who regard it as an autograph work by Giotto and those who assign it
to a studio assistant. Richard Offner, A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian
Paintings, The Arts 5 (1924): 244, considered both the Goldman Madonna
and the Saint Stephen in the Museo Horne in Florence the work of a
nameless master of considerable gifts who must have worked very close
to Giotto.
[13] Curt H. Weigelt, Giotto: Des Meisters Gemlde (Stuttgart, 1925), 242;
Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, in Henry Thode, Giotto, ed. Wolfgang Fritz Volbach,
3rd ed., Knstler-Monographien (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1926), 159 n. 62;
Wilhelm R. Valentiner, A Catalogue of Early Italian Paintings Exhibited at the
Duveen Galleries, New York, April to May 1924 (New York, 1926), n.p.,
Introduction; Pietro Toesca, La pittura fiorentina del Trecento (Verona,
1929), 60 n. 9; Pietro Toesca, Giotto di Bondone, in Enciclopedia italiana
di scienze, lettere ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. 19291939
(Milan, 1933), 17:218; Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento
fiorentino, 1, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 974, 988 n. 1; Bernard Berenson, Italian
Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works
with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 236; Bernard Berenson, Pitture
italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere
con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 203; Robert
Oertel, Die Frhzeit der italienischen Malerei (Stuttgart, 1953), 91; Robert
Oertel, Early Italian Painting to 1400 (London, 1968), 98.
[14] Once they came into possession of the painting after Goldmans death,
Duveen Brothers, Inc., commissioned expert opinions from the most
reputable connoisseurs of the day. Since some of these expertises are
dated 1938 (copies in NGA curatorial files), it must be assumed they were
collected in anticipation of the paintings sale to the Samuel H. Kress
Foundation. Among the scholars approached by Duveen, Giuseppe Fiocco,
Roberto Longhi, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi all unhesitatingly
confirmed the attribution to Giotto, whereas Berenson and F. Mason Perkins
attributed it respectively to a close follower of Giotto and one of the
closest and most gifted of Giottos anonymous pupils. Not invited to
express his opinion on this occasion, Richard Offner entrusted his view of
the Goldman Madonna to a highly critical article devoted to the Italian
paintings in the new National Gallery of Art in Washington, intended for the
Art News but never in fact published; all that remains of it are the page


proofs, copies of which are in the NGA curatorial files. Thus the
peculiarities of the National Gallery panelobserves inter alia the great
American connoisseurwould commit it, like the altarpiece to which it
belongs, to Giottos studio, where the living presence of the master
communicated to this work a considerable proportion of its admirable
qualities, but in which the actual execution was due to an assistant. Offners
judgment of our Madonna was, after all, highly positive; he combined it with
a proposed dating toward the end of the first quarter of the century, close
to that supported by Longhi and various other proponents of Giottos
authorship.
It is worth adding that the newspaper article by Carlyle Burrows cited in
Provenance note 5 triumphantly reported the final judgment of Bernard
Berenson, as pronounced viva voce by the nonagenarian authority on
Italian Renaissance art in 1958: Berenson had then decided, reported
Burrows, to accept the panel as a genuine late Giotto. He would
memorialize this oral opinion in his posthumously published volume,
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2
vols. (London, 1963), 2:81. The fact that the recent Giotto monograph by
Michael Schwarz (2009) did not cite the Washington Madonna presumably
means that he did not accept the painting as an autograph work by Giotto.
Cf. Michael Viktor Schwarz, Giotto (Munich, 2009).
[15] Frank Jewett Mather, Two Attributions to Giotto, Art Studies 3 (1925):
2527; Carlo Gamba, Problemi artistici allesposizione di Londra, Il
Marzocco 35, no. 17 (1930): 2; Roberto Longhi, Progressi nella
reintegrazione dun polittico di Giotto, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 289291;
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 32; Mario Salmi,
La mostra giottesca, Emporium 86 (1937): 358.
2527; Cesare Brandi, Giotto, Le Arti 1 (19381939): 126; Enzo Carli, Giotto
(Florence, 1951), n.p; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese (Milan, 1955), 96; Eugenio
Battisti, Giotto (Geneva, 1960), 115117; John Walker, Guy Emerson, and
Charles Seymour, Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings and
Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection (London, 1961), 46; Bernard
Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols.
(London, 1963), 2:81; Ferdinando Bologna, Novit su Giotto: Giotto al tempo
della cappella Peruzzi (Turin, 1969), 98; Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il
Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974), 52; Luciano Bellosi, Ancora sulla
cronologia degli affreschi del Cappellone di San Nicola a Tolentino, in Arte
e spiritualit nellordine agostiniano e il Convento San Nicola a Tolentino:
Atti della seconda sessione del convegno Arte e Spiritualit negli Ordini
Mendicanti; Tolentino, 14 settembre 1992, ed. Graziano Campisano


(Rome, 1994), 189; Michel Laclotte, Reconstruction and Revaluation, Apollo

108 (1978): 387; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2
vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:219221; Cesare Brandi, Giotto (Milan, 1983),
147; Laura Cavazzini, Giotto (Florence, 1996), 33.
[17] Pietro Toesca, Giotto di Bondone, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze,

lettere ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1933), 17:218;
National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue
(Washington, DC, 1985), 177; Elvio Lunghi, Giotto, in La Pittura in Italia: Il
Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:576;
Giorgio Bonsanti, La bottega di Giotto e la Croce di San Felice, in La croce
giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: Storia e restauro, ed. Magnolia Scudieri
(Venice, 1992), 79, 89 n. 50; Giorgio Bonsanti, La bottega di Giotto, in
Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo
Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 66, 71; Alessandro Tomei, Giotto, in
Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1995), 6:671.
[18] Roberto Longhi, Progressi nella reintegrazione dun polittico di Giotto,

Dedalo 11 (19301931): 289291; Mario Salmi, La mostra giottesca,
Emporium 86 (1937): 358; Emilio Cecchi, Giotto (Milan, 1937), 115116;
Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America (New
York, 1941), no. 11; Alfred M. Frankfurter, The Kress Collection in the National
Gallery (New York, 1944), 14; Michel Florisoone, Giotto (Paris, 1950), 117;
Carlo Gamba, Il Museo Horne a Firenze: Catalogo con 40 illustrazione
(Florence, 1961), 35; John Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC,
(New York, 1963), 6869; Filippo Rossi, ed., Il Museo Horne a Firenze,
Gallerie e musei minori di Firenze (Florence, 1966), 134; Cristina De
Benedictis, Firenze: Omaggio a Giotto Antichit viva 6, no. 3 (1967): 34;
Paolo Dal Poggetto, ed., Omaggio a Giotto: Celebrazioni nazionali nel vii
centenario della nascita di Giotto (Florence, 1967), 11; Giovanni Previtali,
Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 112113, 376377; Giovanni Previtali,
Giotto, in Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo and
Bruno Toscano, 6 vols. (Turin, 1990), 2:604; Paolo Venturoli, Giotto, Storia
dellarte 1, no. 2 (1969): 154, 156, 158; Angelo Tartuferi, Dipinti del Due e
Trecento alla mostra Capolavori e Restauri, Paragone 38, no. 445 (1987):
53, 59 n. 30; Angelo Tartuferi, Giotto: Una nuova immagine, in Giotto:
Guida alla mostra, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 21; Angelo
Tartuferi, Giotto (Florence, 2007), 125, 127; Sandrina Bandera Bistoletti,
Giotto: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), 126; Francesca Flores
dArcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 320, 324; Mikls Boskovits, Giotto di
Bondone, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2000),
55:412, 413, 418; Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto di Bondone, in La pittura in
Europa: Il dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002),
2:360; and Giovanna Ragionieri, in Luciano Bellosi and Giovanna Ragionieri,
Giotto e la sua eredit: Filippo Rusuti, Pietro Cavallini, Duccio, Giovanni da


Rimini, Neri da Rimini, Pietro da Rimini, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti,

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Matteo Giovannetti, Maso di Banco, Puccio Capanna,
Taddeo Gaddi, Giovanni da Milano, Giottino, Giusto deMenabuoi,
Altichiero, Jacopo Avanzi, Jean Pucelle, i fratelli Limbourg (Florence, 2007),
303, 305.
[19] Federico Zeri, Due appunti su Giotto, Paragone 8, no. 85 (1957): 78;
Cesare Gnudi, Giotto, in Enciclopedia Universale dellArte, ed. Istituto per
la collaborazione culturale, 15 vols. (Florence, 1962), 6:236; Roberto Longhi,
Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi, 14 vols. (Florence,
19611984), 4:6; Alberto Busignani, Giotto (Florence, 1993), 206, 307; Julian
Gardner, Giotto in America (and Elsewhere), in Italian Panel Painting of the
(Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 176; Bernard Berenson, Quadri
senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 1, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 974, 988 n. 1;
Almamaria Tantillo Mignosi, Osservazioni sul transetto della Basilica
Inferiore di Assisi, Bollettino darte 60 (1975): 136, 141 n. 38.
2527. See Julius von Schlosser, ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwrdigkeiten:
I Commentarii, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912), 1:36: Nellordine de frati minori [in
Florence] quattro cappelle et quattro tauole (In the order of friars minor of
Florence [i.e., Santa Croce] four chapels and four altarpieces). Vasari, ever
since the first edition (1550) of his Vite, specified that the chapels in
question were that with the stories of Saint Francis (the Bardi Chapel), that
of the Peruzzi, that of the Giugni, and a fourth to the left of the sanctuary
(the family chapel of the Tosinghi and Spinelli). Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de
pi eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a tempi
nostri nelledizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550, ed.
Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi (Turin, 1986), 119.
[21] On this chapel, the penultimate to the left of the cappella maggiore, see
Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein
kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1940), 1:574;
Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and
vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 122145.
The frescoes by Bernardo Daddi, with stories of Saints Lawrence and
Stephen, probably date to the mid-third decade or slightly before. However,
since they are superimposed over earlier frescoes (or possibly merely
geometrical decoration), the chapel could have been officiated several
years before Daddis intervention and perhaps even furnished with an
altarpiece.
[22] Julian Gardner, Panel Paintings Attributed to Giotto in American

Collections, Center/National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in
the Visual Arts 19 (1999): 71; Julian Gardner, Giotto in America (and


Elsewhere), in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed.

Haven, 2002), 176.
[23] Comparison with Giottos surviving polyptychs that include half figures of
saints (the ones in the Badia, today in the Uffizi, Florence, and Santa Maria
del Fiore [the Duomo]) shows a ratio between height and width of c. 2.5:1. If
we assume that the panel in the National Gallery of Art originally had a size
and shape similar to the panels of the two saints now in Chaalis, it must
have been topped by an equilateral triangular gable and had an overall
height of approximately 125 cm. We can then calculate the total width of the
five-part polyptych as c. 312 cm. On the structure and proportions of Giottos
polyptychs in general, see Monika Cmmerer-George, Die Rahmung der
toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966), 5085.
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1; no. 32.
[25] Ugo Procacci, La tavola di Giotto dellaltar maggiore della Chiesa della
Badia fiorentina, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Mario Salmi, ed.
Filippa Aliberti, 3 vols. (Rome, 1962), 2:945. The polyptych has been on
display in the Uffizi, Florence, since 1957.
[26] Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, in Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei pi eccellenti

pittori, scultori ed architetti, ed. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (Milan, 1949),
4:282 n. 69. The tavola di man di Giotto, di figure piccole, che poi se n ita
in pezzi (painting by the hand of Giotto, with small figures, which was then
broken into pieces), putatively rediscovered in Borgo Sansepolcro, was
reported by Vasari in the second edition (1568) of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de
pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568,
ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence, 1967), 2:113. The
tendency now is to accept the hypothesis of Martin Davies, who identified
the fragments of this polyptych with the stories of Christ divided among the
museums of Boston, London, Munich, New York, and the Berenson Library
at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies,
Florence. See Martin Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, National Gallery
Catalogues (London, 1951), 181; and note 8 above.
[27] Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, no. 61.60. The polyptych given
to Jacopo del Casentino is one of the few Florentine polyptychs of the
period to have survived intact; see Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A
(Florence, 1991), 179189.
[28] The Badia polyptych, painted by Giotto for the early medieval church that
had been undergoing enlargement and reconstruction from 1284 onward,


measures 91 340 cm. The polyptych painted by Simone Martini (Sienese,

active from 1315; died 1344) in 1319 for the high altar of the Dominican
church of Santa Caterina in Pisa measures 195 340 cm; that by Pietro
Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345), commissioned in 1320 for the main
altar of the pieve of Santa Maria in Arezzo, 298 309 cm; and the panel by
Meo da Siena, dated 1333 and destined for the high altar of San Pietro in
Perugia, now in the Stdelsches Kunstinstitut at Frankfurt, 59.5 304 cm.
Smaller polyptychs were made for altars in side chapels or for the high altars
in early churches, where the altar tables were generally of reduced size. We
may cite as an example Giottos Stefaneschi altarpiece in Old Saint Peters
in Rome, whose original dimensions, despite its prestigious destination,
were just over two and a half meters in width. On the problem, cf. Julian
Gardner, Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure, in La pittura nel XIV e
XV secolo, il contributo dellanalisi tecnica alla storia dellarte, ed. Hendrik
W. van Os and J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 297322; Julian
Gardner, Giotto in America (and Elsewhere), in Italian Panel Painting of the
(Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 160181.
[29] Peter Murrays useful compilation (1959), complemented now by the work of
Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis (2004), listed, apart from the Badia
polyptych, four panels by Giotto in the church of Santa Croce, one in San
Giorgio alla Costa (the fragmentary Maest now in the Museo Diocesano of
Florence), a crucifix and a now lost image of Saint Louis of Toulouse
formerly in Santa Maria Novella, and a crucifix and four panels in Ognissanti.
See Peter Murray, An Index of Attributions Made in Tuscan Sources before
Vasari (Florence, 1959), 7989; and Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis,
Giottus pictor, vol. 1, Giottos Leben (Vienna, 2004), 285303. The tabula
altaris in the chapel of the Palazzo del Bargello is perhaps cited by error in a
manuscript of Filippo Villanis De origine. Other manuscripts of Villanis book
only report the presence of Giottos frescoes in this chapel; cf. Schwarz and
Theis 2004, 290.
Of the four panels cited in Santa Croce, that of the Baroncelli Chapel is still
in situ. There are no firm reasons for assuming that the polyptych now in the
North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh has a provenance from the family
chapels of the east side of the transept of this church, though its relatively
small size (105.7 250 cm) and the presence of Francis of Assisi among the
saints represented (Santa Croce being a Franciscan church) make this a
possibility. The hypothesis of Wilhelm Suida (1931), who considered this
polyptych as intended for the Peruzzi Chapel, is now generally accepted.
See Wilhelm Suida, A Giotto Altarpiece, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 59 (1931): 188193. The proposed identification of one of
Giottos Santa Croce panels with that formerly in the Bromley Davenport
collection at Capesthorne Hall (Macclesfield) is more uncertain. This
altarpiece, perhaps a product of Giottos atelier and indeed intended for the


church of Santa Croce, was certainly not painted by the hand of the master;
the proposed attribution to the young Taddeo Gaddi seems very
convincing. Its original destination might have been the Lupicini Chapel or,
less probable, the Bardi Saint Francis Chapel, in either of which, given its
relatively small size, it could have been easily accommodated on the altar.
Cf. Mina Gregori, Sul polittico Bromley Davenport di Taddeo Gaddi e sulla
sua originaria collocazione, Paragone 25, no. 297 (1974): 7383; and
Federico Zeri, Italian Primitives at Mssrs. Wildenstein, The Burlington
Magazine 107 (1965): 252256. We may wonder whether so acute an
observer as Ghiberti could ever have classified it as an autograph work by
the master himself. The panels of saints dispersed between the Horne and
Jacquemart-Andr museums remain to be considered. That they come from
the chapels in the east transept of Santa Croce seems improbable due to
their measurements; see Julian Gardner, Giotto in America (and
Elsewhere), in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed.
Haven, 2002), 181 n. 80. But the existence of a Giotto polyptych would also
be conceivable in the chapel of Saint Louis, on the north side of the
transept: this chapel, dating to the years 13321335, could have
accommodated an altarpiece of a width exceeding 3 meters; cf. Irene
Hueck, Stifter und Patronatsrecht: Dokumente zu zwei Kapellen der Bardi,
It cannot be excluded, lastly, that one of Giottos four polyptychs might have
been executed for the high altar of the old church of Santa Croce, in use at
least until 1314 and perhaps until 1320/1330 and doubtless not left without
appropriate decoration. See Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen
von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main,
1940), 1:500.
As for the church of Ognissanti, one of the panels with an undoubted
provenance from the church is the Maest now in the Uffizi, Florence,
oftenthough without foundationconsidered an altarpiece for the high
altar or displayed on its rood-screen; cf. Irene Hueck, Le opere di Giotto
per la chiesa di Ognissanti, in La Madonna dOgnissanti di Giotto
restaurata (Florence, 1992), 3749. Whatever the case, the fact remains that
the Maest comes from Ognissanti, as does the Dormitio Virginis now in the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin (no. 1884) and the great painted crucifix still in situ
in the church that Ghiberti cited in addition to the four panels. On the
crucifix, see Marco Ciatti, ed., Lofficina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di
Ognissanti, Problemi di conservazione e restauro (Florence, 2010). Two
other panels therefore remain to be identified. One might have been the
mezza Nostra Donna col fanciullo in braccio that Ghiberti saw above the
side door of the church leading into the cloister. It is possible, however, that
this Madonna and Child was not a panel painting but a frescoed lunette.
Julius von Schlosser, ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwrdigkeiten, 2 vols.


(Berlin, 1912), 1:36.
[30] Erling Skaugs conclusion that in Florence extensive punch work was
introduced only about 13331334 was perhaps excessively cautious, since
it was based only on securely dated paintings. Even so, Skaug admitted the
occasional use of punches by Giotto before his terminus post quem, for
example in the Stefaneschi altarpiece now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana (on
which see the following note) and in that of the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa
Croce. See Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico:
(Oslo, 1994), 1:3436. This latter chapel was founded, according to the
inscription on its external wall, in 1328; see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi:
Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonn (Columbia, MO, 1982), 88. In
any case, the fact that the gold ground of the Goldman Madonna is totally
devoid of punched decoration might be an indication that it predates both
the Roman and Florentine polyptychs.
[31] The Stefaneschi altarpiece has lost its original frame, which probably bore
the signature of Giotto and the date of execution. The fourteenth-century
Liber benefactorum in the Basilica Vaticana did not hesitate to identify
Giotto as the artist of the polyptych, while the manuscript of the canon
Giacomo Grimaldi, dating to the early seventeenth century, said it was circa
annum MCCCXX depicta. Cf. Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Catalogo della
Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 1, I dipinti dal X secolo fino a Giotto (Vatican City,
1979), 4551. There are no good reasons to doubt the reliability of this
affirmation, probably based on an inscription partially legible on the original
frame. In addition, a punch mark is used in the Ognissanti crucifix, which is
probably earlier than the Stefaneschi altarpiece. See Mikls Boskovits, Il
Crocifisso di Giotto della chiesa di Ognissanti: Riflessioni dopo il restauro,
in LOfficina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti, ed. Marco Ciatti
(Florence, 2010), 4762.
[32] Giotto had already used Kufic-type lettering in the halos of the mourners in
the Santa Maria Novella crucifix, a painting generally recognized as one of
the masters earliest works, datable to c. 1290. Motifs similar to those of
Marys halo in the Washington panelinterlaced motifs that are repeated in
equal form from right to left, with the exception of two different decorative
elements incised in the gold ground above the Madonnas right
shoulderare matched in Christs halo in the Giottesque crucifix in San
Felice in Piazza, Florence (figs. 5 and 6). Tracing based on Magnolia
Scudieri, ed., Lacroce giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: Storia e restauro
(Venice, 1992), 146. Invariably discussed as a product of Giottos shop and
thought to be painted mainly by the masters assistants, this work was dated
to the early years of the fourteenth century by Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la
sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 137138; Carlo Volpe, Sulla Croce di San Felice in


Piazza e la cronologia dei crocefissi giotteschi, in Giotto e il suo tempo: Atti

del congresso internazionale per la celebrazione del vii centenario della
nascit di Giotto, Assisi, Padova, Firenze (Rome, 1971), 253263; and
Giorgio Bonsanti, La bottega di Giotto e la Croce di San Felice, in La croce
giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: Storia e restauro, ed. Magnolia Scudieri
(Venice, 1992), 5390; and toward 1310 or shortly after, i.e., the time of the
Peruzzi Chapel, by Luciano Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 69; and Mikls
Boskovits, Una vetrata e un frammento daffresco di Giotto nel museo di
Santa Croce, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Federico Zeri, 2 vols.
(Milan, 1984), 1:44, the latter of whom considered the crucifix an autograph
painting by Giotto. Similar ornamental motifs also appear in the frescoes of
the Saint Nicholas chapel in the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi,
painted, according to the more recent studies, no later than c. 1300; cf.
Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 192, no. 53 of the repertoire. For the dating of the
Uffizi Maest to the end of the first decade of the fourteenth century, cf.
Giorgio Bonsanti, La bottega di Giotto, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di
sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 66;
and Mikls Boskovits, Giotto: Un artista poco conosciuto? in Giotto:
Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi
(Florence, 2000), 85. Adriano Peroni, La Maest di Ognissanti rivisitata
dopo il restauro, in La Madonna dOgnissanti di Giotto restaurata
(Florence, 1992), 30, argued, however, that the painting should date to the
early years of the century.
[33] In medieval Byzantine devotional images of the Madonna and Childand

hence also in Italian onesMarys hair is in general hidden within a kind of
coif. The color of this article of clothing may vary, but at least in central Italy
within the last decades of the thirteenth and first decades of the fourteenth
century, it is usually red, as in the Washington Madonna. The Virgin is
represented in this way in Giottos pre-1300 Maest now in the Museo
Diocesano in Florence, in the fresco on the inner faade of the upper church
of the basilica in Assisi, and also in the Uffizi Maest and in the Stefaneschi
altarpiece. In Giottos later works, such as the polyptych in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Bologna; the Madonna of Santa Maria a Ricorboli, also in
Florence; and the polyptych in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce
(c. 1328), the mother of Christ instead wears a wimple and a transparent veil
that covers her head but leaves her blond hair visible below it.
[34] Bellosi, who was the first to use the width of the scooped neckline as an
indication of dating, compared the neckline of the Washington Madonna
with those painted by Pietro Lorenzetti in 1320 in the polyptych of the Pieve
of Santa Maria in Arezzo, in Luciano Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: B) per la
pittura di primo Trecento, Prospettiva 11 (1977): 1214. Of course, that does
not imply a dating ad annum; the fact remains that we find increasingly


wider necklines than that of the Goldman Madonna in Giottos last decade
of activity.
[35] This is the date of the Cappella della Maddalena frescoes proposed by
Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 9094; Luciano
Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 59; Cesare Brandi, Giotto (Milan, 1983),
115118; Filippo Todini, Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento in Umbria e il
cantiere di Assisi, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:395; Giorgio Bonsanti, La bottega di
Giotto, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed.
Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 69; Mikls Boskovits, Giotto di
Bondone, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2000),
55:411. The Assisi document also seems to confirm this date, asserting that
the painter Palmerino di Guido repaid a credit on Giottos behalf in January
1309; cf. Valentino Martinelli, Un documento per Giotto ad Assisi, Storia
dellarte 19 (1973): 193208. Evidently, the painter had been present and
was working in the Umbrian city until shortly before this date. Francesca
Flores dArcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 272, proposed a later date (13151318)
for the Magdalene chapel cycle.
[36] Cf. note 29 above. It cannot be excluded that the Raleigh polyptych
belonged to the Peruzzi Chapel. However, the altarpiece is probably earlier
than supposed in the past: Mikls Boskovits argued for a dating of 1310 in
Mikls Boskovits, Il Crocifisso di Giotto della chiesa di Ognissanti:
Riflessioni dopo il restauro, in LOfficina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di
Ognissanti, ed. Marco Ciatti (Florence, 2010), 52, 61 n. 27.
[37] Most art historians of the period accepted the dating of the Peruzzi Chapel
cycle to 13101315. Cf. Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan,
1967), 105107; Luciano Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 62; Cesare Brandi,
Giotto (Milan, 1983), 185; Francesca Flores dArcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995),
252261; Giorgio Bonsanti, La bottega di Giotto, in Giotto: Bilancio critico
di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 66;
Mikls Boskovits, Giotto: Un artista poco conosciuto? in Giotto: Bilancio
critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence,
2000), 8687. Hayden B.J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A
Historical Reevaluation (University Park, PA, 1997), 131, seemed to prefer a
slightly later dating.
[38] See Mikls Boskovits, Una vetrata e un frammento daffresco di Giotto nel
museo di Santa Croce, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Federico Zeri,
2 vols. (Milan, 1984), 1:3945; Mikls Boskovits, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di
sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000),
138140.
[39] The Dormitio Virginis in the Gemldegalerie in Berlin, no. 884, is generally
dated to c. 1310. See Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967),


109112; Luciano Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 59; Mikls Boskovits, ed.,
Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemlde,
trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 5661; Francesca Flores dArcais, Giotto
(Milan, 1995), 237242. The crucifix in Ognissanti, although commissioned
for the same church, is generally thought to be slightly later: according to
Previtali 1967, 137138, in the third decade of the century; according to
Bellosi 1981, 69, di unepoca assai posteriore (of considerably later period)
than the Peruzzi Chapel frescoes. Mikls Boskovits, Il Crocifisso di Giotto
della chiesa di Ognissanti: Riflessioni dopo il restauro, in LOfficina di
Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti, ed. Marco Ciatti (Florence,
2010), 58, considered the painting executed by the mid-1310s, like Flores
dArcais (1995), 243244, who proposed the period 13101315, and Giorgio
Bonsanti, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed.
Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 147150, who preferred the date c. 1315.
[40] Cf. Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis, Giottus pictor, vol. 1, Giottos
Leben (Vienna, 2004), 103112.
[41] On the much-debated problem of the so-called Parente di [i.e., relative of]
Giotto, a painter to whomaccording to some art historiansthe great
master delegated much of the actual execution of very important
commissions during the second and third decade of the fourteenth century,
cf. a summary of the contributions of Giorgio Bonsanti and Mikls Boskovits,
in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo
Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 5573, 7594.
[42] In their recent contribution, Maria Clelia Galassi and Elizabeth Walmsley
(2009) observed analogies between the painting technique of the
Washington Madonna and the panel in the Museo Horne in Florence and
differences between the execution of these latter and the Ognissanti
Madonna and the Raleigh polyptych. This may be explained, in my opinion,
by their different dates of execution. See Maria Clelia Galassi and Elizabeth
Walmsley, Painting Technique in the Late Works of Giotto, in The Quest
for the Original: Underdrawing and Technology in Painting; Symposium 16,
Bruges, 2123 September 2006 [Colloque pour ltude du Dessin Sous-
Jacent et de la Technologie dans la Peinture], ed. Hlne Verougstraete
(Leuven, 2009), 116122.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden support is a single-member poplar panel [1] with vertical grain, which
was cradled sometime in the late 1910s and again in 1937, this time by Stephen
Pichetto.[2] Probably during the earlier of these treatments, the panel was thinned


and trimmed along the edges of the terminal arch.
The painting was executed on a white gesso ground, and the x-radiographs show
evidence of a fabric interlayer between the gesso and the wooden panel. The
gilded areas were prepared with a thin green earth layer followed by a red
bole.[3] The halos and the decorative border along the edges are adorned by
patterns incised freehand in the gold ground. The outlines of the figures were
incised into the ground. In the areas of flesh, the artist applied a green underpaint
wash that loosely defined the shadows, followed by a verdaccio that used a
combination of fine hatchmarks and broader strokes to create the shadows [fig.
1] [fig. 2].[4] The paint was built up in thin, fluid layers. At the underdrawing stage,
visible with infrared reflectography at 0.9 to 5 microns,[5] the childs face was tilted
up slightly by shifting his eyes and ear .
The painted surface is generally in a good state, but the gold ground is slightly
abraded. Numerous scattered small paint losses and a few woodworm exit holes
are visible in the painting. The losses are concentrated mainly in the lower portion
of the Virgins mantle. There is also some staining in the Virgins mantle, which was
inpainted when the painting underwent treatment to remove a discolored varnish
in 2012.[6]


fig. 1 Artificial-colored hyperspectral infrared reflectogram, fig. 2 Infrared reflectogram, Giotto, Madonna and Child, c.
Giotto, Madonna and Child, c. 1310/1315, tempera on 1310/1315, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art,
poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection
Kress Collection. The green earth wash appears red in this
image because it has decreased absorption at the
wavelength chosen for the red display channel. The
verdaccio and drawing appears black.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the wood (see report
dated January 11, 1989, in NGA conservation files).
[2] The Duveen Brothers Records contain an entry for restoration by their Paris
restorer, Mme Helfer, in 1918 and another entry for restoration in 1919,
presumably by a different restorer because the amount is recorded in US
dollars (see Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research
Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 422). Historic x-


radiographs show the panel with the earlier cradle. On Pichettos treatment,
see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:221, and see also the exchange of cables between
the companys New York and London offices (Duveen Brothers Records,
Angeles: reel 89, box 234, folder 23).
[3] Cross-sections taken by the NGA scientific research department in 2012

showed a thin green underpaint layer under the red bole. Joanna R. Dunn,
Barbara H. Berrie, John K. Delaney, and Lisha Denning Glinsman, The
Creation of Giottos Madonna and Child: New Insights, Facture 2 (2015): 6.
[Editors note: This information was not available during Mikls Boskovitss
lifetime and has been added to the technical summary of this Online Edition
in an endeavor to make available the most current information about the
National Gallery of Art collections.]
[4] Maria Clelia Galassi and Elizabeth Walmsley, Painting Technique in the Late
Works of Giotto, in The Quest for the Original: Underdrawing and
Technology in Painting; Symposium 16, Bruges, 2123 September 2006
[Colloque pour ltude du Dessin Sous-Jacent et de la Technologie dans la
Peinture], ed. Hlne Verougstraete (Leuven, 2009), 116122; Joanna R.
Dunn, Barbara H. Berrie, John K. Delaney, and Lisha Deming Glinsman, The
Creation of Giottos Madonna and Child: New Insights, Facture 2 (2015):
217. This was confirmed by the NGA Scientific Research Department using
cross-sections in combination with scanning electron microscopy (see
forthcoming report in NGA Conservation department files) and false-color
hyperspectral infrared reflectography. The false-color hyperspectral infrared
reflectography was captured using a modified 720 Surface Optics
Corporation NIR hyperspectral camera. The focal plane has been replaced
by a Sensor Unlimited high sensitivity InGaAs camera. The images were
collected from 970 to 1680 nm with a spectral resolution of 3.4 nm. The
artificial-color images were made using three bands (centered at 1000nm
for the blue, 1200nm for the green and 1600 nm for the red) to better show
features of interest.
[5] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Vidicon camera, as well as a

FLIR/Indigo Alph VisGaAs focal plane array camera, a Mitsubishi M600 PtSi
focal plane array camera, and a Santa Barbara InSb focal plane array
camera fitted with J and K filters.
[6] At the time of this treatment the painting was analyzed by the NGA scientific
research department using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), cross-
sections in combination with scanning electron microscopy, fiber optic
reflectance spectrometry (XRF), and false color infrared reflectography (see
forthcoming reports in NGA conservation files).


PROVENANCE
Probably commissioned for the church of Santa Croce or the church of Ognissanti,
both Florence.[1] Edouard-Alexandre de Max [1869-1924], Paris;[2] sold 1917 to
(Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold to Henry Goldman
[1857-1937], New York, by 1920;[3] sold 1 February 1937 back to (Duveen Brothers,
Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[4] sold 1939 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation,
New York;[5] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] Peter Murray's compilation of polyptychs by
Giotto (An Index of attributions made in Tuscan Sources before Vasari, Florence,
1959: 79-89), complemented by the work of Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis (
Giottus pictor, 2 vols., Viienna, Cologne, and Weimar, 2004: 1:285-303), lists, apart
from the polyptych in the church of the Badia in Florence, four panels in the church
of Santa Croce, one in San Giorgio alla Costa, a Crucifix and a now lost image of
Saint Louis of Toulouse formerly in Santa Maria novella, and a Crucifix and four
panels in Ognissanti. [2] Edward Fowles, who managed the Paris office of Duveen
Brothers, recalls in his memoirs, In the autumn of 1917, our old friend Charles
Wakefield Mori took me to see an early Florentine Madonna and Child (attributed
to Giotto) which belonged to Max, the famous actor of the Comdie Franaise [in
Paris]. As I examined the painting in Maxs bedroom . . . he told me it had been
given to his great aunt by the Pope. Berenson considered it an excellent work . . .
[by Bernardo Daddi] . . . we agreed to purchase the painting. Berenson later
supervised its cleaning and confessed that he was beginning to perceive certain
Giottesque qualities . . . I had an Italian frame made for the painting. . . . (Edward
Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 104). In a letter of 31 October
1958, to Carlyle Burrows (see note 5 below), Fowles relates that he bought the
picture just 44 years ago, which would have put the purchase in 1914 (Duveen
Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research
Institute, Los Angeles: reel 101, box 246, folder 3; copy in NGA curatorial files). The
former owners story about the paintings provenance does not seem plausible; at
any rate no evidence can be adduced to corroborate it. On the Romanian-born
Edouard de Max, friend of Cocteau and leading tragedian on the Parisian stage in
the first decade of the century, see Louis Delluc, Chez de Max, Paris, 1918. [3] The
painting was displayed in the Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition (1920) at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as part of the Goldman Collection. [4] See
the letter of 5 January 1937, from Henry Goldman to Duveen Brothers, in which he


confirms the sale to the company of nine paintings and one sculpture (Duveen
Brothers Records, reel 312, box 457, folder 4; see also reel 89, box 234, folder 23,
and reel 101, box 246, folders 2 and 3; copies in NGA curatorial files). [5] Carlyle
Burrows states this in an article in the New York Herald Tribune (30 October 1958):
5.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1920 Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
1920, unnumbered catalogue, as by Bernardo Daddi.
1924 Loan Exhibition of Important Early Italian Paintings in the Possession of

Notable American Collectors, Duveen Brothers, New York, 1924, no. 15, as by
Bernardo Daddi (no. 2 in illustrated 1926 version of catalogue, as by Giotto, or an
Assistant).
1930 Exhibition of Italian Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1930,
no. 16, as Attributed to Giotto (no. 8, pl. V in commemorative catalogue published
1931; not in souvenir catalogue).
1979 Berenson and the Connoisseurship of Italian Painting, National Gallery of

Art, Washington, D.C., 1979, no. 43, repro.
2012 Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-
1350, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2012-
2013, no. 2, repro. (shown only in Los Angeles).
2013 Giotto e compagni, Muse du Louvre, Paris, 2013, no. 12, repros.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1920 Berenson, Bernard. "Italian Paintings." Bulletin of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art 15 (1920): 160, 161 repro., as by Bernardo Daddi.
1920 Robinson, Edward. "The Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration." Bulletin of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art 15 (1920): 75.
1922 Valentiner, Wilhelm R. The Henry Goldman Collection. New York, 1922:
n.p., Introduction, no. 1.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):190, fig. 112.


1924 Offner, Richard. "A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings." The Arts
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1925 Mather, Frank Jewett. "Two Attributions to Giotto." Art Studies 3 (1925):
25-27, fig. 2.
1925 Weigelt, Curt H. Giotto: des Meisters Gemlde. Stuttgart, 1925: 204
(repro.), 242.
1926 Thode, Henry. Giotto. Edited by Wolfgang Fritz Volbach. Knstler-
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1966 Vigorelli, Giancarlo, and Edi Baccheschi. Lopera completa di Giotto. 1st
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1967: 11.
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3 (1967): 34.
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(repro.), 376-377, pl. 79.
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1971 Smart, Alistair. The Assisi Problem and the Art of Giotto: A Study of the
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1973 De Benedictis, Cristina. Giotto: bibliografia, 2 (1937-1970). Rome, 1973:
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1974 Bellosi, Luciano. Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte. Turin, 1974: 52, fig.
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1974 Gregori, Mina. "Sul polittico Bromley Davenport di Taddeo Gaddi e sulla
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1975 Tantillo Mignosi, Almamaria. "Osservazioni sul transetto della Basilica
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1977 Bellosi, Luciano. "Moda e cronologia: A) gli affreschi della Basilica
Inferiore di Assisi." Prospettiva 10 (1977): 26, 28, fig. 24.
1977 Bellosi, Luciano. "Moda e cronologia: B) per la pittura di primo Trecento."
Prospettiva 11 (1977): 13 (repro.), 14.
1978 Fahy, Everett. "Italian Paintings at Fenway Court and Elsewhere." The


Connoisseur 198, no. 795 (1978): 29.

1978 Laclotte, Michel. "Reconstruction and Revaluation." Apollo 108 (1978):
387.
1978 Ressort, Claude, Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte, eds. Retables
italiens du XIIIe au XVe sicle. Exh. cat. Muse National du Louvre,
Paris, 1978: 11-14, repro.
1979 Caleca, Antonino, Gaetano Nencini, Giovanna Piancastelli, and Enzo
Carli. Pisa, Museo delle Sinopie del Camposanto monumentale. Pisa,
1979: 68.
1979 Watson, Ross. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1979:
19, pl. 2.
1980 Conti, Alessandro. "Un Crocifisso nella bottega di Giotto." Prospettiva 20
(1980): 48, 56 n. 15.
1981 Bellosi, Luciano. Giotto. Florence, 1981: 71, 72, fig. 147.
1982 Christiansen, Keith. "Fourteenth-Century Italian Altarpieces." Bulletin of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art 40 (1982): 50, 54.
1982 Ladis, Andrew. Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue
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1982 Pietralunga, Fra Ludovico da, and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.).
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Treviso, 1982: 245.
1983 Brandi, Cesare. Giotto. Milan, 1983: 147-149 (repro.), 150, repro. 186.
1983 Ladis, Andrew. "An Early Trecento Madonna Uncovered." Antichit viva
22 (1983): 7, 8, fig. 8.
1984 Boskovits, Mikls. "Una vetrata e un frammento daffresco di Giotto nel
museo di Santa Croce." In Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Federico
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1984 Ercoli, Giuliano. "Una Precisazione per Giotto, Boccaccio e Giovanni di
Pagolo Morelli." In Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Roberto Salvini.
1985 Bonsanti, Giorgio. Giotto. Padua, 1985: 53, 55-56, 172-174, pl. 172.
1985 Boskovits, Mikls. The Martello Collection: Paintings, Drawings and
Miniatures from the XIVth to the XVIIIth Centuries. Florence, 1985: 97.
1986 Castelnuovo, Enrico, ed. La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. 2
vols. Milan, 1986: 1:293; 2:576.
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1987 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Dipinti del Due e Trecento alla mostra Capolavori e
Restauri." Paragone 38, no. 445 (1987): 53, 59 n. 30.
1989 Bandera Bistoletti, Sandrina. Giotto: catalogo completo dei dipinti.
Florence, 1989: 126, repro. 129.
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1989 Previtali, Giovanni. "Giotto." In Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori. Edited
by Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-1994:
2(1990):604.
1990 Testi Cristiani, Maria Laura. "Circostanze avignonesi: il crocifisso
double-face del cardinale Godin a Tolosa, 1." Critica darte 55 (1990): 50
(repro.), 56.
1991 Gardner, Julian. "Review of a Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century. The Works of Bernardo Daddi,
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Collaboration with E. Neri Lusanna." The Burlington Magazine 133 (1991):
201.
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1991 Simon, Robin. "The National Gallery of Art, Washington. Fifty Years of
Private Collecting for the Public Good." Apollo 133 (March 1991): 156,
repro.
1991 "The National Gallery of Art, Washington: fifty years." Apollo 133, no. 349
(March 1991):156, repro.
1991 Tomei, Alessandro. "Giotto." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale. Edited
by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002:
6(1996):671.
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croce giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: storia e restauro. Edited by
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1992: 12, repro.
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di San Nicola a Tolentino." In Arte e spiritualit nellordine agostiniano e

il Convento San Nicola a Tolentino: atti della seconda sessione del
convegno Arte e Spiritualit negli Ordini Mendicanti; Tolentino, 1-4
settembre 1992. Edited by Graziano Campisano. Rome, 1994: 189.
1994 Jackson, Jed. Art: A Comparative Study. Dubuque, IA, 1994: repro. 117.
1995 Flores dArcais, Francesca. Giotto. 1st ed. Milan, 1995: 320, 321 (repro.),
324.
1996 Cavazzini, Laura. Giotto. Florence, 1996: 33, 40.
1996 Gilbert, Creighton E. "Giotto di Bondone." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 12:686
1999 Gardner, Julian. "Panel Paintings Attributed to Giotto in American
Collections." Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study
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2000 Sainte Fare Garnot, Nicolas. "Brve histoire dune redcouverte." In
Primitifs italiens du Muse Jacquemart-Andr. Paris, 2000: 104-105,
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ricerche. Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, 2000: 66, 71, 88,
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Dizionario dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan, 2002:
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del Duecento e del Trecento. (Prospettiva 121-124) Florence, 2006: 432,

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Trecento. (Prospettiva 121-124) Florence, 2006: 439, fig. 3.
2006 Greco, Gabriella, ed. Giotto. Milan, 2006: 286, 287, repro.
2006 Lisner, Margrit. "Osservazioni sul Tondo Doni di Michelangelo e sulla
Madonna del Sacco di Andrea del Sarto: cromia e colore iconografico,
con un epilogo, 1." Arte cristiana 94 (2006): 340.
2007 Bellosi, Luciano, and Giovanna Ragionieri. Giotto e la sua eredit:
Filippo Rusuti, Pietro Cavallini, Duccio, Giovanni da Rimini, Neri da
Rimini, Pietro da Rimini, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ambrogio
Lorenzetti, Matteo Giovannetti, Masso di Banco, Puccio Capanna,
Altichiero, Jacopo Avanzi, Jean Pucelle, i Fratelli Limbourg. Florence,
2007: 127, 303, repro. 305.
2007 Tartuferi, Angelo. Giotto. 1st ed. Florence, 2007: 125 (repro.), 127.
2009 Galassi, Maria Clelia, and Elizabeth Walmsley. "Painting Technique in the
Late Works of Giotto: Infrared Examination of Seven Panels from
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2009 Tomei, Alessandro, ed. Giotto e il Trecento: il pi Sovrano Maestro stato
in dipintura. 2 vols. Exh. cat. Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, Rome.
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2012 Sciacca, Christine, ed. Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance:
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Paris, 2013: no. 12, repros.
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Glinsman. The Creation of Giottos Madonna and Child: New Insights.
Facture 2 (2015): 2-17.


Baronzio, Giovanni
Also known as
Baronzio, Giovanni di
Italian, active c. 1320 - 1350
BIOGRAPHY
The name Johannes Barontius appears in the signature of an altarpiece dated

1345. Representing the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints (Galleria
Nazionale, Urbino), it comes from the church of San Francesco at Macerata Feltria.
Usually, Barontius (the latinized form of Baronzio) is considered a surname, but a
document of 1362 recording the painters tomb in the church of San Giuliano at
Rimini (where he was buried, together with his brother and a son) makes it clear
that it was a patronymic. The only other piece of documentary evidence found thus
far is a deed dated 1343 that cites Iohanne Baroncio pictore as a witness.[1]
Various other paintings were added to the signed Madonna in Urbino over the last
century, including the signed crucifix in San Francesco at Mercatello, which we
now know to be by another painter named Giovanni.[2] The result was a very
extended and heterogeneous catalog that comprised, according to Bernard
Berenson (1932), some forty works. Various scholars have since tried to clarify the
resulting confusion and better define the artists character.[3] In particular, Carlo
Volpe, in his fundamental study on the history of painting in Rimini (1965),
drastically reduced the number of paintings assigned to the painter, grouping
stylistically related works and dividing them among anonymous artists named,
respectively, Master of the Parry Adoration, Master of Santa Colomba, Master of
the Life of Saint John the Baptist, and Pseudo-Baronzio. Art historical analysis of
more recent decades has tended to restore most of the paintings assigned to
these conventional masters to Giovanni Baronzio himself.[4]
To judge from the characteristics of this enlarged oeuvre, the painter, who may be
said to have been a disciple of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) but at second
hand, must have begun his career around 1320 or a little later under the more
immediate influence of Giovanni and Pietro da Rimini. His probable first works
include the stories of Christ now divided between the Galleria Nazionale dArte
Antica di Palazzo Barberini in Rome and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in
Rimini formerly assigned to the Pseudo-Baronzio. Fragments of an altarpiece
Baronzio, Giovanni 501


depicting the Madonna and Child and stories of the life of the Baptist, including the
panels now in the National Gallery of Art, and panels formerly gathered under the
name Master of the Parry Adoration belong to a subsequent phase in Baronzios
development. The final phase of his career is represented by the Madonna and
Child in Urbino and the other version of the Madonna, generally given to Baronzio,
that is still preserved in the church of San Francesco at Mercatello.
Long misunderstood and undervalued by art historians, Giovanni Baronzio was the
leading light of the second generation of painters influenced in a decisive way by
the activity of Giotto at Rimini. Though he adopted many of the compositional
devices and motifs introduced by Giotto, Baronzio assimilated them into his own
distinctive narrative style, enlivened and enriched with a wealth of decorative
elements and genre details taken from everyday life. His narrative scenes,
crowded with incident, err on the side of excessive loquacity, even naivet. But this
was a painter able not only to produce brilliant color combinations and striking
decorative effects but also to achieve moments of great emotional intensity.
[1] Oreste Delucca, I pittori riminesi del Trecento nelle carte darchivio (Rimini,
1992), 112114.
[2] Carlo Volpe, La pittura riminese del Trecento (Milan, 1965), 6263, 71; Mauro
Minardi, Giovanni da Rimini, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 83 vols. (Rome,
19602015), 56(2001):188193.
[3] Cesare Brandi, ed., Mostra della pittura riminese del Trecento (Rimini, 1935), xii,
xiii, xviii, xxii, xxvii, xxxii, 8899, 160; Mario Salmi, La scuola di Rimini, 3, Rivista
del R. Istituto darcheologia e storia dellarte 5 (1935): 98127; Luigi Coletti, I
Primitivi, vol. 3, I padani (Novara, 1947), xiixiv, xviixix; Alberto Martini,
Ricostruzione parziale di un dossale riminese, Paragone 9 (1958): 4044;
Federico Zeri, Una Deposizione di scuola riminese, Paragone 9 (1958): 4654.
[4] Cf. Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin,
Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 1518; Mikls Boskovits,
Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche ai primi del 300, Arte
cristiana 81 (1993): 163182; Daniele Benati, Disegno del Trecento riminese, in Il
Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed. Daniele Benati
(Milan, 1995), 4554; and Daniele Benati, in Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e
botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed. Daniele Benati (Milan, 1995), 246273.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
1902 Brach, Albert.

Giottos Schule in der Romagna. Zur Kunstgeschichte des Auslandes 9.
Strasbourg, 1902.
1908 Sirn, Osvald.

Giottino und seine Stellung in der gleichzeitigen florentinischen Malerei.
Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien Bd 1. Leipzig, 1908: 71-76.
1916 Sirn, Osvald. Giuliano, Pietro and Giovanni da Rimini.

1935 Brandi, Cesare, ed.

Mostra della pittura riminese del Trecento. Exh. cat. Palazzo dell'Arengo,
Rimini, 1935: xii, xiii, xviii, xxii, xxvii, xxxii, 88-99, 160.
1935 Salmi, Mario. La scuola di Rimini, 3.

Rivista del R. Istituto d'archeologia e storia dellarte 5 (1935): 98-127.
1937 Brandi, Cesare. Giovanni da Rimini e Giovanni Baronzio.

Critica dArte 2 (1937): 193-199.
1958 Martini, Alberto. Ricostruzione parziale di un dossale riminese.

Paragone 9 (1958): 40-44.
1958 Zeri, Federico. Una Deposizione di scuola riminese.

Paragone 9 (1958): 46-54.
1960 Minardi, Mauro. "Giovanni da Rimani." In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 56(2001):188-193.
1965 Volpe, Carlo.

La pittura riminese del Trecento. Milan, 1965: 38-39, 41-43, 48, 52-53,
181-186, 198-209, 299-304.


1988 Boskovits, Mikls, ed.

Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der
Gemlde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 15-18.
1990 Pasini, Pier Giorgio.

La pittura riminese del Trecento. Milan, 1990: 123-130.
1992 Delucca, Oreste.

I pittori riminesi del Trecento nelle carte darchivio. Rimini, 1992: 112-114.
1993 Boskovits, Mikls. Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche
ai primi del 300.
Arte Cristiana 81 (1993): 163-182.
1995 Benati, Daniele, ed.

Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche. Exh.
cat. Museo della citt, Rimini. Milan, 1995: 29-57, 246-273.
2006 Benati, Daniele. Il Dossale Corvisieri nel percorso di Giovanni

Baronzio.
LArco 4 (2006): 18-29.


Giovanni Baronzio
The Baptism of Christ

c. 1335
tempera on panel
overall (original panel): 48.8 41.2 cm (19 3/16 16 1/4 in.)
overall (including added strips): 49.6 42 cm (19 1/2 16 9/16 in.)
framed: 56 x 48.6 x 4.6 cm (22 1/16 x 19 1/8 x 1 13/16 in.)
ENTRY
This panel, along with its two companions The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of
Saint John the Baptist and Madonna and Child with Five Angels, are fragments of
a dismantled altarpiece whose original provenance is unknown but which was
presumably commissioned for the high altar of a church dedicated to the Baptist in
Emilia Romagna or, perhaps, in the Marche.[1] Keith Christiansen (1982)[2]
proposed a reconstruction of the altar [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction) as follows:
four stories of the Baptist would have accompanied, on either side, the central
Madonna and Child with Five Angels now in the National Gallery of Art; to the
upper left, Annunciation of the Birth of the Baptist [fig. 2] formerly in the Street
collection in Bath,[3] flanked by Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of the Baptist now
in the Gallery. The lower register on the same side would have consisted of Young
Baptist Led by an Angel into the Wilderness [fig. 3], now in the Pinacoteca
Vaticana,[4] and The Baptist Interrogated by the Pharisees [fig. 4], of which only a
fragment survives, in the Seattle Art Museum.[5] The upper register on the right
side would have consisted of Baptism of Christ in the Gallery (this panel) and The
Baptist Sends His Disciples to Christ [fig. 5], formerly in the Street collection in
Bath.[6] Two more panels formed the lower register on the same side: Feast of
Herod [fig. 6], now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Robert Lehman Collection) in
New York,[7] flanked by The Baptists Descent into Limbo [fig. 7], formerly in the
collection of Charles Loeser in Florence, its whereabouts now unknown.[8] A
possible argument against Christiansens reconstruction, as Laurence Kanter has
informed me (in correspondence), is the fact that the vertically grained wood of the
The Baptism of Christ 505


central Madonna seems to exclude its common origin with the panels
representing the stories of the Baptist, which are painted on panels with horizontal
grain. Kanter considers the possibility of two different altarpieces or one double-
sided altarpiece. These proposals are interesting, but all the fragments share a
common author, their dimensions are comparable, and similarity of pictorial
conduct makes the hypothesis of a single-sided panel more likely after all.
Complete disappearance (except for the Madonna) of the paintings on the back of
a double-sided altarpiece would also seem rather unlikely. And for an altarpiece as
large as two meters or more, instead of a single wooden support, the use of three
panels was preferred. On the whole, Christiansens hypothesis is likely to be
correct.
The altarpiece of Saint John the Baptist had evidently been dismantled by the first
half of the nineteenth century, for by the 1840s fragments of it had begun to
emerge on the art market.[9] Adolfo Venturi (1906) was the first to attempt to
classify more precisely the Baptism of Christ and the other two fragments then in
the Sterbini collection in Rome.[10] Venturi recognized Bolognese influences
deriving from the activity of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) in that city. He
suggested that the artist might have been someone like Jacopo di Paolo, active in
Bologna from the close of the thirteenth century. A few years later Osvald Sirn
(1916), unfamiliar, it seems, with Venturis publication, asserted the common origin
of the Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of the Baptist; Annunciation of the Baptists
Birth; The Baptist Sends His Disciples to Christ; and Feast of Herod.[11] He correctly
attributed them to Giovanni Baronzio, the master who had signed and dated (1345)
the altarpiece now in the Galleria Nazionale in Urbino. The great Swedish art
historian erred, however, in thinking that the panel of Saint John the Baptist
Enthroned in Christ Church Gallery in Oxford stood in the center of the altarpiece.
This painting is clearly Florentine, even if its proposed attribution to Lippo di
Benivieni remains under discussion.[12] Sirns proposal, indeed, convinced few
scholars.[13] Later contributions to the problem accepted instead the proposal of
Richard Offner (1924), who recognized in Madonna and Child with Five Angels the
work of an anonymous painter from the Romagna, to whom he attributed the
stories of the Baptist.[14] Raimond van Marle (1924) also placed the attribution to
Giovanni Baronzio in doubt. He preferred to classify The Baptism of Christ and its
companion panel now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana as works of the Cavallinesque
Riminese school.[15] Lehman (1928), on the other hand, retained the attribution to
Giovanni Baronzio and, in his analysis of Feast of Herod, linked it with the fragment
depicting the Baptism.[16] Both Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933) and Bernard Berenson


(1932, 1936) also assigned to Giovanni Baronzio the panels they recognized as
forming part of the same series.[17] Other art historians and catalogers followed
suit.[18] Doubts then grew about Giovannis authorship: the fragments were
assigned instead to an ad hoc Master of the Life of Saint John the Baptist. This
opinion prevailed in the literature of the following decades; it was also expressed
in the catalogs of the Gallery and repeated in more recent publications.[19] Since
1987, however, the attribution to Giovanni Baronzio has been reinstated, and
reinforced with fresh arguments, both for the group of panels that concerns us
here and for other paintings that had in the past been attributed to the artist;
scholars have increasingly supported this suggestion.[20]
Altarpieces in the elongated horizontal form of thirteenth-century dossals,

approximately one meter (or a little more) in height and two and a half meters in
width, such as the dismantled altarpiece of the Baptist being discussed here, are
rare in Tuscany in the fourteenth century, but must have been fairly common in a
region like Emilia Romagna.[21] They usually showed the Madonna and Child
Enthroned (or, more rarely, a story of Christ) at the center flanked by saints or
biblical or legendary narrative scenes. An extended cycle of stories of the Baptist
comparable to that of our altarpiece has only survived in Emilia Romagna in the
field of mural paintings, more particularly in those of the dome of the baptistery of
Parma.[22] Our altarpiece dedicated to Saint John the Baptist is unusual in its
iconographic program: it lacks scenes usually included in cycles of the Baptist,
such as the Visitation, the Ecce Agnus Dei, the Dance of Salome, or the Burial of
the Baptist, while it includes such rare episodes as Saint John the Baptist Praying
in the Wilderness or the Baptists Descent into Limbo.[23] Nor did the artist hesitate
to introduce into the individual episodes motifs that diverge from the usual
iconography.[24] As regards the panels in the Gallery (as seen in The Birth,
Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist), it is unusual for the episode
of the Washing of the Infant Saint John, often placed in the foreground with an
intentional allusion to the theme of baptism, to be dispensed with, as it is here; it is
replaced instead by the scene in the background, more homely than symbolic in
tone, of two handmaids wrapping the newborn child in swaddling cloths. The
Naming of the Baptist, which often represents a self-sufficient scene, is here
inserted in the scene of the Birth, and indeed placed in the foreground and
combined to the far right with the episode of the Circumcision of the recalcitrant
child.[25] On the other hand, in The Baptism of Christ, the painter remains faithful
to the tradition of representing Christ submerged up to his hips in the water of the
Jordan, the Baptist placed to the left, standing on the rocky banks of the river, and


two angels holding Christs clothes to the right. In the upper part of the panel the
heavens open, and we catch a glimpse of the half-length figure of God the Father
blessing.[26] A motif of archaizing character that gradually disappeared in the
fourteenth century is that of John imposing his hand on Christ instead of pouring
water over his head.[27]
With regard to the Madonna and Child, a motif for which the painters of Rimini had
a special predilection was the cloth of honor supported by angels behind the
Virgins throne [fig. 8]. On the other hand, the motif of the child grasping his
mothers veilan allusion to the Passion[28]is more widespread in fourteenth-
century painting in Tuscany than in Emilia Romagna. The miniature lions on the
throne armrests allude to the throne of Solomon, while the enormous locust in the
hand of the child reminds us of the dietlocusts and wild honeyon which the
Baptist lived during his years in the wilderness.[29]
The precision in representing the insect[30] attests to the artists acute interest in
various aspects and curiosities of daily life. Here as elsewhere in his paintings, he
consciously participated in the more naturalistic and descriptive tendencies of
Gothic art. The pursuit of naturalistic detailin costume, in attributes, in setting
distinguished an innovative current in Italian painting in the second quarter of the
fourteenth century that sought to disassociate itself from the solemn and
classicizing manner of previous decades. Additional proof of this interest are the
elaborate architectural settings of many of the episodes of the Baptists legend (as
in the temple porch in Birth of the Baptist, with its cantilevered upper floor and
Gothic double-lancet windows), the attention devoted to characterizing the
protagonists states of mind, and, not least, the costumes worn, in particular in
Feast of Herod. Peculiarities of fashion in turn provide useful clues for pinpointing
the date of the altarpiece.[31] Other features of Madonna and Child, such as the
use of chrysography and the sharp proportional difference between the figures of
Mary and the angels, might at first sight appear retrograde. More careful
observation shows that the artist used gilded highlights not in the Byzantine
manner but to accentuate the volumetric relief of the forms below the precious
garments and to enliven the sweeping folds of the drapery. The motif of angels
peering out from behind the cloth of honor as if playing hide-and-seek is itself an
indication of the merry, make-believe spirit that animates the gothicizing artistic
current of the time.
Several clues confirm the attribution of our panels to Giovanni Baronzio. First, there
are clear analogies between the fragments of the altarpiece of Saint John and


other works generally attributed to the artist, such as the solemn mantle-clad men
to the right of our Birth of the Baptist and those of Christ before Pilate now in the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin, or the peculiar, splayed-leg pose of the Baptist in the
baptism scene that recurs in the figure of Adam in Descent of Christ into Limbo,
also in the Gemldegalerie.[32] The facial features also coincide: characterized by
drooping heads, squared forms, high foreheads, eyes reduced to narrow slits,
flattened noses, powerful chins, rounded jaws, they are found in all the works of
the artist. The incised decoration of the gold ground is also an important clue for
associating our panels with Giovanni Baronzio.[33]
As for the date of our dismantled altarpiece, it may be placed in or shortly before
the mid-fourth decade of the fourteenth century, on the basis of comparisons with
the artists only signed and dated work.[34] A motif like the swirling and zigzagging
folds of the mantle as it falls to the ground is rendered in a very similar way both in
the Madonna in Washington and in the altarpiece in Urbino. The latter, however, is
likely to be the later of the two, as a number of features make clear. Evidence of its
modernity includes the wider dcollet of Marys dress than that of the Virgin in
Washington, and the fact that her head is covered with a transparent veil, enabling
us to glimpse her elaborate and modish hairstyle with two braids raised and
knotted together over the crown of her head. Abandoning the usual position of
Christ in the Virgins lap, Giovanni Baronzio represents him instead standing on the
ground and gesturing insistently to be restored to his mothers arms. No such
liberties are found in the Gallery Madonna, which is characterized by softer
modeling and by an absence of the delicate and incisive contours that delineate
the forms of the faces and hands in the Urbino Madonna and Child. In observing
the stories of the Baptist, moreover, we cannot fail to notice the absence of the stiff
and formal reserve of the conduct that distinguishes the narrative scenes of the
altarpiece dated 1345: the protagonists of the Nativity and of the Baptism in the
Gallery are squatter in proportions but more natural and spontaneous in the way
they express themselves with gestures. The attitude of the man who observes
Zacharias writing the name of John on a sheet of paper reveals all too clearly the
disapproval of those present in the choice of this name, underlined by the narrative
in Lukes Gospel.[35] The energetic pose of the Baptist, bending forward as far as
he can to place his hand on the head of Jesus, immersed in the waters of Jordan,
is a powerful expression of his zeal and the profound consciousness he has of his
role.


The period that elapsed between the execution of the dismantled altarpiece of the
Baptist and the panel now in Urbino cannot have been brief, but its duration is
difficult to gauge given the lack of other securely datable works by Baronzio. A
probable terminus post quem could be offered by the dossal now divided between
the Galleria Nazionale dArte Antica di Palazzo Barberini in Rome and the
collection of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Rimini; according to a plausible
recent proposal, the dossal must have been commissioned for the high altar of the
Franciscan church of Villa Verucchio and must date to c. 1330.[36] The essential
immobility of the individual compositions contained in this altarpiece, the
rudimentary architectural backdrops, and the strongly simplified drawing that still
recalls models of Pietro da Rimini suggest that this is an early work of Giovanni
Baronzio. The putative Villa Verucchio dossal, which Cesare Brandi compared with
the stories of the Baptist,[37] resembles the fragments being discussed here,
especially in its delicate modeling, sharp chiaroscuro, and facial characteristics, but
it can be assumed to belong to an earlier creative phase in the career of Giovanni
Baronzio. The most probable date for the panels in the Gallery therefore would
seem to be c. 1335.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a dispersed altarpiece by Giovanni

Baronzio as proposed by Keith Christiansen (color images
are NGA objects): a. Annunciation of the Birth of the
Baptist (fig. 2); b. The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of
Saint John the Baptist; c. Young Baptist Led by an Angel
into the Wilderness (fig. 3); d. The Baptist Interrogated by
the Pharisees (fig. 4); e. Madonna and Child with Five
Angels; f. The Baptism of Christ; g. The Baptist Sends His
Disciples to Christ (fig. 5); h. Feast of Herod (fig. 6); i. The
Baptist's Descent into Limbo (fig. 7)
fig. 2 Giovanni Baronzio, Annunciation of the Birth of the

Baptist, c. 1335, tempera on panel, now lost, formerly in
the Street collection, Bath


fig. 3 Giovanni Baronzio, Young Baptist Led by an Angel

into the Wilderness, c. 1335, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca
Vaticana. Image: Scala/Art Resource, NY
fig. 4 Giovanni Baronzio, The Baptist Interrogated by the

Pharisees, c. 1335, wood transferred to Masonite, Seattle
Art Museum, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Image: Eduardo
Calderon


fig. 6 Giovanni Baronzio, Feast of Herod, c. 1335, tempera

on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Robert Lehman Collection
fig. 5 Giovanni Baronzio, The Baptist Sends His Disciples

to Christ, c. 1335, tempera on panel, now lost, formerly in


fig. 8 Detail of upper section, Giovanni Baronzio,

Madonna and Child with Five Angels, c. 1335, tempera on
Kress Collection
fig. 7 Giovanni Baronzio, The Baptist's Descent into

Limbo, c. 1335, tempera on panel, now lost, formerly in the
Charles Loeser collection, Florence


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a dispersed altarpiece by Giovanni Baronzio as proposed by Keith Christiansen (1982)

a. Annunciation of the Birth of the Baptist (Entry fig. 2)
b. The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist
c. Young Baptist Led by an Angel into the Wilderness (Entry fig. 3)
d. The Baptist Interrogated by the Pharisees (Entry fig. 4)
e. Madonna and Child with Five Angels
f. The Baptism of Christ
g. The Baptist Sends His Disciples to Christ (Entry fig. 5)
h. Feast of Herod (Entry fig. 6)
i. The Baptists Descent into Limbo (Entry fig. 7)
NOTES
[1] In the infrequent cases in which their original destination is known,

horizontal dossals come from churches and altars dedicated to the saint
whose legend they illustrate; cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque
Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 140144; Mikls
Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1,
vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270 (Florence 1993), 300,
538, 632. Fourteenth-century Riminese painters also frequently painted


works for Marchigian churches.
[2] Keith Christiansen, FourteenthCentury Italian Altarpieces, Bulletin of the

[3] Cf. The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist,
Provenance note 1. The panels measurements given in Art Treasures of the
West Country (Bristol, 1937) are 19 x 15 in. (48.2 x 38.1 cm).
[4] Cf. Provenance note 1, and Francesco Rossi, Catalogo della Pinacoteca
Vaticana, vol. 3 Il Trecento: Umbria, Marche, Italia del Nord (Vatican City,
1994), 113118. The panel measures 47.8 x 40.5 cm.
[5] Venturi linked the panel, with a provenance from the Sterbini collection (cf.
Provenance note 1) and then on the art market (Galleria Sangiorgi) in Rome,
with the series of episodes from the life of the Baptist. See Lionello Venturi,
Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 92; Lionello Venturi, Italian
Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott,
3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 113. Acquired for the Samuel H.
Kress Collection in 1936, it has been in the Seattle Art Museum (It 37/M 394
L1.1) since 1952. It measures 23.8 x 18.4 cm.
Provenance note 1. Art Treasures of the West Country (Bristol, 1937) gives its
measurements as 17 x 15 in (43.2 x 40.6 cm).
[7] Purchased by Philip Lehman from the Galerie Trotti in Paris in 1921, the
panel was donated by Robert Lehman to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York in 1975 (no. 1975.1.103). See John Pope-Hennessy and Laurence
B. Kanter, The Robert Lehman Collection, vol. 1, Italian Paintings (New York,
1987), 8688. The painting had already been introduced to the art historical
literature by Osvald Sirn, who had seen it on the art market in Paris; Osvald
Sirn, Giuliano, Pietro and Giovanni da Rimini, The Burlington Magazine
for Connoisseurs 29 (1916): 320. Pope-Hennessy and Kanter identified the
coat of arms on the reverse of the panel as that of the Agnelli dei Malerbi
family and suggested that the panel may have been preserved in the
Agnelli collection in Rome or in the Casa Malerbi at Lugo (Ravenna). A
possible connection between the presumed provenance from Lugo
(Ravenna) and the life and interests of Luigi Malerbi (17761843), canonico,
musician, and collector from that little town, has also been surmised. See
Anna Tambini, in Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e
Marche, ed. Daniele Benati (Milan, 1995), 264, but without convincing
evidence.
[8] This panel formed part of the Sterbini collection in 1906 (cf. Provenance
note 1) but was probably acquired shortly after by Charles Loeser
(18651928) for his Florentine collection. In 1926, however, the painting was
auctioned in Florence; it was attributed in the sale catalog to the scuola
dellOrcagna. See Impresa Vendita Cesare Galardelli: Catalogo della


Vendita di Arte Antica di propriet del Sig. L. M. Banti, Florence, April, 1416,
1926, lot 220. Wilhelm Suida stated that the panel had been the property of
Mrs. R. Calnan. Wilhelm Suida, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress
Collection acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 19451951
(Washington, DC, 1951), 36. The paintings measurements are unknown.
[9] Cf. Provenance note 1.
[10] Adolfo Venturi, La Galleria Sterbini in Roma: Saggio illustrativo (Rome,

1906), 4853.
[11] Osvald Sirn, Giuliano, Pietro and Giovanni da Rimini, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 29 (1916): 320.
[12] The panel (no. 6), which Richard Offner assigned to the Florentine following
of the St. Cecilia Master, has also been attributed to Buffalmacco and, by
the present writer, to Lippo di Benivieni. In any case the more recent
literature generally has recognized it as the work of a Florentine artist. See
Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia
Master and His Circle, new ed. (Florence, 1986), 178180. It has further been
shown that it used to belong to the church of Santa Maria degli Ughi in
Florence.
[13] Osvald Sirn and Maurice Brockwell repeated the view that Saint John the
Baptist Enthroned now in Oxford belonged with the dispersed series of
stories of the same saint, and Robert Lehman and L. Venturi accepted this
premise. See Osvald Sirn and Maurice W. Brockwell, Catalogue of a Loan
Exhibition of Italian Primitives (New York, 1917), 181; Robert Lehman, The
Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 74;
Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 94;
Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden
Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 116,
repro. Raimond van Marle, Contributo allo studio della scuola pittorica del
Trecento a Rimini, Rassegna Municipale Rimini 4 (1935): 815, expressed
uncertainty about the proposal, which has since been abandoned by
everyone.
[14] It is worth recalling that Robert Lehman (1928), commenting on Decollation

of the Baptist and Presentation of His Head, cited Richard Offners verbal
opinion, evidently pronounced some years previously, in favor of Giovanni
Baronzios authorship. Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New
York (Paris, 1928), no. 74. But by 1924 Offner had changed his mind. He then
argued that the Lehman panel and the other two stories of the Baptist
formerly in the Pratt collection had been painted around 1340 by the
anonymous master of the Kahn Madonna. Richard Offner, A Remarkable
Exhibition of Italian Paintings, The Arts 5 (1924): 245.
[15] Raimond Van Marle gathered under this loose definition various artists


works, some of which have more recently been recognized as the work of
Giovanni Baronzio. Apart from the two stories of the Baptist mentioned in
the text, they include the stories of Christ now in the Galleria Nazionale
dArte Antica di Palazzo Barberini in Rome, the six small panels with stories
of Christ in the Accademia in Venice, and Adoration of the Magi now in the
Courtauld Institute Art Gallery in London. See Raimond van Marle, The
Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 4, The Local Schools of
North Italy of the 14th Century(The Hague, 1924), 288.
[16] Robert Lehman and following him some other authors cited an otherwise
unspecified story of the Baptist in the Ryerson collection in Chicago that
allegedly formed part of the same series. Robert Lehman, The Philip
Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 74. But the fact that this
painting was not among those that entered the Art Institute of Chicago from
the Ryerson collection suggests the claim is based on a misunderstanding.
[17] Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 92, 94; Lionello
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 113, 116. Among
the works attributed to Giovanni Baronzio, Bernard Berenson listed the
Kahn Madonna, the Lehman Feast of Herod, the Pratt Birth of the Baptist,
and the Angel Leading the Baptist into the Wilderness in the Pinacoteca
Vaticana. To these panels he later added the Baptism of Christ in the Kress
collection. See Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List
of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford,
1932), 4345; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo
dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio
Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 3739.
[18] Guida della Pinacoteca Vaticana, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie (Vatican City,
1933), 54; An Exhibition of Italian Paintings Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of
New York to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences (1935), 32; Alfred M.
Frankfurter, Fine Italian Paintings from Kress Exhibition, Art News 32
(1934): 89; Alfred M. Frankfurter, Medieval Style in Painting, Art News 38
(1940): 14; Alfred M. Frankfurter, On the Italian Renaissance Painters in the
National Gallery, Art News 40 (1941): 17; Alfred M. Frankfurter, How Modern
the Renaissance, Art News 45 (1947): 17; Arts of the Middle Ages: A Loan
Exhibition (Boston, 1940), 20; National Gallery of Art, Book of
Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1941), 60, 238; National Gallery of
Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC,
1941), 13; National Gallery of Art,Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress
Collection (Washington, DC, 1945), 9, 10; The New Kress Gift to the National
Gallery, Washington, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86,
no. 504 (1945): 55; Robert Langton Douglas, Recent Additions to the Kress
Collection, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 (1946): 84; Italian
Paintings (New York, 1947), no. 37; Herbert Friedmann, The Iconography of


the Madonna and Child by Giovanni Baronzio in the Kress Collection,

National Gallery, Washington, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 345352;
Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 730731 (as
maniera di Baronzio); Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia
della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951), 1:209; Edward Fowles, Memories
of Duveen Brothers (London, 1976), 124125.
[19] See Cesare Brandi, Conclusioni su alcuni discussi problemi della pittura
riminese del Trecento, Critica darte 1 (1936): 236237; Wilhelm
Suida, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 19451951 (Washington, DC, 1951),
36; Exposition de la Collection Lehman de New York (Paris, 1957), 3132;
John Walker,National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1963), 297;
DC, 1985), 254255; Carlo Volpe, La pittura riminese del Trecento (Milan,
1965), 3839; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
1979), 1:316318; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei
des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 64; Charles Seymour, Early Italian
Paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven and London, 1970),
108; Hanna Kiel, Review of Antologia di dipinti di cinque secoli, Circolo
delle Stampe, Palazzo Serbelloni,Pantheon 29 (1971): 345; Burton B.
Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian
Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 130;
George Szab, The Robert Lehman Collection: A Guide (New York, 1975),
25; George Kaftal and Fabio Bisogni, Saints in Italian Art,
vol. 3, Iconography of the Saints in the Painting of North East Italy (Florence,
1978), 512, 514, 520; Fulvio Zuliani, Tommaso da Modena, in Tomaso da
Modena: Catalogo, ed. Luigi Menegazzi (Treviso, 1979), 105 n. 9; Keith
Christiansen, Fourteenth-Century Italian Altarpieces, Bulletin of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art 40 (1982): 4245; Antonio Corbara, Il ciclo
francescano di Francesco da Rimini, Romagna arte e storia 4, no. 12 (1984):
59 (Maestro del Battista); Andrea Bacchi, Maestro della Vita del Battista,
in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2
vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:611; Daniele Benati, Pittura del Trecento in Emilia
Romagna, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:208; John Pope-Hennessy and
Laurence B. Kanter, The Robert Lehman Collection, vol. 1, Italian
Paintings (New York, 1987), 86; Pier Giorgio Pasini, La pittura riminese del
Trecento (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1990), 124, 125, 127; Fabrizio Mancinelli,
I dipinti della Pinacoteca dallXI al XV secolo, in Pinacoteca Vaticana:


Nella pittura lespressione del messaggio divino nella luce la radice della
creazione pittorica, ed. Umberto Baldini (Milan, 1992), 162163; Francesco
Rossi, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 3, Il Trecento: Umbria,
Marche, Italia del Nord (Vatican City, 1994), 113118; Katharine
Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists
Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue (New York, 1995), 110; Mojmir
Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 152, 164; Michel Laclotte and Esther
63.
[20] See Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie

Berlin, Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 1518;
Mikls Boskovits, Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche ai
primi del 300, Arte cristiana 81 (1993): 168169; Daniele Benati, Baronzio,
Giovanni, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1992), 3:121;
Daniele Benati, Disegno del Trecento riminese, in Il Trecento riminese:
Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed. Daniele Benati (Milan, 1995),
47, 55, 56 n. 3; Daniele Benati, Il Dossale Corvisieri nel percorso di
Giovanni Baronzio, LArco 4(2006): 27; Daniele Benati, Giovanni Baronzio
nella pittura riminese del Trecento, in Giovanni Baronzio e la pittura a
Rimini nel Trecento, ed. Daniele Ferrara (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2008), 31;
Christian Hornig, Baronzio Giovanni, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die
(Munich, 1993), 7:135; Alessandro Marchi, La pittura della prima met del
Trecento nelle Marche: Presenze riminesi, pittori stanieri e pittori locali,
in Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed.
Daniele Benati (Milan, 1995), 112123; Anna Tambini, In margine alla pittura
riminese del Trecento,Studi romagnoli 47 (1996): 466 (attribuiti a Giovanni
Baronzio); Giovanna Ragionieri, Baronzio, Giovanni, in La pittura in
1:53.
[21] Altarpieces of this type and of similar size originally must have included
Giovanni da Riminis Madonna and Child with Saints in the Museo Correr in
Venice (apparently a triptych but, as the horizontal grain of the wood shows,
originally a type of dossal enriched with gables); Pietro da Riminis
fragmentary panel Christ, the Madonna, and Saints now in the Denver Art
Museum; Francesco da Riminis similar altarpiece now dismantled and
dispersed among the Cini Collection in Venice and museums in Lausanne
and Barcelona; Giovanni Baronzios stories of Christ divided between the
Galleria Nazionale dArte Antica di Palazzo Barberini in Rome and the
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Rimini; and Giovanni Baronzios still intact
altarpieces of this type in the Galleria Nazionale in Urbino and in the church
of San Francesco at Mercatello. We may also recall the early fourteenth-


century dossal of an anonymous master in the Museo Civico at Reggio

Emilia, cf. Carlo Volpe, La pittura riminese del Trecento (Milan, 1965), figs.
64, 78, 159163, 208, 210, 198, 206, 315, and some Bolognese examples,
such as the dossals by the Pseudo Jacopino in the Pinacoteca Nazionale,
for which see Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela
Scaglietti Kelescian, eds., Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo
generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia (Venice, 2004), 7883.
In rare cases, horizontal dossals even larger in size than the
abovementioned were produced, such as that by Giuliano da Rimini in the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (164 300 cm).
[22] See Vronique Rouchon Mouilleron, Le pitture duecentesche del Battistero

di Parma: Iconografia e organizzazione spaziale, in Battistero di Parma, vol.
2, La decorazione pittorica (Milan, 1993), 34116.
[23] On the episode of the Child Saint John the Baptist Praying, see Isle
Falk, Studien zu Andrea Pisano (PhD diss., University of Zurich, 1940), 128;
Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Giovannino Battista: A Study in Renaissance
Religious Symbolism, The Art Bulletin 37 (1955): 8889 and n. 27. The rare
motif of the Baptists Descent into Limbo recurs in dossal no. 14 of the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, which was cataloged by Piero Torriti as the
work of a Maestro senesebizantino but should probably be attributed to
Gilio di Pietro. Cf. Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, vol. 1, I
dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 4445; Mikls Boskovits, Sulle
tracce di un grande pittore toscano di met Duecento, Arte cristiana 98
(2010): 241246. Based on the account in the apocryphal Gospel of
Nicodemus, this is evidently a version of the more familiar iconography of
Christs Descent into Limbo (Anastasis), in which the Baptist, easily
recognizable, often appears among the Fathers awaiting the Saviors arrival;
cf. Elisabeth Lucchesi Palli, Hllenfahrt Christi, in Lexikon der christlichen
Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols.
(Rome, 1970), 2:325.
[24] For example, Annunciation to Zacharias, formerly in the Street collection in

Bath, is very unusual in iconography. It takes place in a Romanesque church
packed with worshippers, and the priest is kneeling before the altar as if
celebrating Mass. The iconography adopted in the other former Street panel
is equally rare. Here, in the scene in which the disciples are sent by John to
interrogate Christ, instead of the miracles performed by Christ we see a
group of believers sitting on the ground and listening to the Saviors words.
Also rare is the twofold presence of Salome in Feast of Herod, now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: in one she is dancing, and in the
other she is presenting the decapitated head of the Baptist on a charger to
the banqueters.
[25] The episode of the Circumcision, if shown at all, substitutes either the scene
of the Birth of the Baptist, as in the relief on the faade of San Giovanni in


Venere at Fossacesia (Chieti), or that of the Naming of the Baptist, as in the

reliefs of the cathedral of Auxerre. See Otto Lehmann-
Brockhaus, Abruzzen und Molise: Kunst und Geschichte, Rmische
Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana (Munich, 1983), 175176; Camille
Enlart, La sculpture des portails de la cathdrale dAuxerre du XIIIe la fin
du XIVe sicle, Congres archeologique de France 74 (1907): pl. between
602 and 603.
[26] On the iconography of the Baptism of Christ, see Gabriel Millet, Recherches
sur liconographie de lvangile aux XIVe, XVe et XVIe sicles, daprs les
monuments de Mistra, de la Macdoine et du Mont-Athos, Bibliothque des
coles franaises dAthnes et de Rome (Paris, 1916), 170215; Gertrud
Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols. (Gtersloh, 19661990),
1:137152.
[27] On placing the hand on the person being baptized, cf. U. Miekle, Taufe,
Taufszenen, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, eds. Engelbert
Kirschbaum and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, 1972), 2:244247; and,
more generally, Lucien De Bruyne, Limposition des mains dans lart
chrtien ancien, Rivista darcheologia cristiana 20 (1943): 113278. Baptism
by infusionthat is, by the pouring of water over the neophytes headis
usually represented from the fourteenth century onward.
[28] See Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during
the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 116117.
[29] With reference to Proverbs 30:27 (the locusts have no king, yet all of them
march in rank), Herbert Friedmann explained that in medieval thought,
locusts were sometimes considered symbols of converted pagans. See
Herbert Friedmann, The Iconography of the Madonna and Child by
Giovanni Baronzio in the Kress Collection, National Gallery,
Washington, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 345352. But in the case
of the altarpiece being discussed here, in which the Madonna and Child is
flanked by stories of the Baptist, the locust in the Christ childs hand
presumably was intended to allude, more prosaically, to the food on which
the Baptist lived in the wilderness of Judea (cf. Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6). As for the
figures of lions on the throne, in medieval theology Mary was considered
the personification of wisdom, seated on the throne of Solomon, in which (1
Kings 10:19) two lions stood beside the stays (i.e., beside the armrests). Cf.
also Gregor Martin Lechner, Sedes Sapientiae, in Marienlexikon, ed.
[30] Herbert Friedmann, The Iconography of the Madonna and Child by

Giovanni Baronzio in the Kress Collection, National Gallery, Washington,
Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 350, underlined this aspect.
[31] A very important aspect of womens dress of the period, the depth and
width of the dcollet, is exemplified by the dresses in Feast of Herod (but


also by the dress of Mary herself in the Washington Madonna). This wider
and deeper neckline reflects a fashion that spread in the 1330s; cf. Luciano
Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: A) gli affreschi della Basilica Inferiore di
Assisi,Prospettiva 10 (1977): 2131. Details such as the length of the dresses
of the courtiers portrayed in the foreground in front of Herods table, or the
length of their caps with side flaps, also reflect a phase of the development
of fourteenth-century court fashion that precedes that illustrated by
Giovanni Baronzio in the altarpiece dated 1345 in the Galleria Nazionale in
Urbino. Bellosis studies are useful in elucidating these aspects. Luciano
Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974) 4154. The details
of dress I have cited, to which others can be added, therefore suggest a
date for our panels in the 1330s.
[32] For the five fragments with stories of Christ in the Gemldegalerie in Berlin
(no. 1110), cf. Carlo Volpe, La pittura riminese del Trecento (Milan, 1965), 86
and fig. 280 (as Master of the Parry Adoration); Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe
Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 1518 and figs. 1520 (as Giovanni Baronzio).
[33] As Brigitte Klesse has shown, the ornamental motifs incised in the gold
ground in the Gallerys panels depicting stories of the Baptist recur in the
abovementioned panels in the Gemldegalerie in Berlin, in the fragments
belonging to the same series now in the Accademia in Venice (no. 26), and
in the altarpiece signed by Giovanni and dated 1345 in the Galleria
Nazionale in Urbino; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen
Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 281.
[34] For the altarpiece Madonna and Child with Angels and Saints and Stories of
Christ in Urbinos Galleria Nazionale (no. 125), cf. Carlo Volpe, La pittura
riminese del Trecento (Milan, 1965), 82; Pier Giorgio Pasini, La pittura
riminese del Trecento (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1990), 141143.
[35] The Gospel narrative (Lk 1:5963) explains that Elizabeths kinsfolk and
neighbors had suggested the boy be called Zacharias like his father and not
John, as indicated by the angel at the time of the Annunciation (Lk 1:13: and
you shall call his name John), objecting: There is none of thy kindred that
is called by this name.
[36] It is Massimo Medica who observed that the two surviving fragments are
similar in subject and iconography to those preserved in the church of San
Francesco a Villa Verucchio until the mid-nineteenth century. The same
scholar also assumed that, since this church was completed in 1324, the
altarpiece for its high altar would have been commissioned and installed not
many years later. Massimo Medica, Una proposta per la provenienza del
Dossale di Baronzio: La chiesa francescana di Villa Verucchio, LArco 4
(2006): 1316. The dating of c. 13301335 that Daniel Ferrara suggested for
the dossal is too late, in my opinion. Cf. Daniele Ferrara, ed., Giovanni


Baronzio e la pittura a Rimini nel Trecento (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2008),

108115.
[37] Cesare Brandi, ed., Mostra della pittura riminese del Trecento (Rimini, 1935),
xxiii, who considered the Madonna in the Gallery and the stories of the
Baptist as works by an anonymous Riminese master, compared them with
the stories of Christ now in the Galleria Nazionale of Palazzo Barberini,
Rome, though the latter are said to be more closely linked to the traditions
of painting in Rimini.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a panel made from a single piece of wood with horizontal grain. It
has been thinned to approximately 1 cm, and cradled. The x-radiographs show
pieces of fabric between the wood and the gesso. Areas to be gilded were
prepared with red bole. Major contours were delineated with incised lines, which
were reinforced with dark paint in the early stages of painting. The artist used gold
and silver leaf in the brocade of the figure on the right and gold leaf in the
background.[1] The gold is tooled freehand. The ornamental gold leaf border
survives in its original width along the bottom and right sides of the panel but it is
partially truncated along the other two sides.[2] The panel has suffered some worm
damage in the past. Stephen Pichetto treated the painting and applied the cradle
c. 1934, and Mario Modestini treated it again in 1955.[3] The panel was
vandalized in 1974, causing a vertical crack above the heads of the figures on the
right. The painted surface also suffered scattered losses in the figures, as did the
gold ground on the right. Local treatments were performed in these areas at that
time. Old, discolored inpainting can be noted in the rocks below the figure of the
Baptist, in the saints robes, and in the head of the angel to the far right. There is a
fair amount of inpainting in the figure of God at the top of the panel and in the gold
around this area. The varnish has darkened to some degree.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Silver and gold leaf were identified by the NGA scientific research
department using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (see report dated
February 16, 2000, in NGA conservation files).
[2] A photograph published by Pietro Toesca shows that much of the original


gold leaf along the bottom is missing, indicating that it has been heavily
inpainted. Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951),
732.
DC, 1979), 1:316, reported that this painting was cradled, cleaned, restored,
and varnished by Stephen Pichetto and last varnished by Mario
Modestini. The photographs reproduced by Adolfo Venturi and Pietro
Toesca show numerous losses in the painting and therefore must have
been taken prior to Pichettos treatment. Adolfo Venturi, La Galleria Sterbini
in Roma: Saggio illustrativo (Rome, 1906), 51; Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento,
Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 732.
PROVENANCE
Possibly commissioned as part of the high altarpiece of a church dedicated to Saint

John the Baptist in Emilia Romagna or in the Marche, Italy. Probably Monsignor
Gabriele Laureani [d. 1849], Rome; Guilio Sterbini [d. 1911], Rome, by 1874;[1] Pasini
collection, Rome, by 1924;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence);
purchased June 1933 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to
NGA. [1] David Farabulini (La pittura antica e moderna e la Galleria del cav. Giulio
Sterbini, Rome, 1874: 29) cites varie storie della vita del Battista in the Sterbini
collection, while Adolfo Venturi (La Galleria Sterbini in Roma, Rome, 1906), in
publishing The Baptism of Christ, then forming part of that collection, comments
that two additional Stories of the Saint, the San Giovanni che parla a due seguaci
(i.e., the Baptist Interrogated by the Pharisees) and S. Giovanni tra i Padri del
Limbo (i.e., the Baptists Descent into Limbo) also formed part of this collection.
Farabulini further explains (1874, 13) that Sterbini had acquired paintings for his
collection in Rome from Monsignor Gabriele Laureani, prefect of the Vatican
Apostolic Library, who was engaged in acquiring paintings by maestri primitivi for
the Vaticans collections. Since the works later gathered in the Pinacoteca Vaticana
also include a panel from this series, namely the Young Baptist Being Led into the
Wilderness by an Angel (no. 40185), there are good grounds for assuming that it
had arrived in Rome together with the fragments acquired by Sterbini. On the
Sterbini collection see also L. Morozzi, "Da Lasinio a Sterbini. Primitivi in una
raccolta romana di secondo Ottocento," AEIMNETO. Miscellanea di studi per
Mauro Cristofani, ed. by B. Adembri, II, Florence, 2006: 908-916. The supposition,
quite unfounded, that NGA 1939.1.131 actually comes from the Pinacoteca Vaticana,


no doubt derives from these circumstances (see Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from
the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools XIII - XV century, London, 1966: 69,
and Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington,
D.C., 1979: 1:316, citing Bernard Berensons notes on the reverse of a photograph
of the painting, in the Kress Foundation files). [2] Lionello Venturi (Pitture italiane in
America, Milan, 1931) was the last to report the paintings presence in the Pasini
collection. Federico Zeri wrote to Robert O. Parks that Pasini was the dealer who
sold the entire Sterbini collection; Parks in turn passed this information on to John
Walker (letter, Parks to Walker, 27 December 1949, in NGA curatorial files). [3] The
bill of sale for a large number of paintings, including this one, is dated 28 June
1933 (copy in NGA curatorial files).
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1932 An Exhibition of Italian Paintings, Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of New York
to Museums, Colleges, and Associations, twenty-four venues in the United
States, 1932-1935, no. 32.
1995 Il Trecento Riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, Museo

della Citt, Rimini, Italy, 1995-1996, no. 52, repro.
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1906: 48, 51 (repro.), 53.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 4(1924):288, repro. 291.
Paris, 1928: no. LXXIV, repro.
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City, 1933: 54.
1934 Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Fine Italian Paintings from Kress Exhibition." Art
News 32 (1934): 8, repro. 9.
1935 An Exhibition of Italian Paintings Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of New
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Milan, 1992: 162-163.
1993 Boskovits, Mikls. "Per la storia della pittura tra la Romagna e le Marche
ai primi del 300." Arte cristiana 81 (1993): 168-169.
1994 Rossi, Francesco. Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, 3. Il Trecento:
Umbria, Marche, Italia del Nord. Vatican City, 1994: 113-118, fig. 156.
1995 Baetjer, Katharine. European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art by Artists Born before 1865. A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995:
110.
1995 Benati, Daniele, ed. Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra
Romagna e Marche. Exh. cat. Museo della citta, Rimini. Milan, 1995: 47,
55, 246, 248, 260, 264, 266, repro. 268-269.
1996 Tambini, Anna. "In margine alla pittura riminese del Trecento." Studi
romagnoli 47 (1996): 466.
2002 Ragionieri, Giovanna. "Baronzio, Giovanni." In La pittura in Europa. Il
Dizionario dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan, 2002: 1:53.
2006 Benati, Daniele. "Il Dossale Corvisieri nel percorso di Giovanni
Baronzio." LArco 4 (2006): 27.
2006 Morozzi, Luisa. "Da Lasinio a Sterbini: primitivi in una raccolta romana di
secondo Ottocento." In AEIMNETO. Miscellanea di studi per Mauro
Cristofani. 2 vols. Edited by Benedetta Adembri. Florence, 2006: 2:912,
916 n. 50.
2008 Ferrara, Daniele, ed. Giovanni Baronzio e la pittura a Rimini nel
Trecento. Exh. cat. Galleria Nazionale dArte Antica, Rome, Cinisello
Balsamo (Milan), 2008: 31, 106.


Giovanni Baronzio
The Birth, Naming, and

Circumcision of Saint John
the Baptist
c. 1335
tempera on panel
overall: 48.8 40.7 cm (19 3/16 16 in.)
framed: 55.7 x 48.1 x 5.1 cm (21 15/16 x 18 15/16 x 2 in.)
Inscription: on the sheet on which Zacharias is writing: NOMEN / E[S]T IO /
HA[NN]ES (The name is John)
ENTRY
This panel, along with its two companions The Baptism of Christ and Madonna and
Child with Five Angels, are fragments of a dismantled altarpiece whose original
provenance is unknown but which was presumably commissioned for the high altar
of a church dedicated to the Baptist in Emilia Romagna or, perhaps, in the
Marche.[1] Keith Christiansen (1982)[2] proposed a reconstruction of the altar [fig.
1] (see also Reconstruction) as follows: four stories of the Baptist would have
accompanied, on either side, the central Madonna and Child with Five Angels also
in the National Gallery of Art; to the upper left, Annunciation of the Birth of the
Baptist [fig. 2] formerly in the Street collection in Bath,[3] flanked by Birth, Naming,
and Circumcision of the Baptist now in the Gallery. The lower register on the same
side would have consisted of Young Baptist Led by an Angel into the Wilderness
[fig. 3], now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana,[4] and The Baptist Interrogated by the
Pharisees [fig. 4], of which only a fragment survives, in the Seattle Art Museum.[5]
The upper register on the right side would have consisted of The Baptism of Christ
in the Gallery and The Baptist Sends His Disciples to Christ [fig. 5], formerly in the
Street collection in Bath.[6] Two more panels formed the lower register on the
same side: Feast of Herod [fig. 6], now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Robert
Lehman Collection) in New York,[7] flanked by The Baptists Descent into Limbo
The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist 530

[fig. 7], formerly in the collection of Charles Loeser in Florence, its whereabouts
now unknown.[8] A possible argument against Christiansens reconstruction, as
Laurence Kanter has informed me (in correspondence), is the fact that the vertically
grained wood of the central Madonna (see Madonna and Child with Five Angels)
seems to exclude its common origin with the panels representing the stories of the
Baptist, which are painted on panels with horizontal grain. Kanter considers the
possibility of two different altarpieces or one double-sided altarpiece. These
proposals are interesting, but all the fragments share a common author, their
dimensions are comparable, and similarity of pictorial conduct makes the
hypothesis of a single-sided panel more likely after all. Complete disappearance
(except for the Madonna) of the paintings on the back of a double-sided altarpiece
would also seem rather unlikely. And for an altarpiece as large as two meters or
more, instead of a single wooden support, the use of three panels was preferred.
On the whole, Christiansens hypothesis is likely to be correct.
Richard Offner (1924), who recognized in Madonna and Child with Five Angels the
work of an anonymous painter from the Romagna, to whom he attributed the
stories of the Baptist.[14] Raimond van Marle (1924) also placed the attribution to
Giovanni Baronzio in doubt. He preferred to classify The Baptism of Christ and its


iconography.[24] As regards the panels in the Gallery (as seen in this panel), it is
unusual for the episode of the Washing of the Infant Saint John, often placed in the
foreground with an intentional allusion to the theme of baptism, to be dispensed
with, as it is here; it is replaced instead by the scene in the background, more
homely than symbolic in tone, of two handmaids wrapping the newborn child in
swaddling cloths. The Naming of the Baptist, which often represents a self-
sufficient scene, is here inserted in the scene of the Birth, and indeed placed in the
foreground and combined to the far right with the episode of the Circumcision of
the recalcitrant child.[25] On the other hand, in The Baptism of Christ, the painter

remains faithful to the tradition of representing Christ submerged up to his hips in

the water of the Jordan, the Baptist placed to the left, standing on the rocky banks
of the river, and two angels holding Christs clothes to the right. In the upper part of
the panel the heavens open, and we catch a glimpse of the half-length figure of
God the Father blessing.[26] A motif of archaizing character that gradually
disappeared in the fourteenth century is that of John imposing his hand on Christ
instead of pouring water over his head.[27]
mothers veilan allusion to the Passion [28]is more widespread in fourteenth-
The precision in representing the insect [30] attests to the artists acute interest in
Gothic art. The pursuit of naturalistic detailin costume, in attributes, in
settingdistinguished an innovative current in Italian painting in the second
quarter of the fourteenth century that sought to disassociate itself from the solemn
and classicizing manner of previous decades. Additional proof of this interest are
the elaborate architectural settings of many of the episodes of the Baptists legend
(as in the temple porch in Birth of the Baptist, with its cantilevered upper floor and
the date of the altarpiece.[31] Other features of the Madonna and Child, such as
the use of chrysography and the sharp proportional difference between the figures
of Mary and the angels, might at first sight appear retrograde. More careful


role.
seem to be c. 1335.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES





Calderon





Kress Collection


RECONSTRUCTION

NOTES



[3] Cf. Provenance note 1. The panels measurements given in Art Treasures of
the West Country (Bristol, 1937) are 19 x 15 in. (48.2 x 38.1 cm).
[4] Cf. The Baptism of Christ, Provenance note 1, and Francesco Rossi,
Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 3 Il Trecento: Umbria, Marche,
Italia del Nord (Vatican City, 1994), 113118. The panel measures 47.8 x 40.5
cm.
The Baptism of Christ, Provenance note 1) and then on the art market
(Galleria Sangiorgi) in Rome, with the series of episodes from the life of the
Baptist. See Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 92;
Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 113.
Acquired for the Samuel H. Kress Collection in 1936, it has been in the
Seattle Art Museum (It 37/M 394 L1.1) since 1952. It measures 23.8 x 18.4 cm.
[6] Cf. Provenance note 1. Art Treasures of the West Country (Bristol, 1937)
gives its measurements as 17 x 15 in (43.2 x 40.6 cm).
evidence.
[8] This panel formed part of the Sterbini collection in 1906 (cf. The Baptism of
Christ, Provenance note 1) but was probably acquired shortly after by
Charles Loeser (18651928) for his Florentine collection. In 1926, however,
the painting was auctioned in Florence; it was attributed in the sale catalog
to the scuola dellOrcagna. See Impresa Vendita Cesare Galardelli:
Catalogo della Vendita di Arte Antica di propriet del Sig. L. M. Banti,

Florence, April, 1416, 1926, lot 220. Wilhelm Suida stated that the panel
had been the property of Mrs. R. Calnan. Wilhelm Suida, Paintings and
Sculpture from the Kress Collection acquired by the Samuel H. Kress
Foundation 19451951 (Washington, DC, 1951), 36. The paintings
measurements are unknown.
[9] Cf. The Baptism of Christ, Provenance note 1.

1906), 4853.
Florence.
Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 74;
Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 94;
Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 116,
repro. Raimond van Marle, Contributo allo studio della scuola pittorica del
Trecento a Rimini, Rassegna Municipale Rimini 4 (1935): 815, expressed
uncertainty about the proposal, which has since been abandoned by
everyone.


North Italy of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 288.
Exhibition (Boston, 1940), 20; National Gallery of Art, Book of
Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC,
1941), 13; National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress
Collection (Washington, DC, 1945), 9, 10; The New Kress Gift to the National
Gallery, Washington, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86,
no. 504 (1945): 55; Robert Langton Douglas, Recent Additions to the Kress
Collection, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 (1946): 84; Italian
Paintings (New York, 1947), no. 37; Herbert Friedmann, The Iconography of

the Madonna and Child by Giovanni Baronzio in the Kress Collection,

National Gallery, Washington, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 345352;
Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 730731 (as
riminese del Trecento, Critica darte 1 (1936): 236237; Wilhelm
Suida, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 19451951 (Washington, DC, 1951),
36; Exposition de la Collection Lehman de New York (Paris, 1957), 3132;
John Walker,National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1963), 297;
delle Stampe, Palazzo Serbelloni,Pantheon 29 (1971): 345; Burton B.
25; George Kaftal and Fabio Bisogni, Saints in Italian Art,
vol. 3, Iconography of the Saints in the Painting of North East Italy (Florence,
1978), 512, 514, 520; Fulvio Zuliani, Tommaso da Modena, in Tomaso da
Laurence B. Kanter, The Robert Lehman Collection, vol. 1, Italian
Paintings (New York, 1987), 86; Pier Giorgio Pasini, La pittura riminese del
Trecento (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1990), 124, 125, 127; Fabrizio Mancinelli,
I dipinti della Pinacoteca dallXI al XV secolo, in Pinacoteca Vaticana:

Nella pittura lespressione del messaggio divino nella luce la radice della
creazione pittorica, ed. Umberto Baldini (Milan, 1992), 162163; Francesco
Rossi, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 3, Il Trecento: Umbria,
Marche, Italia del Nord (Vatican City, 1994), 113118; Katharine
Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists
Born before 1865: A Summary Catalogue (New York, 1995), 110; Mojmir
Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 152, 164; Michel Laclotte and Esther
63.

Trecento nelle Marche: Presenze riminesi, pittori stanieri e pittori locali,
in Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed.
Daniele Benati (Milan, 1995), 112123; Anna Tambini, In margine alla pittura
riminese del Trecento,Studi romagnoli 47 (1996): 466 (attribuiti a Giovanni
1:53.



[23] On the episode of the Child Saint John the Baptist Praying, see Isle
Falk, Studien zu Andrea Pisano (PhD diss., University of Zurich, 1940), 128;
(Rome, 1970), 2:325.

the banqueters.


reliefs of the cathedral of Auxerre. See Otto Lehmann-
Brockhaus, Abruzzen und Molise: Kunst und Geschichte, Rmische
Forschungen der Bibliotheca Hertziana (Munich, 1983), 175176; Camille
Enlart, La sculpture des portails de la cathdrale dAuxerre du XIIIe la fin
du XIVe sicle, Congres archeologique de France 74 (1907): pl. between
602 and 603.
1:137152.
Giovanni Baronzio in the Kress Collection, National Gallery,
Washington, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 345352. But in the case
of the altarpiece being discussed here, in which the Madonna and Child is
flanked by stories of the Baptist, the locust in the Christ childs hand
presumably was intended to allude, more prosaically, to the food on which
the Baptist lived in the wilderness of Judea (cf. Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6). As for the
figures of lions on the throne, in medieval theology Mary was considered
the personification of wisdom, seated on the throne of Solomon, in which (1


Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: A) gli affreschi della Basilica Inferiore di
Assisi,Prospettiva 10 (1977): 2131. Details such as the length of the dresses
of the courtiers portrayed in the foreground in front of Herods table, or the
length of their caps with side flaps, also reflect a phase of the development
of fourteenth-century court fashion that precedes that illustrated by
Giovanni Baronzio in the altarpiece dated 1345 in the Galleria Nazionale in
Urbino. Bellosis studies are useful in elucidating these aspects. Luciano
Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974) 4154. The details
of dress I have cited, to which others can be added, therefore suggest a
date for our panels in the 1330s.


108115.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a single piece of horizontally grained wood that has been thinned to
approximately 2 cm and cradled. The x-radiographs show that pieces of fabric
were applied to the panel before it was covered with gesso. The areas to be gilded
were prepared with red bole. Lines marking major contours in the figures and
architecture were inscribed and then reinforced with dark paint in the early stages
of painting. Gold and silver leaf were identified in several decorative details on the
architecture and in the brocade cloth behind the bed, but only gold leaf was found
in the background.[1]
The panel was cut from an altarpiece along the ornamental gold leaf border
separating it from the other scenes; at the left edge, the ornamental border is
truncated. The panel has suffered some worm damage in the past. The painted
surface is fairly well preserved, but inpainting along several old scratches has
discolored, and there is a fair amount of inpainting in the body and in the blanket
covering Saint Elizabeths bed, in the group of women behind it, and in the lower
part of the robes of the figures in the foreground. Much of the gold of the
ornamental border along the lower edge is modern, and a 1 cm-wide strip above it
is heavily inpainted. The painting was cradled, restored, and varnished by
Stephen Pichetto in 1947 and cleaned, restored, and varnished by Mario
Modestini in 1950.[2] Archival x-radiographs show an earlier cradle, indicating that
the painting had been cradled before Stephen Pichetto worked on it. The surface
film is now dull and discolored.
TECHNICAL NOTES

[1] The NGA scientific research department identified gold and silver leaf using
x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) (see report dated February 16, 2000,
in NGA conservation files).
DC, 1979), 1:318.
PROVENANCE

John the Baptist in Emilia Romagna or in the Marche, Italy. George Edmund Street
[1824-1881], London, by 1880;[1] probably by inheritance to his son, Arthur Edmund
Street [1855-1938], Bath. Harold Irving Pratt [1877-1939], New York, by 1917.[2]
(Wildenstein & Co., Inc., London, New York and Paris); sold 1947 to the Samuel H.
Kress Foundation;[3] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] The painting must have been acquired by
Street, the English Gothic Revival architect, together with two other fragments from
the same dismantled altarpiece: the Annunciation of the Baptists Birth and the
Baptist Sending His Disciples to Christ. In addition to the Gallerys painting, these
two panels were also exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1880 (nos. 231 and 234).
Both were presented anew at an exhibition in Bristol in 1937 as the property of
Streets son in Bath. But since then all trace of them has been lost: it is possible
these two were destroyed in a bombardment that struck the Street familys house
during World War II; see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting. Sec. III, vol. V, The Fourteenth Century. Bernardo Daddi and
his circle (Brattleboro, 1947), 2nd edition: Mikls Boskovits, assisted by Ada
Labriola and Martina Ingedaay Rodio, Florence, 2001: 472, citing information
provided by Federico Zeri. The date of Streets acquisition of the panels is
uncertain; perhaps it occurred between the dates of the first and second edition of
his book Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages. Notes of a Tour in the North of Italy
, London, 1855 (Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages. Notes of Tours in the North of
Italy, London, 1874). In the first edition the author shows little interest in painting,
but in the preface to the second he recalls his many visits to Italy and draws the
readers attention to the publication of James Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista
Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth
Century, London, 1864-1871. [2] Exactly when the panel passed into the collection
of Pratt, the American oil industrialist and philanthropist, is also uncertain. Reports
of this collection are found from 1909 onward (see Edward Fowles, Memories of

Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 33). Pratt lent the painting to a 1917 exhibition at
Kleinberger Galleries in New York, from whom he possibly acquired it. By the time
of the 1947 exhibition of Italian paintings at Wildenstein's in New York, it was no
longer in the Pratt collection: the catalogue lists the owner as Wildenstein. [3] The
bill of sale (copy in NGA curatorial files) from Wildenstein & Co. to the Kress
Foundation for thirteen paintings and one tapestry room is dated 30 October 1947;
payment was made in installments. The painting is described as by Giovanni
Baronzio da Rimini.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1880 Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the
British School. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, 1880, no. 228, as Birth
of St. John the Baptist by an unknown artist.
1917 A Loan Exhibition of Italian Paintings, Kleinberger Galleries, New York, 1917,
no. 70, repro., as by Giovanni Baronzio.
1947 Italian Paintings, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 1947, no. 37, repro.,
as by Giovanni Baronzio.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1916 Sirn, Osvald. "Giuliano, Pietro and Giovanni da Rimini." The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 29 (1916): 320, 321 pl. VI.
1917 Sirn, Osvald, and Maurice W. Brockwell. Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition
of Italian Primitives. Exh. cat. F. Kleinberger Galleries. New York, 1917:
180 (repro.), 181.
5 (1924): 245.
1925 McCormick, William B. "Otto H. Kahn Collection." International Studio 80
(1925): 282, 286.

44.
1:no. 116, repro.
e storia dellarte 5 (1935): 112, repro. 113.
413.
1940 Falk, Ilse. "Studien zu Andrea Pisano." Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Zurich, 1940: 128.
1941 Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 3(1947):xviii, lxix n. 34,
pl. 34.
1947 Frankfurter, Alfred M. "How Modern the Renaissance." Art News 45
(1947): repro. 17.
1947 Italian Paintings. Exh. cat. PaceWildenstein, New York, 1947: n.p., no. 37,
repro.
no. 6, repro., as Birth, Naming and Circumcision of St. John the Baptist.
1951 Toesca, Pietro. Il Trecento. Storia dellarte italiana, 2. Turin, 1951: 730-
731.
1965 Volpe, Carlo. La pittura riminese del Trecento. Milan, 1965: 38-39, 80,
fig. 182.
Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 64, 186-187, 281.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 130, 416, 647.
1975: 25.
1978 Kaftal, George, and Fabio Bisogni. Saints in Italian Art. Vol. 3 (of 4),
Iconography of the Saints in the Painting of North East Italy. Florence,
1978: 512, 514.
Essays by Andrea Bacchi and Daniele Benati. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 1:208;
2:611.
1994: 3(1992):430.
(Milan), 1990: repro. 124.
1991-2002: 3(1992):121.
Milan, 1992: 162-163.

110.
Romagna e Marche. Essays by Daniele Benati and Alessandro Marchi.
Exh. cat. Museo della citta, Rimini. Milan, 1995: 47, 55, 56 n. 3, 116, 248,
260, 264, 266, repro. 267-268.
romagnoli 47 (1996): 466.
916 n. 50.
Balsamo (Milan), 2008: repro. 29, 31, 106.

Giovanni Baronzio

Five Angels
c. 1335
tempera on panel
overall: 102.3 49.3 3.7 cm (40 1/4 19 7/16 1 7/16 in.)
framed: 138.4 x 70.1 cm (54 1/2 x 27 5/8 in.)
Inscription: on the Madonna's halo: AVE.MARIA.GRAT[IA].PLENA.D[OMI]N[U]S:
(Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; from Luke 1:28)
ENTRY
This panel, along with its two companions The Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of
Saint John the Baptist and The Baptism of Christ, are fragments of a dismantled
altarpiece whose original provenance is unknown but which was presumably
commissioned for the high altar of a church dedicated to the Baptist in Emilia
Romagna or, perhaps, in the Marche.[1] Keith Christiansen (1982)[2] proposed a
reconstruction of the altar [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction) as follows: four stories of
the Baptist would have accompanied, on either side, the central Madonna and
Child with Five Angels now in the National Gallery of Art; to the upper left,
Annunciation of the Birth of the Baptist [fig. 2] formerly in the Street collection in
Bath,[3] flanked by Birth, Naming, and Circumcision of the Baptist now in the
Gallery. The lower register on the same side would have consisted of Young
Baptist Led by an Angel into the Wilderness [fig. 3], now in the Pinacoteca
Vaticana,[4] and The Baptist Interrogated by the Pharisees [fig. 4], of which only a
fragment survives, in the Seattle Art Museum.[5] The upper register on the right
side would have consisted ofThe Baptism of Christ in the Gallery and The Baptist
Sends His Disciples to Christ [fig. 5], formerly in the Street collection in Bath.[6] Two
more panels formed the lower register on the same side: Feast of Herod [fig. 6],
now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Robert Lehman Collection) in New
Madonna and Child with Five Angels 555


York,[7] flanked by The Baptists Descent into Limbo [fig. 7], formerly in the
collection of Charles Loeser in Florence, its whereabouts now unknown.[8] A
possible argument against Christiansens reconstruction, as Laurence Kanter has
informed me (in correspondence), is the fact that the vertically grained wood of the
central Madonna seems to exclude its common origin with the panels
representing the stories of the Baptist, which are painted on panels with horizontal
grain. Kanter considers the possibility of two different altarpieces or one double-
sided altarpiece. These proposals are interesting, but all the fragments share a
common author, their dimensions are comparable, and similarity of pictorial
conduct makes the hypothesis of a single-sided panel more likely after all.
Complete disappearance (except for the Madonna) of the paintings on the back of
a double-sided altarpiece would also seem rather unlikely. And for an altarpiece as
large as two meters or more, instead of a single wooden support, the use of three
panels was preferred. On the whole, Christiansens hypothesis is likely to be
correct.
Richard Offner (1924), who recognized in the Madonna and Child the work of an
anonymous painter from the Romagna, to whom he attributed the stories of the
Baptist.[14] Raimond van Marle (1924) also placed the attribution to Giovanni
Baronzio in doubt. He preferred to classify The Baptism of Christ and its




iconography.[24] As regards the panels in the Gallery (as seen in The Birth,
Naming, and Circumcision of Saint John the Baptist), it is unusual for the episode
of the Washing of the Infant Saint John, often placed in the foreground with an
intentional allusion to the theme of baptism, to be dispensed with, as it is here; it is
replaced instead by the scene in the background, more homely than symbolic in
tone, of two handmaids wrapping the newborn child in swaddling cloths. The
Naming of the Baptist, which often represents a self-sufficient scene, is here
inserted in the scene of the Birth, and indeed placed in the foreground and


combined to the far right with the episode of the Circumcision of the recalcitrant
child.[25] On the other hand, in The Baptism of Christ, the painter remains faithful
to the tradition of representing Christ submerged up to his hips in the water of the
Jordan, the Baptist placed to the left, standing on the rocky banks of the river, and
two angels holding Christs clothes to the right. In the upper part of the panel the
heavens open, and we catch a glimpse of the half-length figure of God the Father
blessing.[26] A motif of archaizing character that gradually disappeared in the
fourteenth century is that of John imposing his hand on Christ instead of pouring
water over his head.[27]
mothers veilan allusion to the Passion [28]is more widespread in fourteenth-
The precision in representing the insect [30] attests to the artists acute interest in
Gothic art. The pursuit of naturalistic detailin costume, in attributes, in
settingdistinguished an innovative current in Italian painting in the second
quarter of the fourteenth century that sought to disassociate itself from the solemn
and classicizing manner of previous decades. Additional proof of this interest are
the elaborate architectural settings of many of the episodes of the Baptists legend
(as in the temple porch in Birth of the Baptist, with its cantilevered upper floor and
the date of the altarpiece.[31] Other features of Madonna and Child, such as the
use of chrysography and the sharp proportional difference between the figures of
Mary and the angels, might at first sight appear retrograde. More careful




role.
seem to be c. 1335.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES






Calderon







Kress Collection



RECONSTRUCTION

NOTES




Provenance note 1. The panels measurements given in Art Treasures of the
West Country (Bristol, 1937) are 19 x 15 in. (48.2 x 38.1 cm).
[4] Cf. The Baptism of Christ, Provenance note 1, and Francesco Rossi,
Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 3 Il Trecento: Umbria, Marche,
Italia del Nord (Vatican City, 1994), 113118. The panel measures 47.8 x 40.5
cm.
The Baptism of Christ, Provenance note 1) and then on the art market
(Galleria Sangiorgi) in Rome, with the series of episodes from the life of the
Baptist. See Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 92;
Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 113.
Acquired for the Samuel H. Kress Collection in 1936, it has been in the
Seattle Art Museum (It 37/M 394 L1.1) since 1952. It measures 23.8 x 18.4 cm.
Provenance note 1. Art Treasures of the West Country (Bristol, 1937) gives its
measurements as 17 x 15 in (43.2 x 40.6 cm).
evidence.
[8] This panel formed part of the Sterbini collection in 1906 (cf. The Baptism of
Christ, Provenance note 1) but was probably acquired shortly after by
Charles Loeser (18651928) for his Florentine collection. In 1926, however,
the painting was auctioned in Florence; it was attributed in the sale catalog


to the scuola dellOrcagna. See Impresa Vendita Cesare Galardelli:

Catalogo della Vendita di Arte Antica di propriet del Sig. L. M. Banti,
Florence, April, 1416, 1926, lot 220. Wilhelm Suida stated that the panel
had been the property of Mrs. R. Calnan. Wilhelm Suida, Paintings and
Sculpture from the Kress Collection acquired by the Samuel H. Kress
Foundation 19451951 (Washington, DC, 1951), 36. The paintings
measurements are unknown.
[9] Cf. The Baptism of Christ, Provenance note 1.

1906), 4853.
Florence.
Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 74; Lionello Venturi,
Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 94; Lionello Venturi, Italian
3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 116, repro. Raimond van Marle,
Contributo allo studio della scuola pittorica del Trecento a Rimini,
Rassegna Municipale Rimini 4 (1935): 815, expressed uncertainty about
the proposal, which has since been abandoned by everyone.



North Italy of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 288.
Exhibition (Boston, 1940), 20; National Gallery of Art, Book of Illustrations
(Washington, DC, 1941), 60, 238; National Gallery of Art, Preliminary
Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 13; National
Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection
(Washington, DC, 1945), 9, 10; The New Kress Gift to the National Gallery,
Washington, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86, no. 504 (1945):
55; Robert Langton Douglas, Recent Additions to the Kress Collection,
The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 (1946): 84; Italian Paintings


(New York, 1947), no. 37; Herbert Friedmann, The Iconography of the
Madonna and Child by Giovanni Baronzio in the Kress Collection, National
Gallery, Washington, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 345352; Pietro
Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 730731 (as
riminese del Trecento, Critica darte 1 (1936): 236237; Wilhelm Suida,
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 19451951 (Washington, DC, 1951), 36;
Exposition de la Collection Lehman de New York (Paris, 1957), 3132; John
Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1963), 297;
delle Stampe, Palazzo Serbelloni, Pantheon 29 (1971): 345; Burton B.
25; George Kaftal and Fabio Bisogni, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 3,
Iconography of the Saints in the Painting of North East Italy (Florence, 1978),
512, 514, 520; Fulvio Zuliani, Tommaso da Modena, in Tomaso da
Laurence B. Kanter, The Robert Lehman Collection, vol. 1, Italian Paintings
(New York, 1987), 86; Pier Giorgio Pasini, La pittura riminese del Trecento
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1990), 124, 125, 127; Fabrizio Mancinelli, I dipinti


della Pinacoteca dallXI al XV secolo, in Pinacoteca Vaticana: Nella pittura

lespressione del messaggio divino nella luce la radice della creazione
pittorica, ed. Umberto Baldini (Milan, 1992), 162163; Francesco Rossi,
Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 3, Il Trecento: Umbria, Marche,
Italia del Nord (Vatican City, 1994), 113118; Katharine Baetjer, European
Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born before 1865: A
Summary Catalogue (New York, 1995), 110; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta,
(Prague, 1998), 152, 164; Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench, Peinture
italienne: Muse du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), 63.

Trecento nelle Marche: Presenze riminesi, pittori stanieri e pittori locali, in
Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed. Daniele
Benati (Milan, 1995), 112123; Anna Tambini, In margine alla pittura riminese
del Trecento, Studi romagnoli 47 (1996): 466 (attribuiti a Giovanni
1:53.




[23] On the episode of the Child Saint John the Baptist Praying, see Isle Falk,
Studien zu Andrea Pisano (PhD diss., University of Zurich, 1940), 128;
(Rome, 1970), 2:325.

the banqueters.



reliefs of the cathedral of Auxerre. See Otto Lehmann-Brockhaus, Abruzzen
und Molise: Kunst und Geschichte, Rmische Forschungen der Bibliotheca
Hertziana (Munich, 1983), 175176; Camille Enlart, La sculpture des portails
de la cathdrale dAuxerre du XIIIe la fin du XIVe sicle, Congres
archeologique de France 74 (1907): pl. between 602 and 603.
1:137152.
Gazette des Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 345352. But in the case of the
altarpiece being discussed here, in which the Madonna and Child is flanked
by stories of the Baptist, the locust in the Christ childs hand presumably
was intended to allude, more prosaically, to the food on which the Baptist
lived in the wilderness of Judea (cf. Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6). As for the figures of lions
on the throne, in medieval theology Mary was considered the
personification of wisdom, seated on the throne of Solomon, in which (1



Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: A) gli affreschi della Basilica Inferiore di Assisi,
Prospettiva 10 (1977): 2131. Details such as the length of the dresses of the
courtiers portrayed in the foreground in front of Herods table, or the length
of their caps with side flaps, also reflect a phase of the development of
fourteenth-century court fashion that precedes that illustrated by Giovanni
Baronzio in the altarpiece dated 1345 in the Galleria Nazionale in Urbino.
Bellosis studies are useful in elucidating these aspects. Luciano Bellosi,
Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974) 4154. The details of dress
I have cited, to which others can be added, therefore suggest a date for our
panels in the 1330s.


108115.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a panel made from a single, vertically grained plank of wood, which
has been thinned to approximately 1.2 cm and cradled. It was covered with pieces
of fabric, followed by gesso, and areas to be gilded were prepared with red bole.
The artist used both gold and silver leaf in the cloth of honor, but just gold leaf in
the background.[1] The gold background is worked freehand, while the Virgins
halo is punched as well as incised. Sgraffito technique was used to reveal the gold
and silver areas in the cloth of honor, but the chrysography of the Virgins robe was
created by mordant gilding on top of the paint layer. The outlines of architecture
and major contours of the figures were incised and then reinforced or redrawn with
dark paint in the early stages of painting. Stephen Pichetto applied the present
cradle and collar and treated the painting in 19421943,[2] but old, undated x-
radiographs show an earlier, wider cradle in place. The panel shows some damage
from worm tunneling. The background is terminated along its upper edge with an
ornamental gold leaf border that is absent on the other three sides of the panel,
indicating that they have probably been cropped. There are numerous small,
scattered losses over the whole image. The largest areas of inpainting are located
in the four corners, in the forehead and halo of the Madonna, and along the bottom
edge. The chrysography of the Madonnas robes is slightly worn. The painted
surface is coated with a dull and somewhat yellowed varnish.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department identified gold and silver leaf using
x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (see report dated February 16, 2000, in
NGA conservation files). At that time, XRF analysis suggested that the
pigment in the Virgins blue robe was azurite.


DC, 1979), 1:316, reported that Stephen Pichetto cradled, cleaned, restored,
and varnished the painting.
PROVENANCE

John the Baptist in Emilia Romagna or in the Marche, Italy. Lon Ouroussoff [1877-
1933], Vienna and later, Monte Carlo and Cannes, early twentieth century;[1]
purchased February 1920 by Edward Fowles for (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London,
New York, and Paris);[2] sold to Otto H. Kahn [1867-1934], New York, by 1924; by
inheritance to his wife, Addie Wolff Kahn [d. 1949], New York; sold 18 January 1937
to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[3] sold 1942 to the Samuel
H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1943 to NGA. [1] Lon Ourousoff had been
Russian ambassador in Vienna. In the years after World War I his collection was
reported to be both in Cannes and in Monte Carlo. [2] Duveen Brothers Records,
Angeles: reel 422. [3] Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London,
1976: 124, describes Otto Kahns acquisition of the panel from Duveen Brothers
and its sale back to the company by Kahns widow. See also Duveen Brothers
Records: reel 79, box 224, folder 7; reel 328, box 473, folder 2.
EXHIBITION HISTORY

Giovanni Baronzio (no. 33 in illustrated 1926 version of catalogue).
1940 Arts of the Middle Ages: A Loan Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
1940, no. 57, as The Virgin and Child Enthroned.




BIBLIOGRAPHY
5 (1924): 240 (repro.), 245.
1925 McCormick, William B. "Otto H. Kahn Collection." International Studio 80
(1925): 280 (repro.), 286.
the Duveen Galleries, April to May 1924. New York, 1926: n.p., no. 33,
repro.
Paris, 1928: no. LXXIV, repro.
44.
1:no. 113, repro.
1935 Brandi, Cesare, ed. Mostra della pittura riminese del Trecento. Exh. cat.
Palazzo dell'Arengo, Rimini, 1935: xxii-xxiii, 212 fig. 140.
e storia dellarte 5 (1935): 112, 113 (repro.), 115, 125 n. 22.
413.
1940 Arts of the Middle Ages 1000-1400. A Loan Exhibition. Exh. cat. Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, 1940: 20.
1940 Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Medieval Style in Painting." Art News 38 (1940):
14, repro.
1941 Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 3(1947):xix, lxix n. 34,
pl. 33.
York, 1944: 17, repro., as by Giovanni Baronzio.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 10, repro., as by Giovanni
Baronzio.
1945 "The New Kress Gift to the National Gallery, Washington." The


Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86, no. 504 (1945): 55.

1946 Douglas, Robert Langton. "Recent Additions to the Kress Collection."
The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 (1946): repro. 84.
1947 Sandberg-Vaval, Evelyn. "A Madonna by Giovanni Baronzio." The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 89 (1947): 32, n. 11.
text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 36.
1951 Toesca, Pietro. Il Trecento. Storia dellarte italiana, 2. Turin, 1951: 730.
the XIV Century. New York, 1954: 75 n. 27, 109 n. 3, 122.
1959 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. Proischodenie italjanskogo vozrodenija. Vol. 2
(of 3), Iskusstvo treento. Moscow, 1959: 222, repro. 487.
1965 Volpe, Carlo. La pittura riminese del Trecento. Milan, 1965: 38-39, 80,
fig. 181.
Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 64, 213, 281.
1971 Kiel, Hanna. "Review of Antologia di dipinti di cinque secoli, Circolo delle
Stampe, Palazzo Serbelloni." Pantheon 29 (1971): 345.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 130, 646.
1975: 25.


1976 Fowles, Edward. Memories of Duveen Brothers. London, 1976: 124-125.

Essays by Andrea Bacchi and Daniele Benati. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 1;208;
2:611.
1994: 3(1992):430.
(Milan), 1990: repro. 127.
1991-2002: 3(1992):121.
1992 Hornig, Christian. "Baronzio Giovanni." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon:
Milan, 1992: 162-163.
110.


Romagna e Marche. Exh. cat. Museo della citta, Rimini. Milan, 1995: 47,
55, 56 n. 3, 264, repro. 265, 266, repro. 268.
romagnoli 47 (1996): 466.
916 n. 50.
Balsamo (Milan), 2008: 31, 106.


Grifo di Tancredi
Italian, active 1271 - 1303 (or possibly 1328)
BIOGRAPHY
Grifo must have been active in the profession of painter by 1271: in that year, he
rented a workshop in Volterra together with Filippo di Jacopo. Therefore, his birth
date probably should be placed before rather than after 1250. The same artist is
likely the Grifo di Tancredi who was paid for work on painting the Fontana
Maggiore in Perugia in 1281. By 1295, when he hired an apprentice for his shop, he
had secured his residence in Florence. His enrollment in the Florentine painters
guild can be placed in the period between 1297 and 1312. In 1303 he executed a
now lost painting in the Palazzo Vecchio, commemorating a political event of the
day. It seems unlikely that he can be identified with the Grifo, son of the late
Tancredi da Montegonzi, cited in a document of 1328,[1] although it cannot be
excluded, given the relative scarcity of the name. The fragmentary inscription on a
portable triptych in the collection of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres and now on
loan to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, conjecturally integrated as
H[oc] OP[us] Q[uod] FEC[it] M[agister] GRI[fus] FL[orentinus],[2] has enabled a
small group of works hitherto assembled by Roberto Longhi (1974) under the
conventional name of Master of San Gaggio to be attributed to the painter.[3] Grifo
probably had been trained under the prolific artist strongly rooted in the traditions
of pre-Cimabuesque Florentine painting known under the conventional name of
the Magdalen Master. The two seem to have worked together in some
enterprises.[4] Cimabues influence was to prove decisive in Grifos more advanced
phase. In such late works as the Maest from the monastery of San Gaggio near
Florence (now in the Galleria dellAccademia), Grifo seems to have been swayed
by the influence of the Master of Santa Cecilia, recently identified with Gaddo
Gaddi, head of an important workshop and one of the protagonists of fourteenth-
century painting in Florence.[5]
Grifo di Tancredi is sometimes considered one of the first followers of Giotto

(Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337), but his art exemplifies an alternative approach to that of
his great contemporary. He started out from the lessons of Cimabue but developed
further, aiming at an art of solemn and realistic composure, capable of expressing
complex emotions. Sometimes he shows himself able to confer monumentality on
Grifo di Tancredi 580


his scenes, as in the fragmentary frescoes in the chapel of San Giacomo at

Castelpulci. His paintings in general do not lack the narrative clarity and the
classical spirit that distinguish the works of Giotto, but he never achieved Giottos
volumetric richness or mastery of perspective; the settings of Grifos narrative
scenes reveal his difficulty in creating optically convincing settings around his
figures.
[1] The person cited in the document renounced the rights of patronage he had in
the church of San Cresci at Monteficalli (now Montefioralle at Greve in Chianti),
near Florence; cf. Giovanni Lami, Sanctae ecclesiae Florentinae monumenta:
Quibus notitiae innumerae ad omnigenam Etruriae aliarumque regionum historiam
spectantes continentur, 4 vols. (Florence, 1758), 1:599 n. It would have been
unusual for a painter to have enjoyed such rights. For further documentary
information on Grifo di Tancredi, see Angelo Tartuferi, Grifo di Tancredi, in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 83 vols. (Rome, 19602015), 59(2002):397.
[2] Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin,

Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 122, thus expanded the
abbreviations of the surviving part of the inscription. More recent scholarship
generally accepted this proposed reading of the inscription; cf. Nicolas Barker,
Hugh Brigstocke, and Timothy Clifford, A Poet in Paradise: Lord Lindsay and
Christian Art, ed. Aidan Weston-Lewis (Edinburgh, 2000), 34.
[3] Roberto Longhi, Giudizio sul Duecento (1948), in Edizione delle opere
complete di Roberto Longhi, 14 vols. (Florence, 19611984), 7(1974):1415 and 44,
gathered a number of paintings under the name of Maestro di San Gaggio: the
altarpiece with the Maest and four saints in the Galleria dellAccademia in
Florence (no. 6115); the polyptych now divided between the National Gallery of Art
and the Muse de Chambry; and the triptych divided between Christ Church
Gallery in Oxford and the heirs of the Sessa collection formerly in Milan. For the
altarpiece in the Accademia, see Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a
Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia di Firenze, ed. Mikls
Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 9498; and for further additions
to the catalog, see Angelo Tartuferi, Grifo di Tancredi, in Dizionario biografico
degli italiani, 83 vols. (Rome, 19602015), 59(2002):397399. For the panel at
Oxford, see J. Byam Shaw, Paintings by Old Masters at Christ Church Oxford
(London, 1967), 29.


[4] Grifo painted the stories of Christ to the sides of a half-length Madonna and
Child, now in the Timken Art Gallery in San Diego; see Laurence B. Kanter, in
Timken Museum of Art: European Works of Art, American Paintings and Russian
Icons in the Putnam Foundation Collection (San Diego, 1996), 3541. The present
writer has conjectured that the two artists also worked side by side in the
fragmentary Maest in the church of San Remigio in Florence. See also Ada
Labriola, Lo stato degli studi su Cimabue e un libro recente, Arte cristiana 88
(2000): 352 n. 51.
[5] On the Master of Santa Cecilia, cf. Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century,
sec. 3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle, new ed. (Florence, 1986), 21
148. For the masters identification with Gaddo Gaddi, see Monica Bietti, Gaddo
Gaddi: Unipotesi, Arte cristiana 71 (1983): 4952; Mikls Boskovits, Un nome per
il maestro del Trittico Horne, Saggi e memorie di storia dellarte 27 (2003): 5770.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1960 Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti.

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 59(2002):387-399.
1992 Chiodo, Sonia. "Grifo di Tancredi." In

1983+: 62(2009):129-131.
1999 Bagemihl, Rolf. Some Thoughts About Grifo di Tancredi of Florence and
a Little-Known Panel at Volterra.
Arte Cristiana 87 (1999): 413-426.


Grifo di Tancredi
Christ Blessing
c. 1310
tempera on panel
painted surface (top of gilding): 73 52.6 cm (28 3/4 20 11/16 in.)
painted surface (including painted border): 75.6 52.6 cm (29 3/4 20 11/16 in.)
overall: 78.2 55.5 1.5 cm (30 13/16 21 7/8 9/16 in.)
Inscription: on the book held by Christ: EGO SUM / LUX / MUNDI. (I am the light of
the world)
ENTRY
Up until the mid-nineteenth century, this panel and its two companions (Saint Peter
and Saint James Major) were preserved together with two others from the same
polyptych [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction): one representing the Baptist [fig. 2] now
in the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Chambry,[1] and the other probably with an image
of Saint Ursula, its whereabouts currently unknown.[2] They were parts of an
altarpiece that, in view of its dimensions and execution, must have been a
commission of some importance, although characterized by iconographic
conventions and technical features (execution on a single panel) of an archaizing
type. From an iconographic point of view, the bust of the adult Christ (rather than
the Madonna and Child) in the central panel, rather uncommon in Tuscany at the
time of the execution of the work,[3] and the appearance among the lateral saints
of one whose veneration was not particularly widespread (if she really does
represent, as would seem to be the case, Saint Ursula), might suggest that the
altarpiece was intended for the nuns of the Florentine convent named after this
saint and founded in 1309.[4] The elaborate ornamental decoration incised on the
gold ground is probably a measure of the importance attached to the work. This
type of decoration, preferred by Cimabue, was not common in Florence and was
generally used in the thirteenth century only on images of the Maest.[5] As for the
peculiar profiles of the triptych components, and the fact that they seem to have
been painted on a single panel, these were aspects of archaizing character but still
fairly widespread in Florentine painting in the early fourteenth century.[6]
Christ Blessing 583


Artaud de Montor probably acquired the National Gallery of Arts panels in Italy in
the later years of the eighteenth or early years of the nineteenth century. They
came to him accompanied by the attribution (wholly unjustified) to Margaritone
dArezzo, with which they were later illustrated in the successive catalogs of his
collection (1808, 1811, 1843).[7] A century later, Bernard Berenson (1920) suggested
an attribution to Cimabue.[8] Publishing the three panels immediately after their
acquisition by Duveen Brothers, Inc., in 1919, Berenson considered them executed
as early as 1271...or a little later and compared them with various late thirteenth-
century works, including two apse mosaicsone in San Miniato al Monte in
Florence[9] and the other in Pisa Cathedral, the latter a documented work of a
magister Franciscus, who executed it between 1301 and 1302[10]and the fresco
with the scene of the Capture of Christ in the upper church of San Francesco at
Assisi.[11] The panels were exhibited under the name of Cimabue in 1920, 1924,
and 1935, and various subsequent publications accepted the attribution.[12] Among
these we may mention the opinions of Osvald Sirn (1922), who compared the
three paintings with the artists late works (in particular with the Maest now in the
Uffizi, Florence);[13] Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933); Enzo Carli (1949); Pietro Toesca
(1927); and Luigi Coletti (1941), all of whom thought that the paintings in the Gallery
probably were autograph by the master.[14] Berenson himself restated on various
occasions his conviction of the Cimabuesque authorship of the panels. But
Raimond Van Marle (1923 and later) placed this in doubt, as did Richard Offner
(1924), though he admitted the possibility of a direct intervention of the master, at
least in the central panel.[15] Mario Salmi (1935) also excluded the three panels
from Cimabues catalog; additionally, he recognized one of the missing figures of
the former Artaud de Montor altarpiece in the panel of the Baptist in the museum in
Chambry.[16] In 1948, Roberto Longhi identified the master of the polyptych with
the anonymous artist who executed the Maest no. 6115 in the Galleria
dellAccademia in Florence.[17] That panel came from the monastery of San Gaggio
near Florence,[18] hence the conventional name Longhi bestowed on this artist:
Master of San Gaggio. From that moment, the attribution to Cimabue disappeared
from the art historical literature, apart from the posthumous edition of Berensons
Italian Pictures (1963) and the catalogs of the Gallery.[19] The three paintings
thereafter were classified as works by a follower of the master, or ascribedever
more frequentlyto the Master of San Gaggio himself.[20] In 1987, the present
writer tentatively proposed the identification of this anonymous master with Grifo di
Tancredi,[21] and this proposal has since met with growing consensus.[22] On the
other hand, different opinions have been expressed about the dating of the former
Christ Blessing 584


Artaud de Montor polyptych: Luiz C. Marques (1987) proposed the date 12751280;
Edward Garrison (1949), Angelo Tartuferi (1990, 2002), and Rolf Bagemihl (1999),
the years between 1280 and 1290; Sonia Chiodo (2009), the last decade of the
thirteenth century; and others have preferred a dating around or even after
1300.[23]
An aid for solving the problem of dating may come from the panel that gave its
name to the painter, namely the Maest now in the Accademia. This is not dated,
but some clues suggest that it was executed in the early years of the fourteenth
century.[24] The very circumstance that the earlier literature related the altarpiece
in the Accademia to the Master of Santa Cecilia, and the three panels in
Washington to the earlier production of Pacino di Bonaguida, implies that their
closest stylistic affinities should be sought in works dating to the early decades of
the fourteenth century.[25] The influence of the young Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 -
1337) has even been aired.[26] That seems improbable, for some characteristic
aspects of the art of Grifo da Tancredi, such as the incongruities and chaotic
perspective of his architectural structures or of his marble thrones, suggest that his
models in this phase were derived not from Giotto but from the works of Cimabue
and artists of his own generation, as yet unable to accept the rationality of Giottos
way of creating pictorial space. The model for the panel in the Accademia, for
example, could have been an image of the type of the Maest of Santa Margherita
at Montici, or Saint Peter Enthroned (dated 1307) in the church of San Simone in
Florence.[27]
If the San Gaggio altarpiece in the Accademia belongs, as I believe, to the first
decade of the fourteenth century, a similar dating may also apply to the former
Artaud de Montor panels. The two share close affinities. Among the saints in the
Florentine Maest, the Baptist in particular is almost a replica of the image of the
same saint in the painting now in the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Chambry, but the
Saint Peter [fig. 3] standing alongside the protagonist in the San Gaggio altarpiece
also is very close to the representation of that saint in our panels. Their faces are
energetically modeled, with marked contrasts of light and shade and characterized
by very pronounced cheekbones, short nose, fleshy lips, small eyes, and
penetrating gaze. Their facial features and their intense brooding expressions are
further enlivened by the undulating curls that frame their faces, while their stiff,
simplified drapery, furrowed by few folds and given an almost metallic consistency
and sheen, assumes a subordinate role. The artists unfamiliarity with the rules of
perspectival foreshortening is also betrayed in the panels now in the Gallery,
Christ Blessing 585


notably by the rendering of the book held in Christs left hand [fig. 4]: its pages,
instead of opening, improbably seem to bend backwards.[28] Offner (1924) rightly
observed that, although the frowning expression of the energetically squared
faces [fig. 5] may recall those of the Florentine caposcuola, Cimabues figures
possess a higher intensity.[29] At least during his late phase, Grifo emphasized
solemnity and elegance in his figures, delineated with a graphic style that Fern
Rusk Shapley correctly deemed more suave and flowing than in Cimabues
commonly accepted paintings.[30] It is just in this respect that Grifo went beyond
the example of Cimabue. His human ideal is gentler, more graceful in movement,
neater in dress. He conforms more faithfully to the conventions of the Gothic style
in Florentine painting, as did the Master of Santa Cecilia (that is, probably Gaddo
Gaddi) and Lippo di Benivieni during these same years. The style of the
Washington panels suggests that their dating be placed between the first and the
second decade of the fourteenth century. But if we are right in assuming that they
were intended for the church of SantOrsola in Florence, they cannot have been
any earlier than 1309.
Christ Blessing 586


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Grifo di

Tancredi (color images are NGA objects): a. Saint Peter; b.
Saint John the Baptist (fig. 2); c. Christ Blessing; d. Saint
James Major; e. After Grifo di Tancredi, line drawing of a
lost image of Saint Ursula
fig. 2 Grifo di Tancredi, Saint John the Baptist, c. 1310,

tempera on panel, Muse des Beaux-Arts, Chambry
Christ Blessing 587


fig. 4 Detail, Grifo di Tancredi, Christ Blessing, c. 1310,

tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
fig. 3 Detail of Saint Peter, Grifo di Tancredi, San Gaggio

altarpiece, c. 1300, tempera on panel, Galleria
dell'Academia, Florence
Christ Blessing 588


fig. 5 Detail, Grifo di Tancredi, Saint Peter, c. 1310,

Christ Blessing 589


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Grifo di Tancredi
a. Saint Peter
b. Saint John the Baptist (Entry fig. 2)
c. Christ Blessing
d. Saint James Major
e. After Grifo di Tancredi, line drawing of a lost image of Saint Ursula
NOTES
[1] Vronique Damian and Jean-Claude Giroud, Peintures florentines,

Collections du Muse de Chambry (Chambry, 1990), 6667. The panel
entered the museum in 1914 as a gift of Leonce Mesnard. I have been
unable to establish the paintings fate in the time period between the 1851
sale and 1914.
[2] The fate of this painting is also unknown. It never resurfaced after its sale at
the abovementioned auction. However, the drawing of it published in the
Artaud de Montor catalog (1843) suffices to show that the collectors
identification of the crowned female saint with Saint Clare of Assisi was
mistaken. The martyr saint in question is clearly of royal birth, if not a queen;
Christ Blessing 590


George Kaftal plausibly recognized her as Saint Ursula. George Kaftal,

(Florence, 1952), 996.
[3] While the adult Christ appears with some frequency at the center of
altarpieces, at least in the area of Lazio, in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, this iconography is rarer in Tuscany, where the center panel or
compartment is usually filled with the Madonna and Child. Cf. Edward B.
1949), nos. 278, 279, 280, 298, 305. Significant exceptions are Meliores
altarpiece in the Uffizi, Florence (no. 9153); that in the Museo Nazionale in
Pisa (no. 1582) and dating to the early years of the Trecento; and Giottos
polyptych now in the North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh, no. GL.
60.17.7. Other sui generis cases are presented by the Stefaneschi altarpiece
in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, executed for Saint Peters basilica in Rome and
hence reflecting local iconographic conventions, and the polyptych of
Taddeo Gaddi formerly in the Bromley Davenport collection, in which the
central image represents not the blessing Christ but the Vir dolorum. For the
latter painting, see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and
Catalogue Raisonn (Columbia, MO, 1982), 2021. Yet after the early
decades of the fourteenth century, altarpieces with Christ at the center
disappear completely, only to reappear sporadically in the second half of
the century; cf. Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
[4] P. N. Cianfogni and Domenico Moreni, Memorie istoriche dellAmbrosiana R.

Basilica di S. Lorenzo di Firenze, 3 vols. (Florence, 1804), 1:136139.
[5] In Florence, panels with similarly decorated gold grounds are found
especially in representations of the Maest. We may cite, for example, the
three versions of the Maest that have come down to us from the hand of
Cimabue, Duccios Madonna Rucellai, or the altarpiece of the Magdalen
Master in the church of San Michele at Rovezzano near Florence. See
Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998a), 105112,
132, 136, 248; and Angelo Tartuferi, La pittura a Firenze nel Duecento
(Florence, 1990), pl. 163. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Lucchese
master Deodato Orlandi also used this type of decoration on horizontal
altarpieces with half-length figures of saints. Examples include the one
dated 1300 now in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa (no. 1586); the
dismembered and dispersed polyptych of which the center panel is known,
formerly in the Hurd collection in New York, inscribed with the date 1308;
and even in a portable tabernacle, like that now in the Gemldegalerie in
Berlin. See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa:
La pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 260261;
Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index
(Florence, 1949), 160 no. 418; Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische
Christ Blessing 591


Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier

(Berlin, 1988), 256259.
[6] Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index

(Florence, 1949), 173, observed that the peculiar profile of the former Artaud
de Montor panels seems unique among paintings dating to this period. But
this does not necessarily imply, as Garrison believed, that it is the result of
modern falsification. Nor does Garrisons doubt regarding the genuineness
of the appearance of the paintings in the way they were illustrated in the
drawing published in the Artaud de Montor catalog seem justified. It should
be borne in mind that the outer frame of the altarpiece has been lost,
probably when the figures were separated and their profiles adjusted to the
painted internal frame. The external frame originally might have had a
different profile, for instance like that of the Sienese triptych no. 11 in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, which still preserves its original mixtilinear
external frame while the ornamental border that delimits the upper part of
the scenes is trefoil shaped. Another similar case is the Florentine Madonna
in the Acton collection in Florence, which originally formed the center of an
altarpiece; it too is executed on wood with horizontal graining (cf. Garrison
1949, no. 635). Here, the painted inner frame is arch shaped, whereas the
outer frame placed over it is triangular in profile. It is therefore difficult to
reconstruct with any precision the original external profile of the polyptych
by Grifo di Tancredi.
Altarpieces with half-length figures, executed on a single horizontal-grained
wooden support, represent an archaic form that Sienese painters
abandoned around 1300 but that continued to be used sporadically in
Florence in the early decades of the fourteenth century. The best known
example is the polyptych of Santa Reparata, produced in Giottos shop no
earlier than c. 1310; cf. Giorgio Bonsanti and Alfio Del Serra, in Capolavori e
restauri (Florence, 1986), 354357. Cf. also the examples cited in
Provenance note 3.
[7] Alexis-Franois Artaud de Montor, Considrations sur ltat de la peinture

en Italie, dans les quatre sicles qui ont prcd celui de Raphal: Par un
membre de lacadmie de Cortone; Ouvrage servant de catalogue
raisonn une collection de tableaux des XIIe, XIIIe, XIVe et XVe sicles
(Paris, 1808), nos. 30, 31, 34; Alexis-Franois Artaud de Montor,
Considrations sur ltat de la peinture en Italie, dans les quatre sicles qui
ont prcd celui de Raphal, par un membre de lAcadmie de Cortone
(Artaud de Montor): Ouvrage servant de catalogue raisonn une
collection de tableaux des XIIe, XIIIe, XIVe et XVe sicles (Paris, 1811), nos.
35, 36, 39; Alexis-Franois Artaud de Montor, Peintres primitifs: Collection
de tableaux rapporte dItalie (Paris, 1843), nos. 35, 36, 39.
[8] Bernard Berenson, A Newly Discovered Cimabue, Art in America 8 (1920):

250271.
Christ Blessing 592


[9] Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting,

sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270 (Florence 1993),
142144, 726733. The mosaics of the Florentine church, executed in the
1270s probably by the Master of SantAgata, were restored for the first time
in 1297 and then later as well. They are now rather difficult to read, but the
figure of Christ, which Berenson compared with the Christ in the
Washington painting, belongs to the earliest phase of the program. See
Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting,
Sec. i, vol. ii, The Mosaics of the Baptistery of Florena (Florence 2007), 207
n. 158, 603607.
[10] Roberto Paolo Novello, I mosaici, in Il Duomo di Pisa, ed. Adriano Peroni, 3
vols. (Modena, 1995), 1:286287, 556558.
[11] Alessio Monciatti, in La basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Giorgio

Bonsanti (Modena, 2002), 503504.
[12] Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition: Loans and Special Features (New York,
1920), unnumbered catalog; Loan Exhibition of Important Early Italian
Paintings in the Possession of Notable American Collectors (New York,
1924), no. 2; and Raymond Escholier et al., Exposition de lart italien de
Cimabue Tiepolo (Paris, 1935), 51.
[13] This is the panel from the church of Santa Trinita (no. 8343), variously dated.
More recent scholarship has tended to date it to the last decade of the
thirteenth century; cf. Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri
(Milan, 1998), 249256.
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 10; Enzo Carli,
Cimabue, in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols. (Florence, 1949), 3:1614; Pietro
Toesca, Il medioevo, 2 vols., Storia dellarte italiana 1 (Turin, 1927), 2:1040 n.
48; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 37.
[15] Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol.
1, From the 6th Until the End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 476,
574; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of
Painting, vol. 5, The Local Schools of Central and Southern Italy of the 14th
Century (The Hague, 1925), 442, fig. 262; Raimond van Marle, Le scuole
della pittura italiana, vol. 1, Dal VI alla fine del XIII secolo (The Hague, 1932),
495496, fig. 321; Richard Offner, A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian
Paintings, The Arts 5 (1924): 244.
[16] Mario Salmi, Per il completamento di un politico cimabuesco, Rivista darte

17 (1935): 114.
[17] Roberto Longhi, Giudizio sul Duecento, Proporzioni 2 (1948): 19, 47.
[18] See Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano,
Christ Blessing 593


Cataloghi della Galleria dellAccademia di Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and

Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 9498.
[19] Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2

vols. (London, 1963), 1:50.
[20] The following authorities spoke of school or following of Cimabue: Giulia

Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti, eds., Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento:
Catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937 (Florence, 1943), 277;
Roberto Salvini, Cimabue (Rome, 1946), 23; Roberto Salvini, Cimabue, in
Enciclopedia Universale dellArte, ed. Istituto per la collaborazione culturale,
15 vols. (Florence, 1960), 3:473; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 472 n. 1; Edward B.
1949), 172173; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black
Death (Princeton, 1951), 9 n. 2; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Pittura del
Dugento a Firenze (Florence, 1955), 127; Sergio Samek Ludovici, Cimabue
(Milan, 1956), 4244; Hellmut Hager, Die Anfnge des italienischen
Altarbildes: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgechichte des toskanischen
Hochaltarretabels (Munich, 1962), 111112; Mario Salmi, La donazione
Contini Bonacossi, Bollettino darte 52 (1967): 223; Burton B. Fredericksen
and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in
North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 54, 403, 440,
645; Enio Sindona, Lopera completa di Cimabue e il momento figurativo
pregiottesco (Milan, 1975), 119120; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the
Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:134135; Meryle Secrest,
Duveen: A Life in Art (New York, 2004), 422. Longhis 1963 attribution to the
Master of San Gaggio, in Roberto Longhi, In traccia di alcuni anonimi
trecentisti, Paragone 14 (1963): 10, was accepted in turn by Ugo Galetti and
2:1486 (though the three paintings were also listed among the works of
Cimabue on p. 672 of the same publication); Michel Laclotte, De Giotto
Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les muses de France (Paris, 1956), 15;
Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 1, I dipinti toscani del
secolo XIII (Rome, 1958), 56; Luisa Marcucci, in Le Muse des Beaux-Arts de
Chambry (Chambry, 1960), n.p., fig. 15; Giovanni Previtali, La fortuna dei
primitivi: Dal Vasari ai neoclassici (Turin, 1964), 232; Giovanni Previtali,
Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 26; Carlo Volpe, La formazione di
Giotto nella cultura di Assisi, in Giotto e i giotteschi in Assisi (Rome, 1969),
38; Mikls Boskovits, Cenni di Pepe (Pepo), detto Cimabue, in Dizionario
biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 1979), 23:452; Fra Ludovico da
Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini, Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco
e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso, 1982), 416; Alessandra Guerrini,
Christ Blessing 594


Maestro di San Gaggio, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed.

Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:625; Luiz Marques, La peinture
du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 202, 286; Angelo Tartuferi, La
pittura a Firenze nel Duecento (Florence, 1990), 63, 109; Vronique Damian
and Jean-Claude Giroud, Peintures florentines, Collections du Muse de
Chambry (Chambry, 1990), 23, 6667; Artaud de Montor, Jean Alex
Francis, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996),
2:514.

Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 122, proposed an
integration of the fragmentary inscription of the triptych in the collection of
the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres.

732 n. 1, 809; Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan,
1998), 129; Luciano Bellosi, La lezione di Giotto, in Storia delle arti in
Toscana: Il Trecento, ed. Max Seidel (Florence, 2004), 96; Rolf Bagemihl,
Some Thoughts about Grifo di Tancredi of Florence and a Little-Known
Panel at Volterra, Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 413414; Angelo Tartuferi, Grifo
di Tancredi, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2002),
59:398; Sonia Chiodo, in Larte a Firenze nellet di Dante (12501300), ed.
Angelo Tartuferi and Mario Scalini (Florence, 2004), 110114; Andrea
Staderini, Un contesto per la collezione di primitivi di Alexis-Franois
Artaud de Montor (17721849), Proporzioni 5 (2004): 38; Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Montano dArezzo a San Lorenzo, in Le chiese di San Lorenzo e
San Domenico: Gli ordini mendicanti a Napoli, ed. Serena Romano and
Nicolas Bock (Naples, 2005), 109.
[23] Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 202,
286; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated
Index (Florence, 1949), 172173; Angelo Tartuferi, La pittura a Firenze nel
Duecento (Florence, 1990), 63, 109; Angelo Tartuferi, Grifo di Tancredi, in
Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 87 vols. (Rome, 2002), 59:398; Rolf
Bagemihl, Some Thoughts about Grifo di Tancredi of Florence and a Little-
Known Panel at Volterra, Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 413414; Sonia Chiodo,
Grifo di Tancredi, in Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Knstler
aller Zeiten und Vlker, ed. Gnter Meiner, 87 vols. (Munich, 2009), 62:129.
See also Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 1, I dipinti toscani
del secolo XIII (Rome, 1958), 56; Hellmut Hager, Die Anfnge des
italienischen Altarbildes: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgechichte des
toskanischen Hochaltarretabels (Munich, 1962), 111112; Roberto Longhi, In
traccia di alcuni anonimi trecentisti, Paragone 14 (1963): 10.
[24] The monastery of the Augustinian nuns dedicated to San Gaggio (= Caius),
sometimes described as having been founded in the fourteenth century, in
Christ Blessing 595


fact already existed in the 1270s, as demonstrated by a testament of 1274;

cf. Guido Carocci, I dintorni di Firenze, vol. 2, Sulla sinistra dellArno
(Florence, 1907), 289; Robert Davidsohn, Forschungen zur lteren
Geschichte von Florenz, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1896), 4:416. At that time, the
community of cloistered nuns, called donne rinkiuse di San Gaggio,
probably was very small; perhaps they did not even have their own church.
That such a church presumably existed around the turn of the century can,
however, be inferred from documents of 1299 and 1304, cited by Domenico
Moreni, Notizie istoriche dei contorni di Firenze, vol. 6, Dalla Porta a Pinti
fino a Settignano (Florence, 1795), 207, which speak of a monastero and its
badessa. Grifos painting, a Maest, judging from its fame and size, cannot
have been destined for the high altar: instead, it adorned the meeting place
of a religious confraternity in the church; cf. Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine
Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 433446.
It therefore presupposes the existence of a church open to the public and
for this reason additionally seems more likely to date after than before c.
1300.
[25] No. 6115 of the Galleria dellAccademia was attributed to the Master of Santa
Cecilia by Mario Salmi, Spigolature darte toscana, LArte 16 (1913):
293294; Ugo Procacci, La R. Galleria dellAccademia di Firenze (Rome,
1936), 22. On the other hand, Roberto Longhi noted in a youthful polyptych
by Pacino di Bonaguida, now in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio of
Florence, un aspetto torvo simile a quello datoci (a surly expression similar
to the one given to us) by the Maestro di San Gaggio in the former Artaud
de Montor altarpiece. Roberto Longhi, In traccia di alcuni anonimi
trecentisti, Paragone 14 (1963): 10.
[26] Even in his first intervention, Roberto Longhi noted in the San Gaggio
altarpiece and in the panels now in Washington reflections of the prime
sterzature plastiche del Giotto giovane (the first turns of the wheel towards
the plasticity of the young Giotto). Roberto Longhi, Giudizio sul Duecento,
Proporzioni 2 (1948): 19. For his part, Luisa Marcucci expressed the view that
lautore della tavola di San Gaggio, quando la dipinse...aveva gi veduto la
Madonna [by Giotto] di Ognissanti (the author of the San Gaggio altarpiece
had, when he painted it, already seen Giottos Madonna from the
Ognissanti), and that this implied that it would date no earlier (or not much
earlier) than the second decade of the Trecento. Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie
nazionali di Firenze, vol. 1, I dipinti toscani del secolo XIII (Rome, 1958), 57.
[27] For these panels, generally (though not unanimously) assigned to the
Master of Santa Cecilia, cf. Richard Offner and Mikls Boskovits, A Critical
and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec.
Christ Blessing 596


3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle, new ed. (Florence, 1986),
114121, 132137.
[28] Painters of the thirteenth century often represented the blessing Christ with
a closed book in his hand. In contrast, examples of Christ holding an open
book reveal the problems involved in foreshortening. It is enough to
mention in this regard the already cited altarpiece in the Museo Nazionale in
Pisa and the mosaic of Magister Francesco in the apse of Pisa Cathedral.
See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa: La
pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 202203;
Adriano Peroni, ed., Il Duomo di Pisa, 3 vols. (Modena, 1995), 2, pt. 2: pl.
1571.

(1924): 244.
DC, 1979), 1:134.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden supports of Saint Peter and Saint James Major are single-member
poplar panels with horizontal grain.[1] The upper 6.5 cm of the top, the curved sides
of the gables, and the 1.3 cm-wide wooden strips on all sides are later additions.
Both panels have been thinned and have had a mahogany cradle applied to the
reverse. Christ Blessing was painted on a two-member wooden support, also with
horizontal grain. The join is located approximately 10.3 cm from the top of the
panel. This is above the tops of the panels depicting the saints, which explains why
they do not have similar joins. The upper 4 cm of Christ Blessing and 0.8
cm1.3 cm-wide strips on all sides are also modern additions. This panel, too, has
been thinned and cradled. Examination of the x-radiographs and the backs of the
panels reveals evidence of three nail holes vertically aligned down the center of
each painting, indicating that the panels once had vertical battens. A piece of the
top nail remains in Saint James Major. Line drawings published in the catalog of
the Artaud de Montor collection [2] prove that the three figures, probably painted
originally on one single panel,[3] had already been divided at the time they were
acquired by the French collector in the early years of the nineteenth century. At
that time, Christ Blessing still retained its original triangular gable, whereas the
others had curvilinear gables terminating in triangular tops. After the 1851 sale (see
Provenance), the gables were truncated, possibly in order to frame the panels
Christ Blessing 597


together. The panel now in Chambry (see below) still preserves the appearance
given to it following the cutting of its gable, whereas the tops of the ones now in
Washington have been altered, probably after their acquisition by Duveen
Brothers, Inc., with the clumsy reconstruction of the gables of Saint Peter and
Saint James Major.[4] A very fine layer of fabric had been applied to all panels
under the traditional gesso ground. A green layer is present under the flesh
tones.[5] The ground against which the figures are set is gilt and decorated with
punched and hand-incised motifs. The present gold decorations on the drapery of
Christ and the inscription on the book are modern, but an older layer of gold is
visible under the inscription on the book.
The panels are generally in fine condition, but with many small, inpainted losses.
The ornamental borders of the gables are in large part modern.[6] The surface
coating is slightly discolored.
TECHNICAL NOTES
sections (see report dated August 17, 1988, in NGA conservation files).
[2] Alexis-Franois Artaud de Montor, Peintres primitifs: Collection de tableaux

rapporte dItalie (Paris, 1843), 3031.
[3] That the panels have horizontal grain despite their longitudinal shape
suggests that they were painted on a single panel, like some of the earliest
polyptychs we know. This is the case with Vigoroso da Sienas polyptych
dated 1291 now in the Galleria Nazionale in Perugia (no. 32), or the
altarpiece, now divided in sections, whose central panel belongs to the
Museum of Santa Croce in Florence and one lateral component to an
unknown private collectionthe work of an early fourteenth-century artist
close to the Maestro Daddesco. See Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and
vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 251252. Analogous is the
case of the triptych by Bernardo Daddi, formerly also in Santa Croce and
now in the storerooms of the Soprintendenza in Florence, which still
remains on its undivided wooden support. See Christoph Merzenich, Vom
[4] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library,

Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 85, box 230, folder 25,
Christ Blessing 598


document the commission of the frame but not the paintings treatment.
[5] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the paint using x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), and the pigments found were consistent
with those used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (see report dated
August 17, 1988, in NGA conservation files).
[6] Edward B. Garrison was certainly in error when he stated that the tooling in
the gold background...is not original. Edward B. Garrison, Italian
Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 173.
There is no reason to affirm, as he did, that the shapes of the panels, when
still in Paris, are impossible in the period and that the painted borders are
all modern. The original appearance of the altarpiece was probably
somewhere between Vigorosos above-cited Perugia panel and the one in
the Acton collection in Florence (see Garrison 1949, 160 no. 419), though the
latter has simple triangular gables over the lateral figures.
PROVENANCE
By 1808 in the collection of Alexis-Franois Artaud de Montor [1772-1849], Paris,

who probably purchased the panels during one of his several periods of residence
in Italy;[1] (his estate sale, Seigneur and Schroth at Hotel des Ventes Mobilires,
Paris, 16-17 January 1851, nos. 35, 36, and 39 [with 1937.1.2.a and .c, as by
Margaritone dArezzo); Julien Grau [1810-1895], Troyes; by inheritance to his
daughter, Marie, comtesse Bertrand de Broussillion, Paris;[2] purchased September
1919 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., Paris, New York, and London);[3] Carl W. Hamilton
[1886-1967], New York, by 1920;[4] returned to (Duveen Brothers, Inc.); sold 15
December 1936 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[5]
gift 1937 to NGA. [1] On Artaud de Montor, apart from the unpublished doctoral
dissertation of Roland Beyer for the University of Strasbourg in 1978, see Jacques
Perot, "Canova et les diplomates franais Rome. Franois Cacault et Alexis
Artaud de Montor, Bullettin de la Socit de lHistoire de lArt franais (1980): 219-
233, and Andrea Staderini, Un contesto per la collezione di primitivi di Alexis -
Franois Artaud de Montor (1772-1849), Proporzioni. Annali della Fondazione
Roberto Longhi 5 (2004): 23-62. [2] This information on the post-Artaud de Montor
provenance of the work was gleaned at the time Duveen Brothers, Inc., purchased
the three panels. See the Duveen prospectus, in NGA curatorial files; Edward
Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 116. [3] Fowles 1976, 116;
Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 85, box 230, folder 25, and reel 422. The
Christ Blessing 599


Duveen record indicates that they purchased the painting in Paris from Hilaire
Grau, a son of Julien Grau. [4] The three panels were exhibited as lent by Carl
W. Hamilton in the New York exhibition in 1920. Fern Rusk Shapley (Catalogue of
the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:134) also states that they
were formerly in the Hamilton collection, and it is reported that the Cimabue
altarpiece was seen in Hamiltons New York apartment by 1920 (see Colin
Simpson, Artfull Partners. Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen, New York, 1986:
199). However, this and other pictures had actually been given to Hamilton on
credit by Duveen Brothers (see Meryle Secrest, Duveen. A Life in Art, New York,
2004: 422) and were probably returned to the dealers by 1924, when they were
shown as "lent anonymously" at the exhibition of early Italian paintings in American
collections held by the Duveen Galleries in New York. [5] The original bill of sale is
in Records of The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Subject Files, box
2, Gallery Archives, NGA; copy in NGA curatorial files.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1920, unnumbered catalogue.

Giovanni Cimabue (no. 1 in illustrated 1926 version of catalogue).
no. 110.

Art, Washington, D.C., 1979, no. 81.
2014 La fortuna dei primitivi: Tesori darte dalle collezioni italiane fra Sette e
Ottocento [The Fortunes of the Primitives: Artistic Treasures from Italian
Collections between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries], Galleria
dell'Accademia, Florence, 2014, repro.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christ Blessing 600


1808 Artaud de Montor, Alexis-Franois. Considrations sur ltat de la

peinture en Italie, dans les quatre sicles qui ont prcd celui de
Raphal: par un membre de lacadmie de Cortone. Ouvrage servant
de catalogue raisonn une collection de tableaux des XIIe, XIIIe, XIVe
et XVe sicles. Paris, 1808: no. 30.
Raphal, par un membre de lAcadmie de Cortone (Artaud de Montor).
Ouvrage servant de catalogue raisonn une collection de tableaux
des XIIe, XIIIe, XIVe et XVe sicles. Paris, 1811: no. 35.
1843 Artaud de Montor, Alexis-Franois. Peintres primitifs: collection de
tableaux rapporte dItalie. Paris, 1843: no. 35.
1920 Berenson, Bernard. "A Newly Discovered Cimabue." Art in America 8
(1920): 251-271, repro. 250.
Museum of Art 15 (1920): 159-160, repro.
1920 Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition. Loans and Special Features. Exh. cat.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1920: 8.
1922 Sirn, Osvald. Toskanische Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1922: 299-
301, pl. 113.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 1(1923):476, 574; 5(1925):442, fig. 262.
Notable American Collectors. Exh. cat. Duveen Brothers, New York,
1924: no. 2.
5 (1924): 241 (repro.), 244.
repro.
2:1040 n. 48.
31, fig. 14.
Christ Blessing 601


150.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 1(1932):495-496, fig. 321.
1932 Nicholson, Alfred. Cimabue: A Critical Study. Princeton, 1932: 59.
1:no. 10, repro.
Paris, 1935: 51.
1935: 143.
1935 Salmi, Mario. "Per il completamento di un politico cimabuesco." Rivista
darte 17 (1935): 113-120, repro. 115.
1935 Serra, Luigi. "La mostra dellantica arte italiana a Parigi: la pittura."
Bollettino darte 29 (1935-1936): 31, repro. 33.
1941 Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 1(1941):37.
New York, 1941: no. 3, repro., as by Cimabue.
Art, Washington, 1941: 41, no. 2, as by Cimbue.
repro. 85, as by Cimabue.
Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence, 1943: 277.
1946 Salvini, Roberto. Cimabue. Rome, 1946: 23.
1947: 216 n. 1.
1948 Longhi, Roberto. "Giudizio sul Duecento." Proporzioni 2 (1948): 19, 47,
fig. 37.
1948 Pope-Hennessy, John. "Review of Proporzioni II by Roberto Longhi." The
Burlington Magazine 90 (1948): 360.
1949 Carli, Enzo. "Cimabue." In Enciclopedia Cattolica. 12 vols. Vatican City,
1949-1954: 3(1949):1614, repro.
Christ Blessing 602


Index. Florence, 1949: 172-173, repro.

Washington, 1951: 16-18, repro., as by Cimabue.
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 1:642; 2:1486.
1955 Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico. Pittura del Dugento a Firenze. Florence,
1955: 127, fig. 186.
1956 Samek Ludovici, Sergio. Cimabue. Milan, 1956: 42-44, 48, pl. 20.
secolo XIII. Rome, 1958: 56.
1958 Salvini, Roberto. "Cimabue." In Enciclopedia Universale dellArte. Edited
by Istituto per la collaborazione culturale. 15 vols. Florence, 1958-1967:
3(1960):473.
1960 Boskovits, Mikls. "Cenni di Pepe (Pepo), detto Cimabue." In Dizionario
Rome, 1960+: 23(1979):542.
1960 Le Muse des Beaux-Arts de Chambry. Chambry, 1960: n.p., fig. 15.
1961 Longhi, Roberto. "Giudizio sul Duecento (1948)." In Edizione delle opere
complete di Roberto Longhi. 14 vols. Florence, 1961-1984: 7(1974):14, 44,
pl. 36.
1962 Hager, Hellmut. Die Anfnge des italienischen Altarbildes.
Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgechichte des toskanischen
Hochaltarretabels. Munich, 1962: 111-112.
School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:50, fig. 4.
1963 Longhi, Roberto. "In traccia di alcuni anonimi trecentisti." Paragone 14
(1963): 10.
1963 Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York, 1963
Cimabue.
1964 Previtali, Giovanni. La fortuna dei primitivi: dal Vasari ai neoclassici.
Turin, 1964: 232.
1967 Previtali, Giovanni. Giotto e la sua bottega. Milan, 1967: 26.
1967 Salmi, Mario. "La donazione Contini Bonacossi." Bollettino darte 52
(1967): 223, 231 n. 1.
1969 Volpe, Carlo. "La formazione di Giotto nella cultura di Assisi." In Giotto e
Christ Blessing 603


i giotteschi in Assisi. Rome, 1969: 38.

Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 54, 403, 440, 645.
1974 Previtali, Giovanni. Giotto e la sua bottega. 2nd ed. Milan, 1974: 26.
of Art, Washington, 1975: 70, repro., as Attributed to Cimabue.
Treviso, 1982: 416.
1986 Guerrini, Alessandra. "Maestro di San Gaggio." In La Pittura in Italia. Il
1986: 2:625.
1986 Simpson, Colin. Artful Partners: Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen.
New York, 1986: 199.
1987 Marques, Luiz. La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale. Paris, 1987:
202, 286, fig. 253.
repro.
1990 Damian, Vronique, and Jean-Claude Giroud. Peintures florentines.
Collections du Muse de Chambry. Chambry, 1990: 23, 66-67.
1990 Tartuferi, Angelo. La pittura a Firenze nel Duecento. Florence, 1990: 63,
109.
1992 Chiodo, Sonia. "Grifo di Tancredi." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die
Sec. I, Vol. I: The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270. Florence,
1993: 732 n. 1, 809.
Edited by Alessandro Conti. 3rd ed. Milan, 1993: 36.
1996 "Artaud de Montor, Jean Alex Francis." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
1998: 287, 289.
Christ Blessing 604



1999 Bagemihl, Rolf. "Some Thoughts About Grifo di Tancredi of Florence and
a Little-Known Panel at Volterra." Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 413-414.
2001: 472 n. 1.
2002 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Grifo di Tancredi." In Dizionario biografico degli
59(2002):398.
2004 Bellosi, Luciano. "La lezione di Giotto." in Storia delle arti in Toscana. Il
Trecento. Edited by Max Seidel. Florence, 2004: 96.
2004 Staderini, Andrea. "Un contesto per la collezione di primitivi di Alexis-
Franois Artaud de Montor (1772-1849)." Proporzioni 5 (2004): 38.
2005 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. "Montano dArezzo a San Lorenzo." In Le
chiese di San Lorenzo e San Domenico: gli ordini mendicanti a Napoli.
Edited by Serena Romano and Nicolas Bock. Naples, 2005: 109.
2007: 68, fig. 42.
2014 Tartuferi, Angelo, and Gianluca Tormen. La fortuna dei primitivi: Tesori
darte dalle collezioni italiane fra Sette e Ottocento. Exh. cat. Galleria
dellAccademia. Florence, 2014: 427-429, repros.
Christ Blessing 605


Grifo di Tancredi
Saint James Major

c. 1310
tempera on panel
painted surface (top of gilding): 62.2 34.8 cm (24 1/2 13 11/16 in.)
overall: 66.7 36.7 1.2 cm (26 1/4 14 7/16 1/2 in.)
ENTRY
Up until the mid-nineteenth century, this panel and its two companions (Saint Peter
and Christ Blessing) were preserved together with two others from the same
polyptych [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction): one representing the Baptist [fig. 2] now
in the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Chambry,[1] and the other probably with an image
of Saint Ursula, its whereabouts currently unknown.[2] They were parts of an
Saint James Major 606




1300.[23]
Florence.[27]





COMPARATIVE FIGURES











RECONSTRUCTION
a. Saint Peter
c. Christ Blessing
NOTES

sale and 1914.



(Florence, 1952), 996.




(Berlin, 1988), 256259.

Provenance note 3.


250271.



n. 158, 603607.
vols. (Modena, 1995), 1:286287, 556558.

(Milan, 1998), 249256.

17 (1935): 114.




vols. (London, 1963), 1:50.




2:514.





1300.


114121, 132137.
1571.

(1924): 244.
DC, 1979), 1:134.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden supports of this work and Saint Peter are single-member poplar
panels with horizontal grain.[1] The upper 6.5 cm of the top, the curved sides of the
gables, and the 1.3 cm-wide wooden strips on all sides are later additions. Both
panels have been thinned and have had a mahogany cradle applied to the reverse.
Christ Blessing was painted on a two-member wooden support, also with
the Artaud de Montor collection[2] prove that the three figures, probably painted


Brothers, Inc., with the clumsy reconstruction of the gables of this panel and Saint
Peter.[4] A very fine layer of fabric had been applied to all panels under the
traditional gesso ground. A green layer is present under the flesh tones.[5] The
ground against which the figures are set is gilt and decorated with punched and
hand-incised motifs. The present gold decorations on the drapery of Christ and the
inscription on the book are modern, but an older layer of gold is visible under the
inscription on the book.
TECHNICAL NOTES




PROVENANCE

Paris, 16-17 January 1851, nos. 35, 36, and 39 [with 1937.1.2.a and .b, as by


EXHIBITION HISTORY

no. 110.

BIBLIOGRAPHY



(1920): 251-271, repro. 250.
301, pl. 114.
1924: no. 2.
5 (1924): 241 (repro.), 244.
repro.
2:1040 n. 48.
31, fig. 14.


150.
1:no. 10, repro.
Paris, 1935: 51.
1935: 143.
darte 17 (1935): 113-120, repro. 115.
Art, Washington, 1941: 41, no. 2, as by Cimabue.
1947: 216 n. 1.
fig. 37.
1949-1954: 3(1949):1614, repro.



3 vols. Milan, 1951: 1:642; 2:1486.
1955: 127, fig. 186.
1956 Samek Ludovici, Sergio. Cimabue. Milan, 1956: 42-44, 48.
3(1960):473.
Rome, 1960+: 23(1979):542.
pl. 36.
(1963): 10.
Turin, 1964: 232.
(1967): 223, 231 n. 1.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 54, 403, 440, 645.

Treviso, 1982: 416.
1986: 2:625.
New York, 1986: 199.
202, 286, fig. 253.
109.
1993: 732 n. 1, 809.
1998: 287, 289.
2001: 472 n. 1.



59(2002):398.
2007: 68, fig. 42.


Grifo di Tancredi
Saint Peter
c. 1310
tempera on panel
painted surface (top of gilding): 61.5 34.5 cm (24 3/16 13 9/16 in.)
overall: 66.2 36.6 1 cm (26 1/16 14 7/16 3/8 in.)
ENTRY
Up until the mid-nineteenth century, this panel and its two companions (Christ
Blessing and Saint James Major) were preserved together with two others from the
same polyptych [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction): one representing the Baptist [fig.
2] now in the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Chambry,[1] and the other probably with an
image of Saint Ursula, its whereabouts currently unknown.[2] They were parts of an
Saint Peter 629


Saint Peter 630


1300.[23]
Florence.[27]
Saint Peter 631



Saint Peter 632


COMPARATIVE FIGURES


Saint Peter 633




Saint Peter 634



Saint Peter 635


RECONSTRUCTION
a. Saint Peter
c. Christ Blessing
NOTES

sale and 1914.
Saint Peter 636



(Florence, 1952), 996.

Saint Peter 637



(Berlin, 1988), 256259.

Provenance note 3.


250271.
Saint Peter 638



n. 158, 603607.
vols. (Modena, 1995), 1:286287, 556558.

(Milan, 1998), 249256.

17 (1935): 114.
Saint Peter 639




vols. (London, 1963), 1:50.

Saint Peter 640



2:514.


Saint Peter 641



1300.
Saint Peter 642


114121, 132137.
1571.

(1924): 244.
DC, 1979), 1:134.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden supports of this work and Saint James Major are single-member
poplar panels with horizontal grain.[1] The upper 6.5 cm of the top, the curved sides
of the gables, and the 1.3 cm-wide wooden strips on all sides are later additions.
Both panels have been thinned and have had a mahogany cradle applied to the
reverse. Christ Blessing was painted on a two-member wooden support, also with
the Artaud de Montor collection[2] prove that the three figures, probably painted
Saint Peter 643


Brothers, Inc., with the clumsy reconstruction of the gables of this panel and Saint
James Major.[4] A very fine layer of fabric had been applied to all panels under the
traditional gesso ground. A green layer is present under the flesh tones.[5] The
ground against which the figures are set is gilt and decorated with punched and
hand-incised motifs. The present gold decorations on the drapery of Christ and the
inscription on the book are modern, but an older layer of gold is visible under the
inscription on the book.
TECHNICAL NOTES


Saint Peter 644


PROVENANCE

Paris, 16-17 January 1851, nos. 35, 36, and 39 [with 1937.1.2.b and .c, as by
Saint Peter 645


EXHIBITION HISTORY

no. 110.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Saint Peter 646



(1920): 251-271, repro. 250.
301, pl. 114.
1924: no. 2.
5 (1924): 241 (repro.), 244.
repro.
2:1040 n. 48.
31, fig. 14.
Saint Peter 647


150.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 1(1932):495-496, fig. 321.
1:no. 10, repro.
Paris, 1935: 51.
1935: 143.
darte 17 (1935): 113-120, repro. 115.
Art, Washington, 1941: 41, no. 2, as by Cimabue.
1947: 216 n. 1.
fig. 37.
1949-1954: 3(1949):1614, repro.
Saint Peter 648



3 vols. Milan, 1951: 1:642; 2:1486.
1955: 127, fig. 186.
1956 Samek Ludovici, Sergio. Cimabue. Milan, 1956: 42-44, 48.
3(1960):473.
Rome, 1960+: 23(1979):542.
pl. 36.
(1963): 10.
1963 Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York, 1963
Cimabue.
Turin, 1964: 232.
(1967): 223, 231 n. 1.
Saint Peter 649



Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 54, 403, 440, 645.
Treviso, 1982: 416.
1986: 2:625.
New York, 1986: 199.
202, 286, fig. 253.
109.
1993: 732 n. 1, 809.
1998: 287, 289.
Saint Peter 650


2001: 472 n. 1.
59(2002):398.
2007: 68, fig. 42.
Saint Peter 651


Lippo Memmi
Also known as
Filippo di Memmo
Sienese, active 1317/1347
BIOGRAPHY
Son of the Sienese painter Memmo di Filippuccio, Lippo probably was born
towards the end of the thirteenth century and trained in his fathers shop. His
earliest signed and dated work (1317), the Maest, is in the Palazzo Pubblico in San
Gimignano, the city where his father was long active. Similar in composition and
style to the more famous version of the same theme painted two years earlier by
Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) in the Palazzo Pubblico in
Siena, the fresco implies the existence of artistic relations between the two at this
time. These relations would become even closer in the following years, leading to
collaboration between the two, sometimes in the execution of the same work, and
even to ties of blood. Simone married Lippos sister in 1324.
A proper evaluation of Lippos oeuvre is now hampered both by the inclusion of

some works by Simone Martini that have come down to us in poor condition and
by attempts to assign some of his paintings to other artists. Donato Martini and
Federico (or Tederico) Memmi, respectively brothers of Simone and Lippo, painters
of whom no authenticated works are known, have been proposed on various
occasions, for example, as attributions for paintings that should more properly be
given to Lippo Memmi himself. Some scholars have gone so far as almost to
eliminate Lippos activity as an independent master altogether, preferring to speak
of an indistinguishable bottega of members of the Memmi family.[1] These attempts
lead to no convincing results. Sometimes, admittedly, in particular in the
Annunciation and Saints now in the Uffizi, Florence, the stylistic kinship between
the two brothers-in-law is so close as to make it difficult to distinguish the work of
the one from the other. It would be mistaken, however, to consider Lippo merely as
an able imitator of the style of Simone. His considerable artistic stature clearly
emerges from various signed works, which also permit a satisfactory reconstruction
of his career.
After painting the robust figures arrayed in rather wooden poses on either side of
the Virgin in the San Gimignano Maest and in the Madonna dei raccomandati in
Lippo Memmi 652


Orvieto Cathedral, also a signed work although probably executed with the help of
an assistant, Lippo developed a more delicate style, skillfully combining the needs
of linear elegance and subtlety of modeling with the volumetric compactness of
three-dimensional bodies. Works exemplifying this more suave and aristocratic
style include such paintings as the polyptych painted for Pisa Cathedral (now in the
church of San Niccol, Casciana Alta); the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the
Pisan church of Santa Caterina, probably painted shortly after the canonization of
the saint (1323); and the signed Madonna in the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg
(Germany). In 1325 or in the years immediately following, Lippo painted a polyptych
for the church of San Paolo a Ripa dArno in Pisa, whose panels have now been
dispersed among the museums of Altenburg, Avignon, Douai, Palermo, and Pisa.[2]
The finesse of modeling and the exquisite rhythmic modulations of the design of
this latter polyptycha work that Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574) claimed
bore the signature of Lippohave led some scholars to remove it from the
painters oeuvre and to reassign it to Barna, an artist who was not cited in
documents known today. However, in his Commentarii, Lorenzo Ghiberti claimed
that Barna was the master of the New Testament cycle in the Collegiata of San
Gimignano. Since the words Lipus de senis pinsit are found scratched into the
plaster in various passages of the cycle, we may assume that Lippo was the real
author of the works assigned to Barna.
In 1333 Lippo painted the figure of the female Saint (Massima?) in the triptych of the
Annunciation in Siena Cathedral, signed together with Simone, and, in the same
year, placed his own signature on the diptych now divided between the
Gemldegalerie of Berlin and a private collection. To the fourth decade we can
assign, apart from some precious small panels for private devotion, some important
public commissions: the Madonna del Popolo from the church of the Servi in Siena
(now in the Museo Diocesano) and the Madonna no. 595 in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale of Siena, the two lateral panels of which are now in a private
collection.[3] After having worked with his brother-in-law in 1344 for the Ospedale
della Scala in Siena, in 1347 Lippo signed a now-lost panel in the Franciscan church
in the papal city of Avignon. In this same year the painter is once again recorded in
Siena, where sometime later he painted his last work known to us, for the church of
San Domenico: a fresco of the Madonna and Child with saints (now in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale), which bears his signature and the fragmentary date
MCCCL ... Faithful partner and fratello in arte of Simone Martini, Lippo created
works that would constitute, no less than that of his brother-in-law, a firm point of
reference for the main Sienese painters of the second half of the fourteenth
Lippo Memmi 653


century.
[1] Cristina De Benedictis, La pittura senese 13301370 (Florence, 1979), 1422;

Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi, eds., Simone Martini e chompagni
(Florence, 1985), 82102; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003),
172188, 328336 et passim.
[2] Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps, eds., Maestri senesi e toscani nel
Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg (Siena, 2008), 2837.
[3] Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi, eds., Simone Martini e chompagni
(Florence, 1985), 9093.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Weigelt, Curt H. Lippo Memmi. In

1907-1950: 23(1929):275-277.
1958 Carli, Enzo.

Pittura pisana del Trecento, 1: Dal Maestro di S. Torpe al Trionfo della
Morte. Milan, 1958.
1960 Ranucci, Cristina. "Lippo di Memmo di Filippuccio (Memmi)." In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 65(2005):225-228.
1976 Caleca, Antonio. Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 1.
Critica dArte 41 (1976): 49-59.
1977 Bennett, Bonnie Apgar. "Lippo Memmi, Simone Martinis fratello in

arte: the Image Revealed by His Documented Works." Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1977.
1977 Caleca, Antonio. Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 2.
Critica dArte 42 (1977): 55-80.
Lippo Memmi 654


1982 Volpe, Carlo. Barna (Federico Memmi?). In

1985 Previtali, Giovanni. Introduzione. In

Simone Martini e chompagni. Edited by Alessandro Bagnoli and
Luciano Bellosi. Florence, 1985: 11-32.
1986 Freuler, Gaudenz. Lippo Memmis New Testament Cycle in the

Collegiata in San Gimignano.
Arte Cristiana 74 (1986): 83-102.
1989 Castri, Serenella. "Memmi, Lippo (Lippo di Memmo di Filippuccio)." In

1991 De Benedictis, Cristina. Lippo Memmi. In

1996 Maginnis, Hayden B.J. "Lippo Memmi." In

London, 1996: 19:454-455.
2002 Franci, Beatrice. "Memmi, Lippo." In

La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3
vols. Milan, 2002: 2:590-591.
2003 "Memmi, Lippo." In

Dictionnaire de la peinture. Edited by Michel Laclotte and Jean Pierre
Cuzin. Paris, 2003: 639-640.
2008 Labriola, Ada.

Simone Martini e la pittura gotica a Siena: Duccio di Buoninsegna,
Memmo di Filippuccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ugolino di Nerio, Ambrogio
Lorenzetti, Lippo Memmi, Matteo Giovanetti, Naddo Ceccarelli,
Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccol di Ser Sozzo. I Grandi maestri dell'arte 19.
Florence, 2008: 54-58, 203-221.
Lippo Memmi 655


Lippo Memmi

Donor
1325/1330
tempera on panel
painted surface: 50.8 23.5 cm (20 9 1/4 in.)
overall: 51.5 24.2 0.5 cm (20 1/4 9 1/2 3/16 in.)
framed: 70 x 36.2 x 5.1 cm (27 9/16 x 14 1/4 x 2 in.)
ENTRY
The paintings iconography is based on the type of the Hodegetria Virgin.[1] It

presents, however, a modernized version of this formula, in keeping with the
humanized faith and sensibility of the time; instead of presenting her son to the
observer as in the Byzantine model, Marys right hand touches his breast, thus
indicating him as the predestined sacrificial lamb. As if to confirm this destiny, the
child draws his mothers hand towards him with his left hand. The gesture of his
other hand, outstretched and grasping the Madonnas veil, can be interpreted as a
further reference to his Passion and death.[2]
The painting probably was originally the left wing of a diptych. The half-length
Madonna and Child frequently was combined with a representation of the
Crucifixion, with or without the kneeling donor. In our panel, the donor, an
unidentified prelate, is seen kneeling to the left of the Madonna; his position on the
far left of the composition itself suggests that the panel was intended as a pendant
to a matching panel to the right. In any case, the image was intended for the
donors private devotion.[3]
Madonna and Child with Donor 656


Ever since its first public appearance at the London exhibition of Sienese painting
in 1904, this panel has been recognized as a work by Lippo Memmi. The attribution
to the fourteenth-century Sienese master has seldom been placed in doubt since
that time.[4] If the paintings attribution can be considered perfectly convincing, its
date is open to question; the art historical literature has expressed various views
on the dating. The date usually proposed for our Madonna and Child is c. 1330, but
some authorities have pushed this either backward to the 1320s or forward to
1335.[5] The lack of any securely dated works by the artist before 1333 (apart, of
course, from the great fresco of the Maest in San Gimignano dated 1317, which
hardly lends itself to stylistic comparison with small panels like ours) justifies this
lack of certainty. It should be said, however, that the identification of Lippo with the
so-called Master of the Triumph of Saint Thomasthat is, the master of the painting
of the same name in the church of Santa Caterina at Pisahas been revived and
has begun to gain ground. If, as various clues suggest, this proposal is likely to be
correct,[6] a further chronological point of reference for Lippos career would thus
be obtained, for the Santa Caterina panel must have been painted in close
proximity to the canonization of Thomas Aquinas in 1323. Another fact that should
be borne in mind, in reflecting on the chronological sequence of Lippos works is a
gradual enrichment of technique, particularly the tendency to pass from a pictorial
treatment of luminous and two-dimensional effect to a softer, more atmospheric,
more richly charged modeling, also involving a more three-dimensional
effect.[7] Some art historians have viewed this change primarily as a consequence
of Lippos adjustment to the manner of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315;
died 1344), but it would be more correct to speak of his gradual espousal of the
ideals of Gothic elegance, not simply his dependence on his brother-in-laws
stylistic development.[8] The various punch marks used to decorate this painting
include several that can also be recognized in paintings attributed to Simone and
executed in the period between 1320 and 1333, or even later. Some of these
punches recur in the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas and in other panels
attributable to the Pisan phase of Lippos activity, hence executed in the period
1320/1325.[9]
Given these observations, a date for the National Gallery of Arts Madonna of
slightly later than the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas can be supported with
some confidence. This conclusion is also reinforced by stylistic considerations, for
the clear-cut and energetic design of the Pisan painting is still exempt from such
features as the accomplished curvilinear rhythms and delicate chiaroscuro
modeling proposed in the painting being discussed here. A terminus ante quem,


on the other hand, is provided by the Madonna [fig. 1] in Berlin (Gemldegalerie)

dated 1333: its more elongated, aristocratic proportions and more spacious and
refined compositional layout indicate the artists gradual adoption of a fully
gothicizing manner. From these considerations, therefore, a date for the
Washington Madonna in the period 1325/1330 can be deduceda date that also
holds good, in all probability, for a painting particularly close in style, namely the
polyptych formerly in the church of San Niccol at Casciana Alta, near
Pisa.[10] Despite some archaizing aspects (such as the round-arched upper
termination of the panels of the main register), the altarpiece seems, in its figural
style, to belong to the same phase as our panel. Mary [fig. 2] is more lissome in
physique and assumes a more composed and elegant pose than in previous
paintings by Lippo, while the curly-headed child [fig. 3], who opens his lips to
pronounce words of blessing, would seem closely akin to the idea proposed in the
Gallery panel [fig. 4]. The fact that the face of Saint Thomas is more subtly
naturalistic in its modeling than that of the same saint in the undated Pisan panel
(c. 1323) suggests a slightly later date.
Lippo, we may infer, embarked on a new stylistic phase in the years around 1325.
This led him not only to dedicate ever-growing attention to reserved elegance of
pose but also to refine his technique. He now tried to accentuate the realistic
effects of his images. His efforts in this direction are testified by the acutely
characterized portrait of the donor [fig. 5] in the Washington Madonna: the flaccid,
unshaven features show evident signs of old age and poor health. But no less
subtle and acute an observation is shown in the treatment of the childs close-
fitting blouse that wrinkles and puckers under the firm touch of Marys finger.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child, 1333, tempera on fig. 2 Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child, tempera on
panel, Gemldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Image: panel, Museo Nazionale, Pisa. Image courtesy of the
bpk, Berlin/Gemldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici Paesaggistici
Berlin/Joerg P. Anders/Art Resource, NY Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici per le Province de
Pisa e Livorno


fig. 4 Detail of Christ, Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child

with Donor, 1325/1330, tempera on panel, National Gallery
of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection
fig. 3 Detail of Christ, Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child,

tempera on panel, Museo Nazionale, Pisa. Image courtesy
of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici
Paesaggistici Storici Artistici ed Etnoantropologici per le
Province de Pisa e Livorno


fig. 5 Detail of donor, Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child

with Donor, 1325/1330, tempera on panel, National Gallery
of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection
NOTES
[1] See Christine Angelidi and Titos Papamastorakis, The Veneration of the
Virgin Hodegetria and the Hodegon Monastery, in The Mother of God: The
Representation of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and


London, 2000), 373387.
[2] On the motif of the child drawing the Virgins hand towards himself and its
possible significance, cf. Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional
Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 168169. See also
Shorr 1954, 116117, on the significance of the veil on which the child
concentrates his attention.
[3] Cf. Wolfgang Kermer, Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von
den Anfngen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Dsseldorf,
1967), 8389. On the genre of diptychs during this period, see Victor M.
Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany,
12501400 (Florence, 2005), 3171; on the figures of devotees kneeling in
prayer, see 107140.
[4] George Martin Richter (1941) was alone in conjecturing an attribution of the
painting to Andrea di Vanni (Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413), though specifying that
it must have been produced in the workshop of Lippo Memmi. Rainer Brandl
(1985) believed the attribution to Lippo unjustified; he insisted on its stylistic
affinities with the paintings of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315;
died 1344) in Assisi and Orvieto. See George Martin Richter, The New
National Gallery in Washington, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
78 (1941): 177; Rainer Brandl, Die Tafelbilder des Simone Martini: Ein Beitrag
zur Kunst Sienas im Trecento (Frankfurt am Main; and New York, 1985), 85
n. 1.
[5] Scholars who have proposed a dating to the 1320s are: Joseph Polzer (1971),
Carlo Volpe (1982), Rainer Brandl (1985), and Eliot W. Rowlands (1996).
Those supporting a dating to c. 1330 or shortly after are: Cristina De
Benedictis (1974, 1979), Giovanna Damiani (1985), Mikls Boskovits (1986,
1988), Pierluigi Leone de Castris (2003), and Sabina Spannocchi (2009). The
date 1335 or after was suggested in the catalogs of the National Gallery of
Art (1941, 1965, 1985), as well as by Fern Rusk Shapley (1979), Serenella
Castri (1992), De Benedictis (1996), and Meryle Secrest (2004). See Joseph
Polzer, Observations on Known Paintings and a New Altarpiece by
Francesco Traini, Pantheon 29 (1971): 386387; Carlo Volpe, in Il gotico a
Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 186;
Rainer Brandl, Die Tafelbilder des Simone Martini: Ein Beitrag zur Kunst
Sienas im Trecento (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1985), 85 n. 1; Eliot W.
Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian
Paintings, 13001800 (Kansas City, MO, 1996), 36, 38; Cristina De
Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco, Antichit viva 13, no. 2
(1974): 89; Cristina De Benedictis, La pittura senese 13301370 (Florence,
1979), 21, 93; Giovanna Damiani, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 92; Mikls
Boskovits, Sul trittico di Simone Martini e di Lippo Memmi, Arte cristiana
74 (1986): 76 n. 33; Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische Malerei:



1988), 78, 81; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 181,
283; Sabina Spannocchi, Lippo e Tederigo Memmi, in La Collegiata di San
Gimignano, vol. 2, Larchitettura, i cicli pittorici murali e i loro restauri, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli (Siena, 2009), 452; National Gallery of Art, Preliminary
Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 133; National
(Washington, DC, 1965), 89; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An
Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 230, 251; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979),
1:330331; Serenella Castri, Memmi, Lippo (Lippo di Memmo di
Filippuccio), in Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo
and Bruno Toscano, 6 vols. (Turin, 1992), 3:581; Cristina De Benedictis,
Lippo Memmi, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996),
7:735; Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York, 2004), 458.
[6] Traditionally attributed to Francesco Traini, the panel in the Pisan church of
Santa Caterina was later reduced to anonymity by the creation of an
eponymous Master of the Triumph of Saint Thomas by Millard Meiss, The
Problem of Francesco Traini, The Art Bulletin 15 (1933): 97173, an artist
perhaps identifiable with Barna, according to Hermann Beenken, Notizien
und Nachrichten. Malerei: Italien 14 Jahrundert, Zeitschrift fr
Kunstgeschichte 3 (1934): 73. It was then reattributed, albeit cautiously, to
Lippo Memmi by Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi
(Novara, 1946), xxx, lxv n. 90. Long ignored in the art historical literature, this
hypothesis was resuscitated and reinforced in more recent years by Antonio
Caleca, Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la bottega di
Simone e Lippo, 1, Critica darte 41 (1976): 4959; Antonio Caleca, Tre
polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la bottega di Simone e Lippo,
2, Critica darte 42 (1977): 5580; Mikls Boskovits, Il gotico senese
rivisitato: Proposte e commenti su una mostra, Arte cristiana 71 (1983): 264;
Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 75, 202; Luciano
Bellosi, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and
Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 9498; Giovanni Previtali, Introduzione ai
problemi della bottega di Simone Martini, in Simone Martini: Atti del
convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988),
153, 156; Joseph Polzer, The Triumph of Thomas Panel in Santa Caterina,
Pisa: Meaning and Date, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in
Florenz 37 (1993): 2970; Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi, in
Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732.
[7] Cf. Luciano Bellosi, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed. Alessandro

Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 100. Hitherto, Lippos stylistic
development had often been interpreted merely as a gradual approximation


of Simones style. For example, Bonnie Apgar Bennett wrote, Lippo

Memmis artistic career into the 1320s can be most accurately characterized
as a progressive acceptance of Simones style. Bonnie Apgar Bennett,
Lippo Memmi, Simone Martinis fratello in arte: The Image Revealed by
His Documented Works (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1977), 114.
[8] The two artists must have worked in partnership since the second decade,
as implied by their presence during the same years in various Tuscan and
Umbrian towns. At San Gimignano, Lippo signed the fresco of the Maest in
1317, and Simone painted one of his youthful altarpieces. Cf. Cristina De
Benedictis, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and
Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 4750; and Dillian Gordon, Simone
Martinis Altarpiece for S. Agostino, San Gimignano, The Burlington
Magazine 133 (1991): 771. In Pisa, Lippo painted his Triumph of Saint Thomas
in the church of Santa Caterina not long after Simones polyptych in the
same church (13191320); and in Orvieto, Simone executed polyptychs in
part preserved in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in the town, and Lippo
was commissioned to paint his Madonna dei raccomandati for the
cathedral.
[9] Mojmir S. Frinta (1998) stated that the punches used in the decoration of the
Gallery's painting also appeared in works by Simone Martini, such as the
youthful polyptych now divided among the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in
Madrid, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the J. Paul Getty
Museum in Los Angeles (punch 16 a, according to Frintas enumeration); the
polyptych in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in Orvieto; the Annunciation
in the Uffizi, Florence (Frintas I 70); the polyptych in Pisa dating to
13191320; and the folding Orsini altarpiece, now divided among the
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, the Gemldegalerie,
Staatliche Museen, Berlin, and the Muse du Louvre, Paris. See Mojmir
Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 310311, 321, 487488; and, for the Orsini
altarpiece, Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003),
362363.
[10] Cf. Antonino Caleca, Mostra del restauro di opere delle province di Pisa e
Livorno (Pisa, 1971), 2225; Joanna Cannon, Simone Martini, the
Dominicans and the Early Sienese Polyptych, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institute 45 (1982): 8586. The close stylistic affinity between the
polyptych of Casciana Alta and the panel in Washington was already
pointed out by Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su
Buffalmacco, Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 89; Carlo Volpe, Il gotico a
Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 186;
Angelo Tartuferi, Appunti su Simone Martini e chompagni, Arte cristiana
74 (1986): 85, 9192 n. 29; and Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische


(Berlin, 1988), 78.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The panel is composed of a single piece of wood trimmed along the lower edge.
At some point in the paintings history, the original triangular gable was cut just
above the Virgins halo. The gable was reconstructed with modern wood during an
undocumented restoration, probably conducted in 19271928.[1] The wooden
support was thinned to 5 mm and cradled, and the vertical edges covered by strips
of modern wood, probably at the same time that the gable was added. The modern
replacement of the missing top of the gable (c. 1216 cm) has been gilded and its
border decorated with punches that imitate the original ones along the vertical
edges of the panel. The painting was executed on a white gesso ground, with
gilding over a layer of red bole in the ground behind the figures. A green
imprimatura can be seen under the flesh tones. The paint was applied in thin layers
with little texture except for a discernible thickness in the Virgins blue cloak. A split
about 6 cm long runs upwards from the center of the lower edge of the panel.
There is a loss in the gilding at the upper left edge, and another loss is visible in
the lower left corner. There is inpainting in the Virgins cloak and in the childs
robe, as well as in some scratches in the faces.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] A photograph (Braun & C., Paris, no. 29710), probably taken on the occasion
of the London exhibition in 1904, shows the painting in the same condition
(with the gable cut and the major losses only roughly inpainted) as in the
reproduction in Robert Langton Douglass note (1927) published on the
occasion of the sale of the Benson collection. The painting presumably was
restored soon after its acquisition by Duveen Brothers, Inc., whose policy
was to restore paintings immediately, and sometimes rather drastically, after
their acquisition. See Robert Langton Douglas, I dipinti senesi della
Collezione Benson passati da Londra in America, Rassegna darte senese
e del costume 1, no. 5 (1927): 103 repro; Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in
Art (New York, 2004), 334.


PROVENANCE
Private collection, Paris; purchased c. 1896 through (Thos. Agnew and Sons, Ltd.,
London) by Robert Henry [18501929] and Evelyn Holford [18561943] Benson,
London and Buckhurst Park, Surrey;[1] sold 1927 with the entire Benson collection
to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[2] purchased 15
December 1936 by The Andrew W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust,
Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] According to Peter Wake, grandson of Robert
Benson (letter, Wake to Anna Voris, 2 February 1976, in NGA curatorial files), based
on Bensons own handwritten records the painting was bought in Paris about 1896
through Agnew. [2] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015,
Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 206, box 351, folders
2 and 3, and reel 207, box 352, folders 1 and 2 (copies in NGA curatorial files). See
also Robert Langton Douglas, "I dipinti senesi della Collezione Benson passati da
Londra in America," Rassegna dArte Senese e del Costume 1/5, no. 3 (May-June
1927): 99-105; Frank E. Washburn Freund, Die Sammlung Benson, Der Cicerone
19 (1927): 495-502; Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976:
183-184. [3] The original invoice for a large group of objects purchased from
Duveen Brothers, Inc. by the Mellon Trust is in NGA archives (Records of The A.W.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, subject files, box 2; copy in NGA
curatorial files).
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1904 Exhibition of Pictures of the School of Siena, Burlington Fine Arts Club,
London, 1904, no. 19.
1927 Loan Exhibition of the Benson Collection of Old Italian Masters, City of
Manchester Art Gallery, 1927, no. 101.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1914: 3(1908):79 n. 1.


1904 Frizzoni, Gustavo. "Lesposizione darte senese al Burlington Fine Arts

Club." LArte 7 (1904): 261.
1904 Fry, Roger. "La mostra darte senese al Burlington Club di Londra."
Rassegna dArte 4 (1904): 117.
1904 "Sienese Art at the Burlington Fine-Arts Club." The Athenaeum 3997
(June 1904): 728.
1905 Douglas, Robert Langton, ed. Exhibition of Pictures of the School of
Siena and Examples of the Minor Arts of That City. Exh. cat. Burlington
Fine Arts Club, 1904. London, 1905: 55, no. 19, pl. 16.
1907 Cust, Lionel. "La collection de M. R. H. Benson (Londres)." Les Arts 70
(1907): 24.
le sue origini. Milan, 1907: 659, fig. 536.
1907 Weigelt, Curt H. Lippo Memmi. In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden
Knstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme and
Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 23(1929):276.
York, 1908-1909: 2(1909):65 n. 6.
ed. New York, 1909: 202.
1914 Benson, Robert Henry. Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16 South Street,
Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex. London, 1914: no. 5.
1914 Borenius, Tancred. Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16 South Street, Park
Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex Collected by Robert and Evelyn
Benson. London, 1914: no. 5.
1920 Marle, Raimond van. Simone Martini et les peintres de son cole.
Strasbourg, 1920: 107-108.
Wildpark-Potsdam, 1924: 278.
1926 Gielly, Louis. Les primitifs siennois. Paris, 1926: 111.
1927 Douglas, Robert Langton. "I dipinti senesi della Collezione Benson
passati da Londra in America." Rassegna darte senese e del costume 1,
no. 5 (1927): repro. 103.
1927 Washburn-Freund, Frank E. "Die Sammlung Benson." Der Cicerone 19
(1927): 500.
1930 Weigelt, Curt H. Die sienesische Malerei des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts.
Pantheon Edition. Florence and Munich, 1930: 34.


103, fig. 105.

and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):282, fig. 186.
1933 Meiss, Millard. "The Problem of Francesco Traini." The Art Bulletin 15
(1933): 116.
1:no. 74, repro.
(repro.), 233.
repro. 153.
Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): 23, fig. 8.
1971 Polzer, Joseph. "Observations on Known Paintings and a New Altarpiece
by Francesco Traini." Pantheon 29 (1971): 386, 387, fig. 8.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 141, 312, 645.
1973 nieyska-Stolot, Ewa. "Geneza, styl i historia obrazu Matki Boskiej
czstochowskiej." Folia historiae artium 9 (1973): 26, 29 fig. 24, 30 n. 74,
fig. 27.
1974 De Benedictis, Cristina. "A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco."
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 9, fig. 11.



93, fig. 18.
1981 Belting, Hans. Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und
Funktion frher Bildtafeln der Passion. Berlin, 1981: 72, 73, fig. 71.
1983 Boskovits, Mikls. "Il gotico senese rivisitato: proposte e commenti su
una mostra." Arte cristiana 71 (1983): 264.
1985 Bagnoli, Alessandro, and Luciano Bellosi, eds. Simone Martini e
chompagni. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Florence, 1985: 92.
1985 Brandl, Rainer. Die Tafelbilder des Simone Martini: ein Beitrag zur Kunst
Sienas im Trecento. Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1985: 85 n. 1.
Washington, 1985: 230, repro. 251 (incorrectly identified as repro. for
1950.11.1.b, Attrib. to Martino di Bartolomeo di Biago, Madonna and Child
with Saint Peter and Saint Stephen).
1986 Boskovits, Mikls. "Sul trittico di Simone Martini e di Lippo Memmi." Arte
cristiana 74 (1986): 76 n. 33, 78 fig. 12.
1986 Conti, Alessandro. "Simone Martini e chompagni: Siena, Pinacoteca
Nazionale, March 27-October 31, 1985." Bollettino darte 71, nos. 35-36
(1986): 101.
1986 Ercoli, Giuliano. "Precursori, maestri e chompagni nella pittura del
Duecento e del Trecento." Antichit viva 25 (1986): 11.
1986 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Appunti su Simone Martini e chompagni." Arte
cristiana 74 (1986): 85, 91-92, n. 29.
1988 Boskovits, Mikls, ed. Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin,
Katalog der Gemlde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 78, 81.
1989 Castri, Serenella. "Memmi, Lippo (Lippo di Memmo di Filippuccio)." In
Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-1994: 3(1992):581.
1989 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. Simone Martini: catalogo completo dei
dipinti. Florence, 1989: 145.
1991 De Benedictis, Cristina. "Lippo Memmi." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 7(1996):735.
1996 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. "Lippo Memmi." In The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols.
Edited by Jane Turner. New York, 1996: 19:455.
Italian Paintings, 1300-1800. Kansas City, MO, 1996: 36, 38.


1997 Edmonds, Penelope. "A Technical Examination, Investigation, and

Treatment of a fifteenth-Century Seinese Polychrome Terra-Cotta
Relief." Studies in the History of Art 57 (1997): 68-69, fig. 3.
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 93, 252, 311, 317, 321, 446, 488.
2002 Franci, Beatrice. "Memmi, Lippo." In La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario dei
pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan, 2002: 2:591.
2003 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. Simone Martini. Milan, 2003: 181, 283.
2009 Spannocchi, Sabina. "Lippo e Tederigo Memmi." in La Collegiata di San
Gimignano, vol. 2, larchitettura, i cicli pittorici murali e i loro restauri.
Edited by Alessandro Bagnoli. Siena, 2009: 452.


Lippo Memmi
Saint John the Baptist

probably c. 1325
tempera on panel
painted surface (incised line to incised line): 88.7 42.2 cm (34 15/16 16 5/8 in.)
painted surface (original panel): 92.5 44 cm (36 7/16 17 5/16 in.)
overall: 94.3 45.3 cm (37 1/8 17 13/16 in.)
framed: 99.1 x 48.3 x 6 cm (39 x 19 x 2 3/8 in.)
Inscription: on the saint's scroll: ECCE AGNUS DEI.ECCE Q[UI TOLLIT PECCATUM
MUNDI] (Behold the Lamb of God; behold him who [taketh away the sins of the
world]; from John 1:29)
ENTRY
The panel presents the Baptist according to the traditional iconography:[1] with
shaggy hair and beard, camel-skin tunic, prophetic scroll in his left hand, and right
hand extended in blessing in the oriental fashion.[2] It is evidently the fragment of a
polyptych whose style, format, and proportions suggest that it was executed in the
circle of the Sienese master Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344)
around 13201330.[3] In the 1930s, Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval concluded that the
painting formed part of the same polyptych to which the panel of Saint Peter [fig.
1] in the Muse du Louvre, Paris, and that of Saint Paul [fig. 2] in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York belonged. She added to these the Madonna and Child
[fig. 3] in the Gemldegalerie, Berlin.[4] Some years later, Helen Comstock linked
the panel being discussed here with another of Saint John the Evangelist [fig. 4],
now in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and with those of Saints Louis
of Toulouse [fig. 5] and Francis [fig. 6] in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena.[5] At
this point, the reconstruction of the dismantled altarpiece, consisting of seven
panels, might have seemed complete. But not all art historians accepted it: some
detected sufficient stylistic disparities between its separate components to cast
doubt on their common origin. For example, Klara Steinweg (1956) considered the
Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist and Saints Peter and Paul to be
Saint John the Baptist 671


parts of two different polyptychs, the second of which might be identified, she
proposed, with that recorded by Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574) as a work
by Lippo Memmi in the church of San Paolo a Ripa dArno in Pisa.[6] Gertrude Coor
(1961) also found this hypothesis attractive.[7] Though her main interest was the
stylistic problems relating to the seven panels now dispersed among various
museums, she cogently pointed out that the provenance of the two panels now in
Siena, from Colle Val dElsa, rendered improbable the identification of the complex
with the one in Pisa described by Vasari. Coor later developed her reconstruction
of the polyptych by observing that the original frame that has survived on the
panels in New Haven and Siena presupposed the existence of a second tier of
smaller panels above the central Madonna and Child and the six lateral saints. In
her view, a bust of Christ in the Muse de la Chartreuse in Douai and the two saints
of the Vallombrosan Order in the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg (Germany) could
have formed part of this upper register.[8] Cristina De Benedictis (1974) proposed
an alternative reconstruction:[9] the panel in Washington, together with those in
Berlin, New Haven, New York, and Paris, formed part of a five-part complex
formerly in the church of San Paolo a Ripa dArno in Pisa. This altarpiece, in her
view, likely would have been furnished with a predella consisting of a series of
busts of apostles, now divided among the National Gallery of Art and other
collections.[10] But she argued that the panels of Saint Francis and Saint Louis now
in the Pinacoteca in Siena could not have formed part of it.
The hypothesis that has met with most support and that probably comes closer to
the truth was formulated by Michael Mallory (1974, 1975) and by Marianne Lonjon
(cited in Laclotte 1978).[11] Both accepted the reconstruction of the main register of
the complex as a heptaptych with a provenance from Colle Val dElsa. While not
excluding the possibility that the above-cited busts of apostles might have
belonged to the predella of the same complex, they maintained that the upper
register was formed not by the panels in Altenburg and Douai but by the half-
length figures of Mary Magdalene [fig. 7] in the Rhode Island School of Design in
Providence; Saint Clare [fig. 8] in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Saint
Agnes [fig. 9] and Saint Anthony [fig. 10] in the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh; and
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary [fig. 11] in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan.[12] An
additional panel of the gable zone, representing a half-length Saint Augustine [fig.
12] and now belonging to the Salini collection, Asciano, has been identified in more
recent years.[13] What is still lacking from the complex reconstructed in this way
[fig. 13] (see also Reconstruction) is the central panel of the upper register. The
central panel of the main register also remains in dispute, since the Madonna now


in Berlin shows some physical discrepancies from the six lateral saints.[14] Finally,
in 1995, Alessandro Bagnoli advanced convincing arguments to trace the origin of
this altarpiece back to the church of San Francesco in San Gimignano.[15]
As for the authorship of the painting in the Gallery, Raimond van Marle immediately
discarded the attribution to Taddeo di Bartolo proposed in the sale catalog (1932)
in favor of Simone Martini.[16] The panel was published under Simones name by
van Marle (1934), although in an expertise written as the 1934 volume was in press,
presumably produced for the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, van Marle had
already suggested this attribution.[17] Various other art historians expressed similar
opinions in handwritten expertises: Bernard Berenson, Giuseppe Fiocco, Roberto
Longhi, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi.[18] The attribution to Simone was
repeated by Helen Comstock (1939), Suida (1940), Robert Langton Douglas (in
Duveen Pictures 1941), George Martin Richter (1941), and Alfred M. Frankfurter
(1944).[19] The panel continued to bear an attribution to Simone in the catalogs of
the Gallery until 1959. However, already in the 1930s, some authors expressed
doubts, and some proposed an alternative attribution to Lippo Memmi (Simones
brother-in-law). Hermann Beenken (1935) rejected Simone Martinis
authorship.[20] Guglielmo Matthiae (1935) associated the painting with Lippo
Memmi, while in a private communication Robert Langton Douglas firmly supported
an attribution to Lippo.[21] For his part, F. Mason Perkins referred the painting to a
pupil or follower of Simone Martini.[22] Richard Offner, in a draft review of the
exhibition of Italian primitives at the Gallery, never published, concluded his
comment on the painting by pointing out, Lippos style commits the Baptist to his
authorship.[23] Klara Steinweg (1956), in turn, classified the painting as
Simonesque; Maria Cristina Gozzoli (1970) and Sebastiana Delogu Ventroni (1972)
classified it as a work by Simones shop.[24] Giovanni Previtali (1985) felt that he
could not wholly reject Simones personal involvement: referring to the Saint John
the Baptist being discussed here and its companion panels, he asked, Is it really
possible wholly to exclude Simones intervention from these extraordinary
quintessences of aristocratic deportment and dignified elegance?[25] Another
hypothesis that has been proposed is that the polyptych in question is the
collaborative work of various painters active in Lippos shop, including the mythical
Barna.[26] The date of the painting is also contested: proposals fluctuate
between 1315 and 1335, even though more recent studies in general accept its
execution in the 1320s.[27]


The uncertainties about the attribution and date of Saint John the Baptist depend
in large measure on art historians different judgments about the extent of Lippo
Memmis oeuvre and of its stylistic autonomy. Various scholars have wondered
whether the changes that can be observed in the paintings attributed to him are
indicative of the masters stylistic development, or of the intervention of particularly
talented assistants, such as Lippos brother Tederico, or others. It seems very
unlikely, however, that the proportions of the figures painted in Lippos shop could
have been elongated, the drawing given added complexity of rhythm, and the
modeling softened depending on the relative talents and skills of the artists
various collaborators. The starting point for a dispassionate consideration of the
question must be the presupposition, apparently banal (though often placed in
doubt), that the signed works, unless proof to the contrary is forthcoming, imply
that the work in question is substantially an autograph of the artist who signed
it.[28] The few secure dates at our disposal regarding the output of the two
brothers-in-law, Lippo Memmi and Simone Martini, who worked in close contact at
least since the 1320s, would suggest that although there is admittedly a substantial
corollary between their styles, their individual characteristics never became
interchangeable. I think it is right to maintain, therefore, that the polyptych of which
the Washington Baptist formed part, with its slender and aristocratic figures of
meditative poise and restrained movements, should be inserted in Lippos catalog
in a phase undoubtedly subsequent to his fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico in San
Gimignano (1317), but preceding the phase in which the artist signed and dated
(1333) the ascetic and nervous figure of the Baptist formerly in the Golovin
collection in New York, which originally formed a diptych together with the signed
Madonna (no. 1081) in Berlin. In these panels, the amplitude of gold ground not
occupied by figures, the pointed arch upper termination, and the pursuit of
preciosity in the elaboration of the decorative elements, especially in the
prominent bands of punched ornament, testify to an advanced stage in the artists
development.[29] The external profiling of the three panels that still retain their
original frame, the trapezoidal termination above the inscribed Gothic arch, and the
slender pinnacles of the upper register all are features that appear more modern
than those of the polyptych from the church of San Niccol at Casciana Alta, near
Pisa. In the latter, undoubtedly painted after 1323,[30] the individual panels of the
altarpiece have squatter proportions and an upper termination in the form of a
trilobate round arch. Moreover, the panels with rectangular external profile are
surmounted by triangular gables, reviving in simplified form the type of Simones
Pisan polyptych dating to 1319/1320. From a strictly stylistic point of view, various


elements suggest a dating of the Casciana Alta complex after the altarpiece with
the Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the church of Santa Caterina in Pisa, a
work probably realized shortly after the saints canonization in 1323.[31] However
prestigious a commission it may have been, that work is characterized by a more
summary modeling, a more emphatic use of an incisive contour line, and a less
subtle hand in exploiting soft chiaroscuro effects in modeling the forms, compared
to the panels discussed here.[32]
One of Lippos paintings for which a plausible date is available is the polyptych of
1325 formerly over the high altar of the church of San Paolo a Ripa dArno in Pisa,
described by Vasari in his vita of Simone and now divided among the museums of
Altenburg, Douai, Palermo (Galleria Nazionale), and Pisa. This is in fact the work by
Lippo that approaches most closely in style the polyptych of which our Baptist
originally formed part.[33]
Despite the uncertainties that various scholars express both about the name of the
artist and about its date, transmitted by the sources but often placed in doubt, it
can be said with some confidence, in the light of our present-day knowledge of
Trecento painting in Siena, that both Lippos signature and the year of execution of
the Pisan polyptych are entirely plausible. Unfortunately, because of the loss of the
original frames and the arbitrary alterations to the external profiling of the main
panels of this altarpiece, typological comparison with the San Gimignano polyptych
is no longer feasible. All we can say is that the airy composition of the individual
panels and the use, at least in the gabled ones, of the pointed arch motif with
inscribed trefoil, suggest their dating to the same period. A further, albeit vague,
piece of evidence of their chronological proximity might be the presence of the
same punched motif in both the Washington panel [fig. 14] and the panel of Saint
Peter now in Palermo.[34] But it is above all the accomplished drawing, especially
evident in the harmonious curvilinear rhythms of the contours; the self-assured
elegance of the poses; and the softness of the modeling that testify that the two
complexes were executed in the same phase of Lippos art. Sufficient evidence
does not exist to establish with certainty whether the one polyptych takes
precedence over the other in date, even though I am inclined to think that the
altarpiece painted for the Franciscans in San Gimignano is somewhat later than the
other, to which the sources attach the date 1325. One thing is certain: the
Washington Saint John the Baptist was painted in the artists full maturity, the
phase in which his output reached its highest levels. That explains, even if it cannot
justify, the now obsolete attribution to Simone Martini.




COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Lippo Memmi, Saint Peter, probably c. 1325, tempera fig. 2 Lippo Memmi, Saint Paul, probably c. 1325, tempera
on panel, Muse du Louvre, Paris. RMN-Grand on panel, gold ground, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Palais/Art Resource, NY. Photographer: Grard Blot New York, Gift of Coudert Brothers, 1888


fig. 3 Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child, probably c. 1325,

tempera on panel, Gemldegalerie, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin. Image: bpk, Berlin/Gemldegalerie, Staatliche
Museen, Berlin/Joerg P. Anders/Art Resource, NY
fig. 4 Lippo Memmi, Saint John the Evangelist, probably c.

1325, tempera on panel, Yale University Art Gallery,
Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, B. A. 1896. Image: Yale
University Art Gallery


fig. 5 Lippo Memmi, Saint Francis, probably c. 1325, fig. 6 Lippo Memmi, Saint Louis of Toulouse, probably c.
tempera on panel, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Image 1325, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena
courtesy of the Ministerio per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali


fig. 7 Lippo Memmi, Mary Magdalene, probably c. 1325, fig. 8 Lippo Memmi, Saint Clare, probably c. 1325,
tempera on panel, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
Design, Providence, Museum Appropriation Fund 21.250. York, Gift of Irma N. Straus, 1964
Image: Erik Gould, courtesy of the Museum of Art, Rhode
Island School of Design, Providence


fig. 9 Lippo Memmi, Saint Agnes, probably c. 1325, fig. 10 Lippo Memmi, Saint Anthony, probably c. 1325,
tempera on panel, Frick Art and Historical Center, tempera on panel, Frick Art and Historical Center,
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh


fig. 11 Lippo Memmi, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, probably fig. 12 Lippo Memmi, Saint Augustine, probably c. 1325,
c. 1325, tempera on panel, Museo Poldo Pezzoli, Milan. tempera on panel, Salini collection, Castello di Gallico,
Image: Fondazione Artistica Poldo Pezzoli ""Onlus"" Asciano, Siena


fig. 13 Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Lippo

Memmi. Bottom tier: a. Saint Louis of Toulouse (fig. 6); b.
Saint Paul (fig. 2); c. Saint John the Baptist; d. Madonna
and Child (fig. 3); e. Saint John the Evangelist (fig. 4); f.
Saint Peter (fig. 1); g. Saint Francis (fig. 5). Upper tier: h.
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (fig. 11); i. Saint Augustine (fig.
12); j. Mary Magdalene (fig. 7); k. Saint Anthony (fig. 10); l.
Saint Clare (fig. 8); m. Saint Agnes (fig. 9)
fig. 14 Detail of halo, Lippo Memmi, Saint John the Baptist,

probably c. 1325, tempera on panel, National Gallery of
Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Lippo Memmi.

Bottom tier:
a. Saint Louis of Toulouse (Entry fig. 6)
b. Saint Paul (Entry fig. 2)
c. Saint John the Baptist
d. Madonna and Child (Entry fig. 3)
e. Saint John the Evangelist (Entry fig. 4)
f. Saint Peter (Entry fig. 1)
g. Saint Francis (Entry fig. 5)
Upper tier:
h. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (Entry fig. 11)
i. Saint Augustine (Entry fig. 12)
j. Mary Magdalene (Entry fig. 7)
k. Saint Anthony (Entry fig. 10)
l. Saint Clare (Entry fig. 8)
m. Saint Agnes (Entry fig. 9)


NOTES
[1] See George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in
Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 549550; Alexandre Masseron, Saint
Jean Baptiste dans lart (Paris, 1957).
[2] The blessing gesture used in the Greek Church is performed with the
forefinger, ring finger, and little finger extended or, as in Lippos panel, with
thumb, forefinger, and little finger extended. See E. Fehrenbach, Bnir
(manire de), in Dictionnaire darchologie chrtienne et de liturgie, ed.
Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, 15 vols. (Paris, 1925), 2, pt. 1:746758.
[3] On the formats of Sienese polyptychs, and in particular of Simone in the

period indicated, cf. Joanna Cannon, Simone Martini, the Dominicans and
the Early Sienese Polyptych, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institute 45 (1982): 6993.
[4] Muse du Louvre, Paris, no. M.I. 690, 94 44.2 cm; Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, no. 88.3.99, 93.3 43.7 cm; Staatliche Museen,
Gemldegalerie, Berlin, no. 1067, 77.5 55.5 cm (calculating only the
dimensions of the original part of this panel, which was cropped at an early
date and later elongated in its upper part by a 9 cm-high modern
addition). Federico Zeri reported Evelyn Sandberg-Vavals manuscript
opinion; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese
and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 51. However, Raimond van
Marle had perhaps already recognized the New York and Paris panels as
probable components of the same multipart altarpiece, noting stylistic
affinities between these two works and the Madonna in Berlin. Raimond van
Marle, Simone Martini et les peintres de son cole (Strasbourg, 1920),
108109.
[5] The paintings in question are: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven,
no. 1943.239, 104.9 44.6 cm; Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, nos. 49 (105
46 cm), 48 (105 46 cm); cf. Helen Comstock, The Worlds Fair and Other
Exhibitions, Connoisseur 103 (1939): 275277.
[6] [Lippo] fece...in San Paolo a Ripa dArno...la tavola a tempera che oggi
sopra laltar maggiore, dentrovi una Nostra Donna, San Piero, San Paolo e
San Giovan Batista ed altri Santi; e in questa pose Lippo il suo nome (Lippo
made in San Paolo a Ripa dArno the tempera painting that today stands on
the high altar, in which is Our Lady, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint John
the Baptist, and other saints; and Lippo put his name to this painting):
Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei pi eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed.
Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence, 1878), 1:554555. Klara Steinweg
cautiously suggested that the two panels of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (now
respectively in the Muse du Louvre, Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of


Art, New York) belonged to this polyptych. Klara Steinweg, Beitrge zu

Simone Martini und seiner Werkstatt, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen
Institutes in Florenz 7 (1956): 168 n. 23.
[7] Gertrude Coor, Two Unknown Paintings by the Master of the Glorification
of St. Thomas and Some Closely Related Works, Pantheon 19 (1961):
131132, 135 n. 25.
[8] Muse de la Chartreuse, Douai, no. 1135, 52 28.5 cm: see Francoise
Baligand, Le Muse de la Chartreuse, Douai (Paris, 1999), 18; Lindenau-
Museum, Altenburg, nos. 4445, 57, 5 26 cm each: see Robert Oertel,
Frhe italienische Renaissance in Altenburg: Beschreibender Katalog der
Gemlde des 13. bis 16. Jahrhunderts im Staatlichen Lindenau-Museum
(Berlin, 1961), 7576; Daniela Parenti, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel
Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, eds. Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps
(Siena, 2008),
2837.
[9] Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco, Antichit

viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 78.
[10] The busts in question are here considered works produced by Simone
Martinis shop (see Saint Matthew, Saint Simon, Saint James Major, and
Saint Judas Thaddeus).
[11] Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,

Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 187202; Michael Mallory,
Thoughts Concerning the Master of the Glorification of St. Thomas, The
Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 1820; Marianne Lonjon, in Retables italiens du XIIIe
au XVe sicle, ed. Claude Ressort, Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte (Paris,
1978), 19.
[12] Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, no. 21.250, 51.5 24.5 cm;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no. 64.189.2, 39.4 19.1 cm (painted
surface; with modern frame, 48.3 20.3 cm); Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh,
no. 1970.38, 40 18.9 cm (painted surface of each; with modern frame, 63.3
24 cm and 63.3 24.5 cm, respectively); and Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan,
no. 3343, 50.5 22 cm.
[13] Federico Zeri first recognized the panel as belonging to the polyptych being
discussed here in 1976 (Zeri to Marianne Lonjon); cf. Marianne Lonjon,
Prcisions sur la provenance du retable dit de Colle di Val dElsa de Lippo
Memmi, La revue des muses de France 56 (2006): 38, n. 2. Cristina De
Benedictis subsequently published it as an image of Saint Augustine,
whereas Lonjon identified the saint in question as the patron of San
Gimignano. However, the fact that the saint wears the black cloak of the
Augustinian canons makes the former proposal more convincing. Cf.
Cristina De Benedictis, Mario Salmi collezionista, in Studi di storia dellarte
sul Medioevo e il Rinascimento: Nel centenario della nascita di Mario Salmi


(Florence, 1992), 125136.
[14] Hayden Maginniss observation (1977) of the differences between the

punched decoration of the Madonna in Berlin and that of the panels thought
to have formed the main register of the polyptych seemed convincing to the
present writer (1988), who noted that the back of the panel of the Madonna
lacks the layer of gesso present in other panels of the polyptych. From this
and a few other small differences, the conclusion has been drawn (and
largely shared in the art historical literature) that the Berlin Madonna cannot
have formed part of the polyptych from the Franciscans of San Gimignano.
Further reflection (and also closer inspection of the back of the Berlin panel,
which reveals that it has been slightly thinned and probably stripped of the
layer of gesso with which it was originally covered) has now strengthened
my suspicion that the painting in question, whose stylistic and chronological
closeness to the other components of the San Gimignano polyptych is
generally recognized, could possibly have formed part of it. Cf. Hayden B.J.
Maginnis, The Literature of Sienese Trecento Painting 19451975,
Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 40 (1977): 289; Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe
Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 75.
[15] Alessandro Bagnoli, La chiesa di San Francesco a Colle di Val dElsa:

Intenti per un restauro globale, in Restauri e recuperi in terra di Siena: XI
Settimana dei Beni Culturali, ed. Cecilia Alessi and Cristina Gnoni Mavarelli
(BadesseMonteriggioni [Siena], 1995).
[16] Collection Comte Oriola, forme en Italie de 1860-1896 env.: Tableaux,

sculptures, tapisseries . . . acquis en grande partie des collections Bardini,
Borghese etc., vente publique Amsterdam, direction Mensing & Fils, le 13
avril 1932 (Amsterdam, 1932), lot. 3.
[17] Undated copy of expertise in NGA curatorial files. Raimond van Marle, Le
scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 2, La scuola senese del XIV secolo (The
Hague, 1934), 210; Raimond van Marle, Italiaansche Kunst in Nederlandsch
Bezeit (Amsterdam, 1934), 85.
[18] Copies of the expertises by Bernard Berenson, Giuseppe Fiocco, Roberto

Longhi, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi are in NGA curatorial files.
[19] See Helen Comstock, The Worlds Fair and Other Exhibitions, Connoisseur
103 (1939): 277; Wilhelm Suida, Die Sammlung Kress: New York, Pantheon
26 (1940): 274; Robert Langton Douglas, in Duveen Brothers, Duveen
Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 13. Cf. also
Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library,
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 121, box 266, folder 18 (copy in
NGA curatorial files); George Martin Richter, The New National Gallery in
Washington, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177; and
Alfred M. Frankfurter, The Kress Collection in the National Gallery (New


York, 1944), 21 (repro.), 63.
[20] Hermann Beenken, Review of Le scuole della pittura italiana II by Raimond

van Marle, Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 4 (1935): 356.
[21] Guglielmo Matthiae, In margine allesposizione darte italiana ad

Amsterdam, Rivista del R. Istituto darcheologia e storia dellarte 5 (1935):
217. For Robert Langton Douglass opinion, cf. Duveen Brothers, Duveen
Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 13, and
Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library,
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 121, box 266, folder 18.
[22] Manuscript opinion, dated March 23, 1940 (copy in NGA curatorial files).
[23] Unpublished draft review intended for Art News (copy in NGA curatorial
files).
[24] Klara Steinweg, Beitrge zu Simone Martini und seiner Werkstatt,

Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 7 (1956): 167;
Cristina Maria Gozzoli, in Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli,
Lopera completa di Simone Martini (Milan, 1970), 105 no. 54; Sebastiana
Delogu Ventroni, Barna da Siena (Pisa, 1972), 59.
[25] Giovanni Previtali, Introduzione, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed.

Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 28.
[26] Ever since 1952, when Federico Zeri firmly asserted the authorship of Lippo
Memmi, most art historians have accepted this attribution (with the
exceptions mentioned above); Federico Zeri, An Exhibition of
Mediterranean Primitives, The Burlington Magazine 94 (1952): 321. But
sometimes the polyptych has been given to Barna and hence reassigned
to the Memmi shop, as part of the recent tendency to consider the paintings
previously cataloged under the name Barna as part of the production of the
bottega of the Memmi family. Charles Seymour (1970) thus considered it
executed at least in part by Barna. Giovanni Previtali (1988) also described
it as a production of the family shop. Alessandro Conti (1986) spoke with
regard to the Gallery Baptist of a so-called Master of Asciano (the
anonymous master to whom he attributed the Madonna in the local
museum, usually given to Barna), and Giulietta Chelazzi Dini (1985)
considered at least the Saint Francis and Saint Louis of Toulouse in the
Pinacoteca of Siena to be the work of the Master of the Triumph of Saint
Thomas Aquinas (Santa Caterina, Pisa), sometimes attributed to Barna, but
perhaps identifiable, according to Chelazzi Dini, with the young Francesco
Traini. There are also those who have supported the common authorship of
Lippo and his brother Tederico for the San Gimignano polytych (Bagnoli
1999, Leone De Castris 2003). See Charles Seymour, Early Italian Paintings
in the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven and London, 1970), 92;
Giovanni Previtali, Introduzione ai problemi della bottega di Simone
Martini, in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985,


ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 160, 161, 166 n. 22, 26; Alessandro
Conti, Simone Martini e chompagni: Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale, March
27October 31, 1985, Bollettino darte 71, no. 3536 (1986): 102; Giulietta
Chelazzi Dini, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and
Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 88; Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di
Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999), 142, 151 n. 184; Pierluigi
Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 181, 218 n. 49.
[27] Conjecturing the authorship of Simone Martini, Raimond van Marle (1934,
1935) proposed the date c. 1320, followed by Alfred Frankfurter (1944).
Duveen Pictures 1941 reproposed the same attribution but suggested a
dating to the years 13151320. A dating to 13251330 was supported by
Gertrude Coor (1961), Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, 1979), Millard Meiss (1977),
NGA 1985, Cristina De Benedictis in her more recent contributions (1992,
1996), and Marianne Lonjon (2006). Antonino Caleca (1976), for his part,
vaguely dated the panel to the decade 13201330, while Alessandro
Bagnoli (1999) proposed its execution in the years 13231325, and Pierluigi
Leone De Castris (2003) in those between 1326 and 1328. De Benedictis
(1974) initially suggested a dating to c. 1330, followed by Michael Mallory
(1974, 1975); Michel Laclotte (1978); Federico Zeri (in Zeri and Gardner, 1980);
Keith Christiansen (1982); and Mauro Natale, Alessandra Mottola Molfino,
and Joyce Brusa (1982). See Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura
italiana, vol. 2, La scuola senese del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 210,
fig. 142; Raimond van Marle, La pittura allesposizione darte antica italiana
di Amsterdam, Bollettino darte 27 (1935): 297, fig. 4; Alfred M. Frankfurter,
The Kress Collection in the National Gallery (New York, 1944), 21, 63;
Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America (New
York, 1941), no. 13; Gertrude Coor, Two Unknown Paintings by the Master of
the Glorification of St. Thomas and Some Closely Related Works, Pantheon
19 (1961): 129130, 133134 n. 15, 135 n. 25; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings
from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century
(London, 1966), 49, fig. 126; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:331333; Millard Meiss, Notes
on a Dated Diptych by Lippo Memmi, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di
Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal
Poggetto, 2 vols. (Milan, 1977), 1:139; National Gallery of Art, European
Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 231; Cristina De
Benedictis, Mario Salmi collezionista, in Studi di storia dellarte sul
Medioevo e il Rinascimento: Nel centenario della nascita di Mario Salmi
(Florence, 1992), 129; Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi, in
Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:733; Marianne
Lonjon, Prcisions sur la provenance du retable dit de Colle di Val dElsa
de Lippo Memmi, La revue des muses de France 56 (2006): 34, 38 n. 1,
39 n. 13; Antonino Caleca, Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna
e la bottega di Simone e Lippo, 1, Critica darte 41 (1976): 53, fig. 59;


Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan,

1999), 142, 151 n. 184; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan,
2003), 181, 218 n. 49; Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su
Buffalmacco, Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8; Michael Mallory, An
Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered, Metropolitan Museum Journal 9
(1974): 187188; Michael Mallory, Thoughts Concerning the Master of the
Glorification of St. Thomas, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 1820; Michel
Laclotte, in Retables italiens du XIIIe au XVe sicle, ed. Claude Ressort,
Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte (Paris, 1978), 19; Federico Zeri, in
Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and
Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 5052; Keith Christiansen, Fourteenth-
Century Italian Altarpieces, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 40
(1982): 26, fig. 25; Mauro Natale, Alessandra Mottola Molfino, and Joyce
Brusa, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, vol. 1, Dipinti (Milan, 1982), 145.
[28] In particular, Giovanni Previtali cast doubt on the credibility of Lippos

signature: he suggested that in the polyptych of San Paolo a Ripa dArno in
Pisa, a work signed by Lippo according to the sources and now dispersed
among the museums in Altenburg, Palermo, Pisa and elsewhere, the
drawing and at least part of the execution should be attributed to Simone
Martini, and that this master was also partially responsible for the execution
of the Madonna in the church of the Servi in Siena, signed by Lippo. Previtali
also believed that an intervention by Lippo was probable in the execution of
the polyptych in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo of Orvieto, although it
bears the signature of Simone Martini. See Giovanni Previtali,
Introduzione, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli
and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 2728. This latter hypothesis more
recently was revived by Bagnoli, who maintained with some assurance the
common authorship of Simone and Lippo for the polyptych in Orvieto. See
Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan,
1999), 142.
[29] The former Golovin Baptist is particularly suited to comparison with the
painting in Washington; cf. An Exhibition of Italian Panels and Manuscripts
from the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries in Honor of Richard Offner
(Hartford, 1965), 24, no. 24; Millard Meiss, Notes on a Dated Diptych by
Lippo Memmi, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed.
Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, 2 vols.
(Milan, 1977), 1:137139. Admittedly, after the drastic cleaning to which the
New York painting has been subjected it is difficult to assess its modeling,
but its composition, its restless contours, or the impulsive gesture of the
saint himself can leave no doubt about the panels belonging to a later
stylistic phase than the Baptist in the Gallery.
[30] For the polyptych of Casciana Alta, originally intended for Pisa Cathedral,


the presence of Saint Thomas Aquinas, canonized on July 18, 1323,

constitutes a secure terminus post quem. But even irrespective of this date,
the more elongated proportions of the figures and the delicacy of the
chiaroscuro imply that the polyptych was painted several years after
Simones polyptych in Santa Caterina in Pisa. On the polyptych of Casciana
Alta, see in particular Luciano Bellosi, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 94102.
[31] With regard to the Santa Caterina altarpiece, for which the contribution of
Michael Mallory (1975) remains fundamental, the so-called Master of the
Triumph of Saint Thomas to whom Mallory and some other scholars
attributed it is now generally identified with Lippo (or Lippo and shop). See
Michael Mallory, Thoughts Concerning the Master of the Glorification of St.
Thomas, The Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 920. The caution of suspecting that a
second artist worked alongside Lippo Memmi, one devoid of any real art
historical substance or even biographical foundationsuch as Tederico
Memmi, a documented personality but perhaps not an artist, or Barna,
likely a wholly fictitious characterseems unjustified.
[32] In the Pisan altarpiece, particularly eloquent analogies with the San
Gimignano polyptych are offered by the figure of Saint Paul to the upper left
(to be compared with the image of the same saint now in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York) and some faces among the friars and religious
people gathered at Saint Thomass feet, similar in facial type to the Saint
Louis in Siena. The Triumph of Saint Thomas nevertheless lacks the pursuit
of the nobility of features, with its subtly modulated profile, and the
measured, curvilinear rhythms of the contours of the tunics and mantles that
distinguish the panel of the Baptist in the Gallery and its companion
paintings.
[33] The figures of the Pisan polyptych seem taller and more slender, and they
move with greater ease, than the figures of the Baptist or of Saints Peter
and Paul in the complex destined for San Gimignano. This might also
depend on the unusual iconography (the representation of the saints seated
on faldstools), but their solemn and composed attitude, the faces modeled
with subtly filtered light, and the delicate shading that minutely explores
each detail of the form anticipate phenomena that characterize Lippos
paintings in the early 1330s. Another aspect that invites comparison
between the Pisa and San Gimignano polyptychs is the dynamic calligraphy,
intermittent in tension, of the contour lines. In the Gallerys panel and its
companions, the artists preoccupation with decorative elements, and
especially his concern with embellishing even the outer edges of the
painted surface with punched motifs, suggest that the San Gimignano
polyptych is slightly later in date than the Pisa polyptych of 1325.
[34] Mojmir S. Frinta (1998) pointed out the presence of the punch mark he
called complex tetra-lobe (tetrafoil) both in the panel in the Gallery and in


the former Chiaramonte Bordonaro Saint Peter (now in the Galleria

Nazionale in Palermo). This punch also recurs in other Lippo works,
including the Casciana Alta polyptych and the triptych of the Annunciation
dated 1333 in the Uffizi, Florence, executed in collaboration with Simone
Martini. See Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval
Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 400.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden support consists of a single-member panel with vertical grain. The
pointed arch retains the first molding of its original engaged frame. Stephen
Pichetto thinned and cradled the panel in 19381939 (at present the wood is
1.31.5 cm thick).[1] Probably on the same occasion the edges of the panel were cut
along the pointed arch.
The painting was executed on a gesso ground. An underdrawing of thin contour

lines is visible with infrared reflectography,[2] and a green underpainting is present
beneath the flesh tones. The gilded areas were prepared with an orange-red layer
of bole. Punchwork decorates the halo as well as the outer edges of the gold
ground and the curved spandrels between the pointed external arch and the
trefoil-shaped inner frame.
The painted surface is in relatively good condition, but a vertical check extends
approximately 6.5 cm from the bottom edge of the panel, and another is visible
only on the reverse. There are small paint losses, which are especially heavy in the
red drapery, and some abrasion in the gold ground. A 2 cm-wide strip of paint and
gilding along the side and bottom edges is later restoration and has discolored. A
nineteenth-century frame was present and covered this strip until the 19381939
treatment.[3] The painting was treated again in 1955 by Mario Modestini. Areas of
the red drapery were extensively glazed during one or both of these treatments. A
thick and discolored layer of varnish now covers the surface.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Cf. Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection:
Italian Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 49; Fern Rusk Shapley,


[2] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Hamamatsu c/1000-03

Vidicon camera fitted with an N2606-10 or N214 lead sulphide tube.
[3] The painting is reproduced within a nineteenth-century frame of rectangular

shape both in the 1932 sale catalog and by Raimond van Marle (in 1934 and
1935). Apparently, it maintained the appearance given to it during an
undocumented nineteenth-century restoration and was not subjected to any
further treatment before its acquisition by Duveen Brothers, Inc., by 1938.
See Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 2, La scuola
senese del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 210, fig. 142; Raimond van Marle,
La pittura allesposizione darte antica italiana di Amsterdam, Bollettino
darte 27 (1935): 297, fig. 4.
PROVENANCE
Probably church of San Francesco, San Gimignano, until 1553;[1] church of San
Giovanni Battista, San Gimignano, until 1782/1787;[2] church of San Francesco,
Colle Val dElsa, between 1787 and mid-nineteenth century.[3] Graf von Oriola,
Schloss Budesheim, Oberhessen; (his sale, Mensing & Fils at Frederik Muller & Co.,
Amsterdam, 13 April 1932, no. 3, as by Taddeo di Bartolo).[4] (Jacques Goudstikker,
Amsterdam), by 1934;[5] purchased February 1937 through (Paul Cassierer & Co.,
Amsterdam) by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[6] sold June
1938 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] In 1865
Francesco Brogi saw two of the original companion panels to the NGAs painting in
the church of the Franciscans of Colle Val dElsa (not published until 1897:
Francesco Brogi, Inventario generale degli oggetti darte della provincia di Siena,
Siena, 1897: 158). However, it has been convincingly suggested (Alessandro
Bagnoli, "La Chiesa di San Francesco a Colle di Val d'Elsa, intenti per un restauro
globale," in Restauri e Recuperi in terra di Siena. XI Settimana dei Beni Culturali,
Sienna, December 1995: n.p.; Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone Martini,
Milan, 1999: 151 n. 184; Marianne Lonjon, Prcisions sur la provenance du retable
dit 'de Colle val dElsa' de Lippo Memmi, Revue des Muse de France 56, no. 2
[2006]: 31-40) that they were transferred there only in the late eighteenth century
from the church of the same order in San Gimignano; it may be presumed that they
had originally adorned its high altar. Situated outside the city walls, the church of
San Francesco in San Gimignano was demolished in 1553, when, by order of
Cosimo I de Medici, a new system of fortifications was erected around the city. [2]
After the 1553 demolition of their church of San Francesco, the Franciscans moved


inside the city of San Gimignano, settling in the convent annexed to the church of
San Giovanni Battista. In 1782 Duke Leopold suppressed this convent, forcing the
friars to make another move. [3] The community of friars moved to the convent of
San Francesco in Colle Val dElsa in 1787, likely bringing with them all the church
furnishings from San Gimignano. As mentioned above (note 1), two companion
panels, Memmis Saint Francis and Saint Louis of Toulouse (both now in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena), were recorded by Francesco Brogi in 1865 as
hanging in the sacristy of the Franciscan church of Colle. The other panels of the
dismembered altarpiece were no longer there at this time. [4] The auction catalog
offered for sale a Collection Comte Oriola, forme en Italie de 1860-1896 env.,
without further explanation. Lot 1 of the sale was a detached fresco by Perugino
representing the Piet, which apparently remained unsold (now in the collection of
the Cassa di Risparmio in Florence). Walter and Elisabeth Paatz (Die Kirchen von
Florenz. Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols., Frankfurt am Main, 1940-1953:
4 [1952]: 649-650, n. 35) cite the fresco as belonging to the heirs of Graf Oriola in
Bdesheim, Oberhessen, the location of the collection. The year 1883 is stated as
the date of Graf Oriolas acquisition. An Italian stone relief representing the Profile
Portrait of a Man, lot 46 of the 1932 sale in Amsterdam, which similarly found its
way into the Kress Foundations collection in 1938 and subsequently into the
Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, is also stated to have belonged to the Oriola
Collection in Bdensheim; see Ulrich Middeldorf, Sculptures from the Samuel H.
Kress Collection. European Sculptures, London, 1976: 67. It is possible that the
Comte Oriola named in the sale catalogue referred to Eduard Ernst Lobo da
Silveira (1809-1862) and his sons, Waldemar (1854-1910) and Joachim (1858-1907)
Lobo da Silveira, all of whom were known as Graf von Oriola. They were the son
and grandsons, respectively, of a Portuguese minister, Joaquim Jos Lobo da
Silveira (1772-1846), who was given a title in the Prussian nobility by Friedrich
Wilhelm III, king of Prussia (1770-1840) and who resettled his family in Prussia.
Waldemar had Schloss Bdesheim constructed in 1885 near an older castle of the
same name, and Joachim was a naval attach in the German embassy in Italy. [5]
Goudstikker lent the painting to an exhibition in Amsterdam in 1934. On the life and
career of the Dutch dealer see Charlotte Wiefhoff, De Kunsthandelaar Jacques
Goudstikker 1897 - 1940, Nederlands Kunsthistotisch Jaarboek 32 (1982): 249-
278. [6] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library,
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 119, box 264, folder 8; reel 121, box 266,
folder 18 (copies in NGA curatorial files). [7] The bill of sale for eight paintings,
including this one, is dated 21 June 1938; payments were to extend through


November 1939. The attributions on the bill, in this case to Simone Martini, were
those of Bernard Berenson. Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015,
Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 329, box 474, folder 5
(copies in NGA curatorial files).
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1934 Italiaansche Kunst in Nederlandsch Bezit, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,

1934, no. 222, repro., as by Simone Martini.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1932 Collection Comte Oriola, forme en Italie de 1860-1896 Env. : tableaux,

sculptures, tapisseries... acquis en grande partie des collections Bardini,
Borghese etc., vente publique Amsterdam, direction Mensing & Fils, le
13 avril 1932. Amsterdam, 1932: lot. 3.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):210, fig. 142.
1934 Marle, Raimond van. Italiaansche Kunst in Nederlandsch Bezeit. Exh.
cat. Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam, 1934: 85, fig. 222.
1935 Beenken, Hermann. "Review of Le scuole della pittura italiana II by
Raimond van Marle." Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 4 (1935): 356.
1935 Marle, Raimond van. "La pittura allesposizione darte antica italiana di
Amsterdam." Bollettino darte 27 (1935): 297, fig. 4
1936 Rinaldis, Aldo de. Simone Martini. Rome, n.d. [1936]: 79.
1939 Comstock, Helen. "The Worlds Fair and other Exhibitions." Connoisseur
103 (1939): 277.
274.
New York, 1941: no. 13, repro., as by Simone Martini.
(repro.), 241 as by Simone Martini.
Art, Washington, 1941: 185, no. 402, as by Simone Martini.
repro. 189, as by Simone Martini.


York, 1944: 21, repro., as by Simone Martini.

1952 Zeri, Federico. "An Exhibition of Mediterranean Primitives." The
1956 Steinweg, Klara. "Beitrge zu Simone Martini und seiner Werkstatt."
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 31, repro., as by Simone Martini.
1960 Ranucci, Cristina. "Lippo di Memmo di Filippuccio (Memmi)." In
82+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 65(2005):227.
1960 Volpe, Carlo. "Precisazioni sul Barna e sul Maestro di Palazzo
Venezia." Arte antica e moderna (1960): 157 n. 10.
1961 Coor, Gertrude. "Two Unknown Paintings by the Master of the
Glorification of St. Thomas and Some Closely Related Works." Pantheon
19 (1961): 129-130, 133-134 n. 15, 135 n. 25, fig. 9.
(reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): no. 298, repro., as by
Simone Martini.
1968 Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. 2 vols.
London and New York, 1968: 2:270.
un riesame dellarte nellet fridericiana. Rome, 1969: 335 n. 7.
1970 Contini, Gianfranco, and Maria Cristina Gozzoli. Lopera completa di
Simone Martini. Milan, 1970: 105, no. 54.
1972 Delogu Ventroni, Sebastiana. Barna da Siena. Pisa, 1972: 59.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 141, 646, 662.
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8.
1974 Mallory, Michael. "An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered."
Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 187-188, fig. 5.
1975 Mallory, Michael. "Thoughts Concerning the Master of the Glorification
of St. Thomas." The Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 18-20.


1976 Caleca, Antonio. "Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 1." Critica darte 41 (1976): 53, fig. 59.
1976 Mallory, Michael. The Sienese Painter Paolo di Giovanni Fei (c. 1345-
1411). New York and London, 1976: 102-103, pl. 37.
1977 Bennett, Bonnie Apgar. Lippo Memmi, Simone Martinis fratello in arte:
The Image Revealed by His Documented Works. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Pittsburgh, 1977. Ann Arbor, MI, 1979: 102-103, pl. 37.
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 2." Critica darte 42 (1977): 70.
1977 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. "The Literature of Sienese Trecento Painting
1945-1975." Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 40 (1977): 289.
1977 Meiss, Millard. "Notes on a Dated Diptych by Lippo Memmi." In Scritti di
storia dellarte in onore di Ugo Procacci. 2 vols. Edited by Maria Grazia
Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto. Milan, 1977: 1:139.
Paris, 1978: 19.
91, 93.
1980 Zeri, Federico, and Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: Sienese and
Central Italian Schools. A Catalogue of the Collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980: 50-52.
1981 Brejon de Lavergne, Arnauld, and Dominique Thibaut. Catalogue
sommaire illustr des peintures du Muse du Louvre. 2, Italie, Espagne,
Allemande, Grande-Bretagne et divers. Paris, 1981: 206.
the Metropolitan Museum of Art 40 (1982): 26, fig. 25.
1982 Natale, Mauro, Alessandra Mottola Molfino, and Joyce Brusa. Museo
Poldi Pezzoli. Vol. 1 (of 7), Dipinti. Milan, 1982: 145.
1985 Bagnoli, Alessandro, and Luciano Bellosi, eds. Simone Martini e
chompagni. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Florence, 1985: 28.
1986 Conti, Alessandro. "Simone Martini e chompagni: Siena, Pinacoteca
Nazionale, March 27-October 31, 1985." Bollettino darte 71, nos. 35-36
(1986): 102.
1986 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Appunti su Simone Martini e chompagni." Arte
cristiana 74 (1986): 86, 92 n. 32.



Katalog der Gemlde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 74, 75.
1988 Martindale, Andrew. Simone Martini. Oxford, 1988: 29, 59, fig. 132.
1988 Previtali, Giovanni. "Introduzione ai problemi della bottega di Simone
Martini." In Simone Martini: atti del convegno; Siena, March 27-29, 1985.
Edited by Luciano Bellosi. Florence, 1988: 160, 161, 166 nn. 22 and 26.
1991-2002: 7(1996):733.
1994 Cannon, Joanna. "The Creation, Meaning and Audience of the Early
Sienese Polyptych: Evidence from the Friars." In Italian Altarpieces,
1250-1550: Function and Design. Edited by Eve Borsook and Fiorella
Superbi Gioffredi. Oxford, 1994: 60 n. 122, pl. 54.
1994 Carli, Enzo. La pittura a Pisa dalle origini alla Bella Maniera. Pisa, 1994:
56.
45.
1996 Maginnis, Hayden B. J. "Lippo Memmi." In The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols.
Edited by Jane Turner. New York, 1996: 19:455.
1999 Bagnoli, Alessandro. La Maest di Simone Martini. Cinisello Balsamo
(Milan), 1999: 142, 151 n. 184.
2002 Franci, Beatrice. "Memmi, Lippo." In La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario dei
2003 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. Simone Martini. Milan, 2003: 181, 218 n. 49.
2003 "Memmi, Lippo." In Dictionnaire de la peinture. Edited by Michel Laclotte
and Jean Pierre Cuzin. Paris, 2003: 640.
2004 Secrest, Meryle. Duveen: A Life in Art. New York, 2004: 458, 461.
2006 Lonjon, Marianne. "Prcisions sur la provenance du retable dit de Colle
di Val dElsa de Lippo Memmi." La revue des muses de France 56
(2006): 34, 38 n. 1, 39 n. 13, figs. 5-7.
2007 Foucart-Walter, Elisabeth, and Jean-Pierre Habert, eds. Catalogue des
peintures italiennes du Muse du Louvre: Catalogue sommaire. Paris,
2007: 41.
Siena, 2008: 28-37.
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 2 vols. Florence, 2009: 1:147, 148 repro.
2009 Spannocchi, Sabina. "Lippo e Tederigo Memmi." in La Collegiata di San
Gimignano, vol. 2, larchitettura, i cicli pittorici murali e i loro restauri.
Edited by Alessandro Bagnoli. Siena, 2009: 450.


Lorenzetti, Pietro
Sienese, active 1306 - 1345
BIOGRAPHY
The art historical literature generally asserts that the great Sienese painter cited in
a document of 1320 as Petrus quondam Lorenzetti and who signed himself as
Petrus Laurentii is to be identified with the Petruccio di Lorenzo paid in 1306 for a
panel, now lost, painted for the Sienese government. If that is the case, then his
date of birth is unlikely to have been any later than 1280.[1] The prestigious
commission presupposes, in fact, that he must have been a well-established artist
by this date. On the other hand, Pietros first securely dated work is the polyptych
in the pieve of Santa Maria in Arezzo, commissioned from him by the bishop of that
city in 1320.
The lack of documentary evidence for any previous work has given rise to many
uncertainties in the reconstruction of his period of apprenticeship and first phase of
activity. However, there is now general consensus that his mural cycle in the
transept and chapel of Saint John in the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi
(two images of the Madonna and Child with saints, stories of the Passion of Christ,
and Saint Francis receiving the stigmata) should be dated prior to 1320, though
according to some authorities, their execution could have been prolonged into the
third decade. A series of panel paintings may also be assignable to Pietros early
career, including the signed Madonna and Child Enthroned and the great painted
crucifix in the Museo Diocesano of Cortona; the Crucifixion in the Fogg Art
Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the dispersed polyptych formed by the
Madonna of Montichiello (now in the Museo Diocesano in Pienza) and the series of
half-length saints divided between the Museo Horne in Florence and the Muse de
Tess in Le Mans. These works show Pietro to be a master of extraordinary ability
who feels the influence of Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 -
1318/1319) but also shows his indebtedness to the compositional rigor,
understanding of physical density, and monumentality of form of Giotto (Florentine,
c. 1265 - 1337), as well as the passionate expressive charge of the sculptures of
Giovanni Pisano.
Lorenzetti, Pietro 699


The misread or mistakenly reconstructed date of some important works has also
prompted discussion, or raised doubts, about Pietros career in the period of his
maturity. His paintings for the Opera del Duomo in Siena in 1326 have been lost.
Thus, a key work for reconstructing Pietros career in the third decade remains the
polyptych signed and dated 1329 from the Sienese church of the Carmine (now
divided among the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, the Norton Simon Museum in
Pasadena, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven). To the same period
art historians have assigned various precious panels of small dimensions as well as
the frescoes in the chapter house of San Francesco in Siena, painted in
collaboration with his brother Ambrogio. Fragments of the latter decoration survive
that are attributable to Pietros hand, notably the Crucifixion and a figure of the
risen Christ, exemplifying, according to Carlo Volpe, an austere and severe style . .
. that appears almost to contradict the chromatic and narrative gothic richness of
the stories . . . of Assisi.[2] But the stylistic shift to which these paintings testify can
perhaps be understood also as the response of the Lorenzetti brothers, on the
basis of their Florentine experiences, to certain manifestations of the courtly-
aristocratic art of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) and Lippo
Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) in these years. Ambrogio is documented in
Florence on several occasions between 1319 and 1332, while the presence even
earlier of the still youthful Pietro in that city is testified by the Saint Lucy in the
church of Santa Lucia dei Magnoli.
In the 1330s, the artists style underwent a further transformation under the
influence of Pietros frequent collaboration with his brother, with whom he painted
the frescoes, now lost, on the facade of the Ospedale della Scala, signed by both
and dated 1335. From this partnership derives the artists greater attention to
elegance of form and delicacy in chiaroscuro modeling that are also to be
observed in the three saints, dated 1332, in the Pinacoteca of Siena. A further
instance of the collaboration between the two brothers is the diptych (Madonna
and Child and Crucifixion) now divided between the Gemldegalerie in Berlin and
the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Pietro executed the Madonna and
Ambrogio the other leaf. One of the most significant testimonies of these years is
the dismembered pala of Beata Umilt, painted for the church of San Giovanni
Evangelista in Florence. Now divided between the Uffizi, Florence, and the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin, it is an extraordinary example of Pietros sober narrative
style and great poetic delicacy, though it is fair to say that scholars have not been
unanimous in dating it nor even recognizing it as the work of his hand.[3]


As for the artists final phase, few works datable to the 1340s are generally
ascribed to the artist; some of them are sometimes given instead to an anonymous
Dijon Master.[4] Only the signed Madonna with a provenance from the church of
San Francesco at Pistoia (Uffizi, Florence)[5] and the altarpiece of extraordinary
modernity with the Birth of the Virgin (Museo dellOpera del Duomo, Siena), also
signed and dated 1342, are undoubted autograph works of these years. The fresco
(Annunciation and Saints) in the church of Castiglione del Bosco (Montalcino),
dated 1345 and considered by various art historians to be the work of assistants, is
the last work attributable to Pietro. It closes the catalog of his works in a minor key,
with accents of almost rustic sobriety.
[1] Cf. Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte senese, 3 vols. (Siena,
18541856), 1(1854):194. It was the Sienese custom to calculate the year ad
incarnationemthat is, from March 25so the date cited in the document,
February 25, 1305, is to be understood in modern style as 1306.
[2] Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 38.
[3] Ernest T. DeWald, Pietro Lorenzetti (Cambridge, MA, 1930), 3031, and
subsequently various other scholars have excluded this important painting from
the catalog of Pietro Lorenzetti. Attribution is complicated by the fact that the
original inscription, which probably contained the date of execution, was replaced
in the nineteenth century by another bearing a date in Roman figures, sometimes
read as 1316 and sometimes as 1341; cf. Mikls Boskovits, ed., Frhe italienische
Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin,
1988), 8589.
[4] Cf. Hayden B.J. Maginnis, The So-Called Dijon Master: For J.R. Lander,
Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 43 (1980): 121138.
[5] The inscription of this painting, like that of the San Giovanni Evangelista
altarpiece, has suffered restoration, and the date included in it has been variously
read as 1315 or 1316 or 1340, or even assumed to have read 1343 in its original
form; cf. Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 2, I dipinti toscani del
secolo xiv (Rome, 1965), 157158.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
1929 DeWald, Ernest T. Pietro Lorenzetti.

Art Studies 7 (1929): 131-166.
1930 Cecchi, Emilio.

Pietro Lorenzetti. Milan, 1930.
1933 Sinibaldi, Giulia.

I Lorenzetti. Siena, 1933.
1960 Becchis, Michela. Lorenzetti, Pietro. In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 65(2005):803-811.
1984 Carli, Enzo.

I Lorenzetti. Milan, 1960.
1984 Maginnis, Hayden B.J. Pietro Lorenzetti: a Chronology.

The Art Bulletin 66 (1984): 183-211.
1989 Volpe, Carlo.

Pietro Lorenzetti. Edited by Mauro Lucco. Milan, 1989.
1991 De Benedictis, Cristina. "Lorenzetti, Pietro." In

2002 Monciatti, Alessio. "Pietro Lorenzetti." In

Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Edited by Chiara Frugoni. Florence,
2002: 13-117.


Pietro Lorenzetti
Madonna and Child with the Blessing

Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and
Catherine of Alexandria with Angels
[entire triptych]
probably 1340
tempera on panel transferred to canvas
Inscription: middle panel, across the bottom edge, on a fragment of the old frame set into the present one: [PETRUS]
L[A]URENTII DE SENIS [ME] PI[N]XIT [ANNO] D[OMI]NI MCCCX...I [1]
[1] This inscription is illustrated as figure 1 of the entry for the painting in the NGA Online Edition, Italian Paintings of the
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries by Mikls Boskovits, launched 2016.
Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg 1941.5.1.a-c
ENTRY
The central Madonna and Child of this triptych, which also includes Saint
Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right panel] and Saint Mary Magdalene,
with an Angel [left panel], proposes a peculiar variant of the so-called Hodegetria
type. The Christ child is supported on his mothers left arm and looks out of the
painting directly at the observer, whereas Mary does not point to her son with her
right hand, as is usual in similar images, but instead offers him cherries. The child
helps himself to the proffered fruit with his left hand, and with his other is about to
Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and 703
Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]

pop one of them into his mouth.[1] Another unusual feature of the painting is the
smock worn by the infant Jesus: it is embellished with a decorative band around
the chest; a long, fluttering, pennant-like sleeve (so-called manicottolo);[2] and
metal studs around his shoulders. The group of the Madonna and Child is flanked
by two female saints. The saint to the left can be recognized as Saint Mary
Magdalene by the cylindrical pyx of ointment in her hand,[3] while Saint Catherine
of Alexandria is identified by her crown and by the wheel of martyrdom she
supports with her right hand, half concealing it below her mantle.[4] Both this saint
and the two angels in the gable above Marys head bear a palm in their hand.[5]
Though signed and dated by the artist [fig. 1],[6] the triptych in the National Gallery
of Art is rarely cited in the art historical literature. An impressive series of letters
from experts whom Felix M. Warburg or Alessandro Contini (later Contini-
Bonacossi) had consulted in 1926 about the three panels (then separately framed)
confirmed their fine state, extraordinary historical importance, and attribution to
Pietro Lorenzetti.[7] Nevertheless, the panels were illustrated but cited only
fleetingly in the art historical literature. For example, Ernest De Wald (1929) denied
their attribution to Pietro, explaining that the panels are evidently of Lorenzettian
derivation but...the heads are all softer and broader than Pietros style. Much of this
[he added] may of course be due to the clever retouching.[8] For his part, Emilio
Cecchi (1930) included the three panels in his catalog of Pietros work and
dedicated a brief comment to them, emphasizing that their solemn plasticity is
typical of the painters last creative phase.[9] Bernard Berenson (1932, 1936, 1968)
concurred with the attribution but cited the panels as dated 1321.[10] Raimond van
Marle (1934) also accepted the attribution and Berensons reading of the
fragmentary date.[11] In the previous year, Giulia Sinibaldi (1933) had limited herself
to citing the paintings among those ascribed to Pietro, but she took no position on
the question.[12] The triptych was ignored by most of the specialized literature in
the following decades, with the exception of the successive catalogs of the Gallery
itself (1942, 1965, 1968), though curiously they failed to point out the artists
signature.[13] Only in the catalog of 1965 was this mentioned: a worn inscription
on bottom of old part of frame of middle panel, and the date tentatively
interpreted as 1321.[14] It was not until the 1970s that the triptych began to be
regularly cited as the work of Pietro Lorenzetti (Fredericksen and Zeri 1972;
Laclotte 1976) or, as in the case of Mojmir S. Frinta (1976), as the work of one of his
assistants, on the basis of the punch marks that also appear in paintings by Jacopo
di Mino del Pellicciaio.[15] Frinta conjectured that the triptych could be attributable
to Mino Parcis, a minor master who was apparently documented in Pietros shop in

1321 and was perhaps the father of Jacopo di Mino.[16] The same scholar
reassigned to Mino some works hitherto attributed to Pietro himself in his last
phase and given by others to an anonymous artist called the Dijon Master. Fern
Rusk Shapley (1979) entertained similar doubts: Whether the attribution to Pietro
Lorenzetti can be fully accepted remains somewhat uncertain.[17] She wondered
whether the Gallery triptych might not have been a work by the same assistant of
Pietro who had painted a Madonna now in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence
(donation by Charles Loeser) and some other stylistically akin panels. However,
Shapley cited a letter written by De Wald to Charles Parkhurst at the Gallery in
1942, reporting that he had examined the infrared photographs made during
restoration at the Gallery and, on that basis, could now confirm Pietros hand.[18]
After the catalog entry written by Shapley (1979), with the exception of Frintas
volume (1998), in which the triptych continued to be classified as a product of
Lorenzettis shop, art historians seem to have agreed that the Washington
paintings should be recognized as an autograph work by Pietro himself.[19] Those
accepting this position include not only the catalog of the Gallery (NGA 1985) but
also Carlo Volpe (1989), Erling S. Skaug (1994), Cristina De Benedictis (1996),
Alessio Monciatti (2002), Keith Christiansen (2003), Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen
(2004), Michela Becchis (2005), Ada Labriola (2008), and Laurence B. Kanter
(2010).[20]
Bearing in mind the triptychs state of preservation, made almost unrecognizable

by inpainting aimed at concealing the damage suffered by the painted surface, it is
difficult to express a balanced judgment of its authorship. Even old photographs of
the panels, made prior to their latest restoration, do not assist much in that
regard [fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4]. Some of its general featuresthe extreme sobriety of
the composition, dominated by massive figures presented in almost frontal pose
and filling almost entirely the space at their disposal, and the form of the panels
themselves, terminating above in a simple pointed archsurely are those one
would expect to find in the paintings by Pietro Lorenzetti in the period around
1340, when the artist was apparently fascinated by the sober grandeur of Giotto
(Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) in his final phase. Undoubtedly Lorenzettian is the
figures clothing, made of heavy stuff and with draperies falling perpendicularly in a
few simplified or pointed folds, which barely discloses or suggests the form of the
underlying body. Similar forms and compositional devices can be found in the
Birth of the Virgin in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in Siena, dated 1342 but
commissioned and planned in 1335;[21] the Madonna now in the Uffizi, Florence,

with a provenance from Pistoia, whose fragmentary date [22] has been variously
read; and the polyptych no. 50 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, recognized
by some (if not all) art historians as executed by Pietro with studio assistance and
dating to the late years of the fourth decade.[23] Unfortunately, perhaps also
because of the Washington triptychs compromised state, the analysis of the
punched ornament provides no useful indications to confirm or deny the
conclusions reached by an interpretation of the stylistic data, but it should be
observed that the decorative motifs of the dress of Saint Catherine are very similar
to those of the cloth of honor of the Madonna in the Uffizi and seem to confirm that
the two works belong to the same period.
A detail that has hitherto escaped attention could offer a clue as to the triptychs
original destination: it was perhaps commissioned for a church not in Siena but in
Pisa, where apparently the motif of the Christ child eating cherries was popular in
the fourteenth century. Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574), who erroneously
attributed the fresco of the Lives of the Anchorites in the Camposanto to the
painter he called Pietro Laurati (that is, Pietro Lorenzetti), reported that the artist
spent a period in Pisa, and so the unusual iconography of the central panel of the
triptych might have been adopted in deference to the wishes of a patron in that
city.[24] In any case, the stylistic character seems to coincide with the evidence of
the signature and the date preserved on the fragment of the original frame that has
come down to us. As for the possible intervention of studio assistants, the state of
preservation of the painting today prevents, in my view, speculations of this kind.
Doubts perhaps can be raised about the inscription itself, because we do not know
how it was recovered and inserted into the existing frame. But it is hardly probable
that the signature of the artist and the date 1340 (or 1341 or 1342) would have been
added to the painting by another hand, concordant with the features of this
particular phase in Pietros career.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Sketch of inscription, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna

and Child, with the Blessing Christ, probably 1340,
tempera on panel transferred to canvas, National Gallery
of Art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in
memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg. (Joanna Dunn,
National Gallery of Art, Washington)
fig. 2 Archival photograph of Saint Mary Magdalene, c.

19201930, left panel, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and
Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary
Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels,
probably 1340, tempera on panel transferred to canvas,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff
Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg.
Image: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice

fig. 3 Archival photograph of the Madonna and Child, c. fig. 4 Archival photograph of Saint Catherine, c.
19281930, central panel, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and 19281930, right panel, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and
Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary
Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels,
probably 1340, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, probably 1340, tempera on panel transferred to canvas,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff
Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg. Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg.
Image: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice Image: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice

NOTES
[1] On the iconography of the Virgin of Hodegetria type, see note 1 in the entry
on Enthroned Madonna and Child. Cherries, symbols of the Annunciation
and the Incarnation of Christ but also of the blood of the Redeemer,
frequently accompany representations of the Madonna and Child in
fifteenth-century paintings; far less frequently do they appear in paintings of
the previous century. Cf. Mirella Levi DAncona, The Garden of the
Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence, 1977),
8993. Nevertheless, cf. some versions of the Madonna and Child painted
by painters active in Pisa, such as Francesco Neri da Volterra in his panel at
San Benedetto a Settimo, Spinello Aretino in a painting commissioned from
him in Pisa (no. 3130, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart), and Cecco di Pietro in a panel
in the Muse in Tours and in another similar panel in the church of San
Torp at Pisa: cf. Mariagiulia Burresi, ed., Pisa e larea pisana, I luoghi della
fede (Milan, 2000), 137138; and Andrea De Marchi, in Italies: Peintures des
muses de la rgion Centre, ed. Annie Gilet and ric Moinet (Paris, 1996),
7576. For a Sienese example of the child carrying cherries in his hand, cf.
the panel by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the parish church of Roccalbenga,
Siena; see Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 212214.
Dorothy C. Shorr (1954) interpreted the motif as fruit of Heaven; Dorothy C.
Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV
Century (New York, 1954), 112.
[2] In Tuscan panels of the early fourteenth century, the child at times appears
naked, at times dressed in a tunic and mantle allantica, or a garment that
recalls the shirt or dalmatic used by celebrants on certain liturgical
occasions. Sometimes, however, as in the Maest by Simone Martini
(Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, or in
the Madonna and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti himself in the pieve of
Castiglione dOrcia, the child wears a dress that bears no relation to the
liturgical conventions of the day, such as a smock furnished with prominent
buttons or laces, which probably reflects childrens garments of the time.
See Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 113115.
To this group belong, from the fourth and fifth decades of the fourteenth
century onwards, images representing the child dressed in smocks with
short but very wide sleeves, such as that illustrated in our painting or in
some panels by Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably
1348) (Madonna no. 553 in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, or Madonna
no. 1923.35 in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts). On the
development of the fashion of the manicottolo and its reflections in painting
of the early fourteenth century, see Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo
della morte (Turin, 1974), 4154.
[3] Cf. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in

Central and South Italian Schools of Painting (Florence, 1965), 255266.
[5] Apart from the scene of the Annunciation of the Death of Mary, in which
Gabriel generally hands a palm branch to her, this attribute is alien to the
iconography of the angels; cf. Engel, in Lexikon der christlichen
Ikonographie, eds. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols.
(Rome, Basel, and Vienna, 1968), 1:626642. In the present context, the
motif probably is meant as a symbol of triumph, as in various biblical
narrativesfor example, in that relating to the celebration of the feast of
Tabernacles (Lev 23:34, 40), or an important military victory of Simon
Maccabeus (1 Mac 13:51), or the entry of Christ into Jerusalem (Mt 21:8; Jn
12:12).
[6] It is not clear when or how the fragment containing the inscription of the lost
original frame was removed. It already had been removed from the original
frame, and was incorporated into the frame that was on the painting when
the current frame was commissioned in 19411942. The literature long
ignored the inscription, probably due to difficulties in reading it. Its
transcription was published for the first time in the NGA catalog of 1965,
with the date interpreted as MCCCXXI. This was repeated in NGA 1985,
although Charles Parkhurst had already sent the transcription to the Frick
Art Reference Library and Robert Langton Douglas in 1946 (letters of August
1 and 2, 1946, copies in NGA curatorial files). Parkhursts reading was
published by Fern Rusk Shapley (1979). See National Gallery of
Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington,
DC, 1965), 77; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated
Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of
the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:269270.
[7] The expertises in question were furnished by such leading art historians of
the time as Wilhelm von Bode (Pietro Lorenzetti...ein Hauptwerk), Georg
Gronau (ein Hauptwerk nicht nur des Pietro Lorenzetti sondern der
Sienesischen Malerei), Detlev von Hadeln (Pietro Lorenzetti. Since years I
have not seen in the market a work of such a high rank by an earlier Italian
master), Roberto Longhi (una delle creazioni pi solenni della maturit di
Pietro Lorenzetti), August L. Mayer (Pietro Lorenzetti...one of the most
important works of the Italian School of the Trecento), and Wilhelm Suida
(eine charakteristische Arbeit des Pietro Lorenzetti...Die Erhaltung aller
Teile ist eine vorzuegliche). Restorers Stephen Pichetto (Pietro Lorenzetti...
the general state of the painting is almost perfect) and Hammond Smith
(oral opinion, cited by Contini in a letter to Felix Warburg of January 3, 1927:
he [Smith] considered it as one of the most important works of the 1300
Italian period in the finest possible state of preservation) were no less
fulsome in their praise. Documents in NGA curatorial files.
[8] Ernest T. DeWald, Pietro Lorenzetti, Art Studies 7 (1929): 162 n. 1.

[9] Emilio Cecchi, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 1930), 37.
[10] Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal
Artists and their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 293; Bernard
Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e
delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936),
252; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian
and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2:221.
del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 361.
[12] Giulia Sinibaldi, I Lorenzetti (Siena, 1933), 175.
[13] National Gallery of Art, Book of Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1942), 135,
251; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and
Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 68.
[14] Reading of the date uncertain, adds the catalog entry, evidently drawing
on information made available by Berensons Indices. National Gallery of
DC, 1965), 77.
[15] Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-

Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge,
MA, 1972), 109, 312, 429, 646; Michel Laclotte, Un Saint Evque de Pietro
Lorenzetti, Paragone 27 (1976): 18 n. 7; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Deletions
from the Oeuvre of Pietro Lorenzetti and Related Works by the Master of the
Beata Umilit, Mino Parcis da Siena and Iacopo di Mino del
Pellicciaio, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20
(1976): 290.
[16] There is no historical evidence of this painter other than the fact that he is
mentioned in a document drawn up at Arezzo on September 21, 1321, in the
role of witness, together with Pietro Lorenzetti. Cf. Andrea Mariotti, Modulo
di progettazione del Polittico di Arezzo di Pietro Lorenzetti, Critica darte 15
(1968): 36, no. 100. But, as far as one is able to judge from the partial
publication of the document, this citation implies neither that Mino was
Pietros assistant nor that he was the father of Jacopo di Mino.
DC, 1979), 1:269270.
[18] Ernest De Wald to Charles Parkhurst, August 25, 1942, letter in NGA
curatorial files.
[19] Cf. Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel
and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 61, 97, 336, 483.
[20] National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated

Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed.
Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 195196; Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from
Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop
Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting with Particular Consideration to
Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:226, 228; Cristina De
Benedictis, Lorenzetti, Pietro, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols.
(Rome, 1996), 7:884, 892; Alessio Monciatti, Pietro Lorenzetti, in Pietro and
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Chiara Frugoni (Florence, 2002), 80, 82; Keith
Christiansen, Paul Delaroches Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti, Apollo 157
(2003): 14 nn. 17, 19; Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, Italienische Gemlde im
Stdel 13001550: Toskana und Umbrien, Kataloge der Gemlde im
Stdelschen Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main (Mainz, 2004), 152 n. 44;
Michela Becchis, Lorenzetti, Pietro, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
82 vols. (Rome, 2005), 65:809; Ada Labriola, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel
Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps
(Siena, 2008), 42; Laurence B. Kanter and John Marciari, Italian Paintings
from the Richard L. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 20.
[21] For the document of the commission, see Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per
la storia dellarte senese, 3 vols. (Siena, 18541856), 1:194.
[22] The date can now be read as M.CCC.X, but the nineteenth-century
restoration integrated the inscription, with the result that various readings of
it have been proposed (1315, 1316, 1340, 1341). In 1799, however, when the
painting entered the Uffizi, Florence, the date 1343 reportedly was visible in
the inscription. Cf. Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan,
1989), 166. The stylistic data confirm that the work must have been painted
around 1340 or shortly after.
[23] Often ascribed to the bottega or school of Pietro Lorenzetti, the work was
claimed as an autograph of Pietro himself by Carlo Volpe (1951). In his
monograph (1989), Volpe dated the painting to the years 13401345, but the
close kinship in style with Ambrogio would, in my view, make a dating in the
late 1330s more plausible. See Carlo Volpe, Proposte per il problema di
Pietro Lorenzetti, Paragone 2, no. 23 (1951): 13; Carlo Volpe, Pietro
Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 197198.
[24] Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei pi eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori,
ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence, 18781885), 1:473. On the otherwise
rare motif of the cherries in Trecento painting, cf. note 1 above. Recently,
Laurence Kanter noted that five of the six punches used in the Washington
painting do not recur in any other painting by Lorenzetti, nor in any other
Sienese painting, and he wondered if it could have been painted in
Florence, based on the fact that at least one of the punches is found there
as early as 1337 and that the shape of the panels in the Washington
altarpiece is more commonly encountered in Florentine than in Sienese
carpentry. Laurence B. Kanter and John Marciari, Italian Paintings from the

Richard L. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 20.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Stephen Pichetto transferred the three parts of this triptych from the three original
wooden panels to a canvas support in 19411942. The paintings may already have
been transferred from the original wooden panels to newer panel supports in an
earlier treatment as well.[1] The current frame was made on the occasion of the
19411942 treatment. It incorporates a strip of wood bearing the date and artists
signature from the original frame [fig. 1]. The ground is a white gesso layer, incised
with a rough outline of the figures. The gold ground is applied on a red bole
preparation, and the halos are decorated with punchwork. Gold leaf was used to
create the decorative trim details on the drapery of the figures. The paint layers of
the central panel are badly worn and have been heavily restored in the course of
various treatments.[2] The inpainting is particularly extensive in the Madonnas
robes, but the shadows in the saints faces are also heavily reinforced and
remodeled, making the painting difficult to assess. In addition, the gold-leafed
details in all of the paintings have been strengthened.





TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Photographs in NGA curatorial files show the paintings during the transfer
performed by Stephen Pichetto. The photographs show four layers of fabric
between the gesso and the panel. A single layer of fabric typically would
have been used to prepare panels in Trecento Italy.
[2] The examination report of the NGA painting conservation department

states, There are at least two or three generations of retouching hidden
below the discolored varnish layer (see report dated September 9, 1988, in
NGA conservation files). Unfortunately, no documentation exists of the
various restorations of the triptych that took place prior to the 19411942
treatment, one of which may have occurred after its acquisition by
Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi in 1926. Correspondence between Contini-
Bonacossi and Stephen Pichetto discussed the possible treatment of the
paintings at this time, but it is unclear if they were actually treated. See Ann
Hoenigswald, Stephen Pichetto, Conservator of the Kress
Collection, 19271949, in Studying and Conserving Paintings: Occasional
Papers on the Samuel H. Kress Collection (London, 2006), 30, 37. At some
point, the paintings apparently were energetically cleaned and generously
retouched, in order to render the much-abraded forms more easily
readable. Emilio Cecchis monograph (1930) reproduced the triptych
probably before this treatment (figs. 2, 3, and 4). The inpainting in this
reproduction appeared to be more discreet than in the illustration published
in the monograph by Ernest De Wald (1929); he apparently used a more
recent set of photographs. In De Walds publication, the three panels still
were separated, and the modeling appeared reinforced by further
retouching. Cf. Emilio Cecchi, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 1930), pls. 104106;
Ernest T. De Wald, Pietro Lorenzetti, Art Studies 7 (1929): pls. 99101.
PROVENANCE
Probably the art market, Florence, by 1924;[1] (Alessandro Contini, Rome), by

1926;[2] sold 1927 to Felix M. Warburg [1871-1937], New York;[3] by inheritance to
his wife, Frieda Schiff Warburg [1876-1958], New York; gift 1941 to NGA. [1] Raimond
van Marle (The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague, 1924:
2:363) reports, rather imprecisely, A short time ago . . . half-length figures [similar,
according to NGA systematic catalogue Mikls Boskovits, to Pietros panels nos.
79, 81 and 82 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena] were offered for sale in
Florence. Nonetheless, adds the author, these may have been products of
Pietros bottega only. Mikls Boskovits did not know of other panels of half-length

saints attributable to the elder Lorenzetti on the art market at that time and thought
it very likely that van Marle was referring to the NGA paintings. [2] Contini (later
Contini-Bonacossi) gathered expertises (in NGA curatorial files) on the triptych in
1926, so it must have been in his possession by then. [3] Correspondence about
the panels among Warburg, Contini, Paul Sachs (Warburgs advisor), and the
restorers Hammond Smith and Stephen Pichetto began in 1926, but stops in 1927,
the year Warburg probably bought the three panels (correspondence in NGA
curatorial files). When Ernest Theodore De Wald published the triptych in 1929 (Art
Studies: Medieval Renaissance and Modern [1929]: 34 n. 1, and figs. 99-101), it
already belonged to the Warburg collection.
EXHIBITION HISTORY

New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 221, pl. 5.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1929 DeWald, Ernest T. "Pietro Lorenzetti." Art Studies 7 (1929): 162 n. 1, pl.
99.
293.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):361.
1933 Sinibaldi, Giulia. I Lorenzetti. Siena, 1933: 175.
repro. 135.
1960 Becchis, Michela. "Lorenzetti, Pietro." In Dizionario biografico degli
65(2005):809.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 109, 312, 429, 646.
1976 Frinta, Mojmir Svatopluk. "Deletions from the Oeuvre of Pietro Lorenzetti
and Related Works by the Master of the Beata Umilit, Mino Parcis da
Siena and Iacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio." Mitteilungen des
1976 Laclotte, Michel. "Un Saint Evque de Pietro Lorenzetti." Paragone 27
(1976): 18 n. 7.
1989 Volpe, Carlo. Pietro Lorenzetti. Edited by Mauro Lucco. Milan, 1989: 195-
196, fig. 175.
1991 De Benedictis, Cristina. "Lorenzetti, Pietro." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 7(1996):884, 892.
1:226, 228; 2:punch chart 7.5.
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 61, 97, 336, 483.
2002 Monciatti, Alessio. "Pietro Lorenzetti." In Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
Edited by Chiara Frugoni. Florence, 2002: 80, repro. 82.
2003 Christiansen, Keith. "Paul Delaroches Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti."
Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, 19.
Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main. Mainz, 2004: 152 n. 44.
2006 Hoenigswald, Ann. "Stephen Pichetto, Conservator of the Kress
Collection, 1927-1949." in Studying and Conserving Paintings:
Occasional Papers on the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 2006:
30 (repro.), 37.

Siena, 2008: 42.

2010 Kanter, Laurence B., and John Marciari, eds. Italian Paintings from the
Richard L. Feigen Collection. Exh. cat. Yale University Art Gallery, New
Haven, 2010: 20.

Pietro Lorenzetti
Madonna and Child, with

the Blessing Christ [middle
panel]
probably 1340
overall: 99.5 52.3 cm (39 3/16 20 9/16 in.)
Inscription: across the bottom edge, on a fragment of the old frame set into the
present one: [PETRUS] L[A]URENTII DE SENIS [ME] PI[N]XIT [ANNO] D[OMI]NI
MCCCX...I [1]
[1] This inscription is illustrated as figure 1 of the entry for the painting in the NGA
Online Edition, Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries by
Mikls Boskovits, launched 2016.
Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg
1941.5.1.b
ENTRY
The central Madonna and Child of this triptych, which also includes Saint Mary
Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel] and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an
Angel [right panel], proposes a peculiar variant of the so-called Hodegetria type.
The Christ child is supported on his mothers left arm and looks out of the painting
directly at the observer, whereas Mary does not point to her son with her right
hand, as is usual in similar images, but instead offers him cherries. The child helps
himself to the proffered fruit with his left hand, and with his other is about to pop
one of them into his mouth.[1] Another unusual feature of the painting is the smock
worn by the infant Jesus: it is embellished with a decorative band around the chest;
a long, fluttering, pennant-like sleeve (so-called manicottolo);[2] and metal studs
around his shoulders. The group of the Madonna and Child is flanked by two
female saints. The saint to the left can be recognized as Saint Mary Magdalene by
Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel] 720

the cylindrical pyx of ointment in her hand,[3] while Saint Catherine of Alexandria is
identified by her crown and by the wheel of martyrdom she supports with her right
hand, half concealing it below her mantle.[4] Both this saint and the two angels in
the gable above Marys head bear a palm in their hand.[5]

(2010).[20]

the panels, made prior to their latest restoration, do not assist much in that regard
[fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4]. Some of its general featuresthe extreme sobriety of the
composition, dominated by massive figures presented in almost frontal pose and
filling almost entirely the space at their disposal, and the form of the panels



COMPARATIVE FIGURES




NOTES

12:12).
Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Fern Rusk Shapley,Catalogue of

DC, 1965), 77.

Lorenzetti,Paragone 27 (1976): 18 n. 7; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Deletions
(1976): 290.
DC, 1979), 1:269270.
curatorial files.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Stephen Pichetto transferred this image and its companions Saint Mary
Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel] and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an
Angel [right panel], forming part of a triptych, from the three original wooden
panels to a canvas support in 19411942. The paintings may already have been
transferred from the original wooden panels to newer panel supports in an earlier
treatment as well.[1] The current frame was made on the occasion of the 19411942
treatment. It incorporates a strip of wood bearing the date and artists signature
from the original frame [fig. 1]. The ground is a white gesso layer, incised with a
rough outline of the figures. The gold ground is applied on a red bole preparation,
and the halos are decorated with punchwork. Gold leaf was used to create the
decorative trim details on the drapery of the figures. The paint layers of the central
panel are badly worn and have been heavily restored in the course of various
treatments.[2] The inpainting is particularly extensive in the Madonnas robes, but
the shadows in the saints faces are also heavily reinforced and remodeled, making
the painting difficult to assess. In addition, the gold-leafed details in all of the
paintings have been strengthened.





TECHNICAL NOTES

PROVENANCE


EXHIBITION HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
100.
293.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):361.
repro. 135.
65(2005):809.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 109, 312, 429, 646.
(1976): 18 n. 7.
196, fig. 175.
1991-2002: 7(1996):884, 892.
1:226, 228; 2:punch chart 7.5.
Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, 19.
30 (repro.), 37.

Siena, 2008: 42.

Haven, 2010: 20.

Pietro Lorenzetti
Saint Catherine of
Alexandria, with an Angel
[right panel]
probably 1340
overall: 92 44.1 cm (36 1/4 17 3/8 in.)
1941.5.1.c
ENTRY
The central Madonna and Child of this triptych, which also includes this panel of
Saint Catherine and Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel], proposes a
peculiar variant of the so-called Hodegetria type. The Christ child is supported on
his mothers left arm and looks out of the painting directly at the observer, whereas
Mary does not point to her son with her right hand, as is usual in similar images, but
instead offers him cherries. The child helps himself to the proffered fruit with his
left hand, and with his other is about to pop one of them into his mouth.[1] Another
unusual feature of the painting is the smock worn by the infant Jesus: it is
embellished with a decorative band around the chest; a long, fluttering, pennant-
like sleeve (so-called manicottolo);[2] and metal studs around his shoulders. The
group of the Madonna and Child is flanked by two female saints. The saint to the
left can be recognized as Saint Mary Magdalene by the cylindrical pyx of ointment
in her hand,[3] while Saint Catherine of Alexandria is identified by her crown and by
the wheel of martyrdom she supports with her right hand, half concealing it below
her mantle.[4] Both this saint and the two angels in the gable above Marys head
bear a palm in their hand.[5]
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right panel] 737




(2010).[20]





COMPARATIVE FIGURES






NOTES


12:12).
Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Fern Rusk Shapley,Catalogue of


DC, 1965), 77.

Lorenzetti, Paragone 27 (1976): 18 n. 7; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Deletions
Beata Umilit, Mino Parcis da Siena and Iacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio,
DC, 1979), 1:269270.
curatorial files.





TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Stephen Pichetto transferred this image and its companions Saint Mary
Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel] and Madonna and Child, with the Blessing
Christ [middle panel], forming part of a triptych, from the three original wooden








TECHNICAL NOTES

PROVENANCE



EXHIBITION HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
101.
293.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):361.
repro. 135.
65(2005):809.



Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 109, 312, 429, 646.
(1976): 18 n. 7.
196, fig. 175.
1991-2002: 7(1996):884, 892.
1:226, 228; 2:punch chart 7.5.
Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, 19.
30 (repro.), 37.


Siena, 2008: 42.

Haven, 2010: 20.


Pietro Lorenzetti
Saint Mary Magdalene,

with an Angel [left panel]
probably 1340
overall: 92.1 44.1 cm (36 1/4 17 3/8 in.)
1941.5.1.a
ENTRY
The central Madonna and Child of this triptych, which also includes this panel of
Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right
panel], proposes a peculiar variant of the so-called Hodegetria type. The Christ
child is supported on his mothers left arm and looks out of the painting directly at
the observer, whereas Mary does not point to her son with her right hand, as is
usual in similar images, but instead offers him cherries. The child helps himself to
the proffered fruit with his left hand, and with his other is about to pop one of them
into his mouth.[1] Another unusual feature of the painting is the smock worn by the
infant Jesus: it is embellished with a decorative band around the chest; a long,
fluttering, pennant-like sleeve (so-called manicottolo);[2] and metal studs around
his shoulders. The group of the Madonna and Child is flanked by two female saints.
The saint to the left can be recognized as Saint Mary Magdalene by the cylindrical
pyx of ointment in her hand,[3] while Saint Catherine of Alexandria is identified by
her crown and by the wheel of martyrdom she supports with her right hand, half
concealing it below her mantle.[4] Both this saint and the two angels in the gable
above Marys head bear a palm in their hand.[5]
Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel] 754




(2010).[20]





COMPARATIVE FIGURES






NOTES
Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century
(New York, 1954), 112.
some panels by Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348)
(Madonna no. 553 in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, or Madonna


12:12).
published by Fern Rusk Shapley (1979). See National Gallery of Art,
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC,
1965), 77; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated
Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of


DC, 1965), 77.

Lorenzetti,Paragone 27 (1976): 18 n. 7; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Deletions
(1976): 290.
DC, 1979), 1:269270.
curatorial files.
[20] National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue


(Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro
Lucco (Milan, 1989), 195196; Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to
Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in
Tuscan Panel Painting with Particular Consideration to Florence,
c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:226, 228; Cristina De Benedictis,
Lorenzetti, Pietro, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome,
1996), 7:884, 892; Alessio Monciatti, Pietro Lorenzetti, in Pietro and


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Stephen Pichetto transferred this image and its companions Madonna and Child,
with the Blessing Christ [middle panel] and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an
Angel [right panel], forming part of a triptych, from the three original wooden








TECHNICAL NOTES

PROVENANCE



EXHIBITION HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
99.
293.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):361.
repro. 135.
65(2005):809.



Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 109, 312, 429, 646.
(1976): 18 n. 7.
196, fig. 175.
1991-2002: 7(1996):884, 892.
1:226, 228; 2:punch chart 7.5.
Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, 19.
30 (repro.), 37.


Siena, 2008: 42.

Haven, 2010: 20.


Lorenzo Monaco
Also known as
Piero di Giovanni
Florentine, c. 1370 - c. 1425
BIOGRAPHY
When, in December 1391, at the end of a novitiate lasting a year, the painter Piero
di Giovanni made his profession in the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria
degli Angeli in Florence, assuming the name of Don Lorenzo,[1] he must already
have been a well-known and esteemed artist in the city and hence no longer very
young. Presumed in the older literature to have been born in Siena,[2] he seems to
have been trained as an artist in Florence, serving in the bottega of Agnolo Gaddi
(Florentine, c. 1350 - 1396), with whom he later collaborated in the painting of the
predella of the altarpiece in the Nobili Chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli, formerly
dated 1387.[3] Ordained a deacon in 1394, he dedicated himself in the following
years to the painting of miniatures, particularly the illumination of the choir-books
of his monastery and of other monastic communities (choir-books nos. 5, 8, and 1,
dated respectively 1394, 1395, and 1396, now in the Biblioteca Medicea
Laurenziana; choir-book C 71 in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence). At
the same time, he also painted a series of small devotional panelsfor example,
the versions of the Madonna and Child with saints in the Muse Jacquemart-Andr
in Paris, in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and in the Haggin Museum in
Stockton, California; or the processional cross in the Art Institute of Chicago.
Between 1398 and 1400, Don Lorenzo is documented as engaged in painting a
polyptych for the Ardinghelli Chapel in the church of the Carmine (generally
identified with the panels now divided among the Toledo [Ohio] Museum of Art, the
Galleria dellAccademia in Florence, and other museums). The difficulties of
working as a painter within the walls of a cloistered monastery induced him to
move to his own workshop in the city, while at the same time maintaining the
status and lifestyle of a monk.
Having overcome his first creative phase, essentially derived from the model of
Agnolo Gaddi, Don Lorenzo reduced the role of incisive contours in the overall
effect of his works; he simplified their compositions and accentuated the corporeal
substance of the figures, characterized by carefully chiseled forms. The
Lorenzo Monaco 771


monumental aspect and stylistic harmony of these works attest to the influence
now exerted on him by the neo-Giottesque revival associated with Niccol Gerini
and the painters of his circle at the turn of the century. Paintings of this phase in his
development include the Madonna and Child dated 1400 formerly in the Kaiser-
Friedrich Museum in Berlin and the other versions of the same subject in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
They prepare the path for the artists most intensely gothicizing phase, initiated
with two works dated 1404: the Man of Sorrows in the Galleria dellAccademia,
Florence, and the triptych in the Pinacoteca of Empoli. This phase achieved its full
development in such works as the large, dismantled polyptych formerly in San
Benedetto fuori Porta Pinti of 14071409 (National Gallery, London, and other
collections); the polyptych from Monteoliveto of 1410 now in the Galleria
dellAccademia, Florence; or the Santa Maria degli Angeli altarpiece in the Uffizi,
Florence, of 1414.
Stimulated by innovative developments in Florentine art, and especially by those

expressed by Ghiberti in the reliefs of his first bronze doors for the Florentine
Baptistery and perhaps also by the linear complexities and brilliant colors that
Gherardo Starnina introduced into Florence on his return from a long period of
residence in Spain, Don Lorenzo experimented with the possibilities offered by
exuberance of line, aristocratic refinement of gesture, and delicate and unusual
color combinations culminating in the calligraphic brilliance and sweeping contours
of paintings dating around the middle of the second decade. Thereafter the works
of Don Lorenzo gradually recover greater formal simplicity and are distinguished
by their more placid mood, softer and more fluid contours, and often a peculiar,
fairy-tale atmosphere, as exemplified in such works as the second triptych in the
Museo della Collegiata in Empoli, the Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi in
Florence, and the decoration (polyptych and frescoes) of the Bartolini Salimbeni
Chapel in Santa Trinita. He was mentioned as still alive in 1422, and various
considerationssuch as the circumstance that, according to Giorgio Vasari
(Florentine, 1511 - 1574), the artist died at the age of fifty-fivesuggest placing his
death a few years later, perhaps around 1425.[4]
[1] See the passage of the registro vecchio from the monastery of Santa Maria degli
Angeli testifying to Don Lorenzos profession of vows, dated December 10, 1391,
transcribed by Marvin Eisenberg in Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 209, and by
Alberto Lenza in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed.
Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 320. In the second edition
Lorenzo Monaco 772


of his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Florence, 1568), Giorgio
Vasari titled the biography dedicated to the artist as Vita di Don Lorenzo Monaco
degli Angeli di Firenze. Don (abbreviation of dominus) was a title originally
reserved for the Benedictine monks, Monaco is the Italian word for monk, and
Angeli refers to the Florentine monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, to which he
belonged. Since then, the painter usually has been termed Lorenzo Monaco.
[2] A 1415 annotation of controversial interpretation in the same registro vecchio of

Santa Maria degli Angeli speaks of don Lorenzo dipintore da siene del nostro
ordine. See Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 212213; and
Alberto Lenza, in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed.
Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 322. Both Eisenberg (1989,
45) and Lenza (in Tartuferi and Parenti 2006, 325 n. 15), in contrast to previous
scholars, doubted that the words da siene implied that the painter was of
Sienese origin.
[3] On this predella, see Erling S. Skaug, in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione
giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence,
2006), 106109. Dillian Gordon noted that according to the seventeenth-century
Sepoltuario by Stefano Rosselli, the altarpiece bore the arms of the family and was
inscribed An.D.1387....; Dillian Gordon, The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings,
National Gallery Catalogues (London, 2003), 197 n. 3.
[4] Between January 1421 and August 1422, Don Lorenzo received payments for
the panel (not clearly identifiable) to adorn the high altar of the church of
SantEgidio in Florence. The Florentine house assigned to the painter by his
monastery in 1415, with a clause specifying that after his death it would be restored
to the ownership of the Camaldolese community, was available again in 1426 for
renting; see Mirella Levi DAncona, Miniatura e miniatori a Firenze dal xiv al xvi
secolo: Documenti per la storia della miniatura (Florence, 1962), 173. It seems
logical to suppose that the monastic community did not intend to wait long to re-let
the property and therefore that Don Lorenzo had died shortly beforehand. If
Giorgio Vasari was right in asserting that the painter died at the age of fifty-five,
and if his date of birth was really c. 1370, his date of death would be in or around
1425; cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle
(Florence, 19661987), 2(1967):305.
Lorenzo Monaco 773


BIBLIOGRAPHY
1905 Sirn, Osvald.

Don Lorenzo Monaco. Strasbourg, 1905.
1907 Suida, Wilhelm. "Lorenzo Monaco, Don." In

1907-1950: 23(1929):391-393.
1938 Pudelko, Georg. The Stylistic Development of Lorenzo Monaco, 1.

1939 Pudelko, Georg. The Stylistic Development of Lorenzo Monaco, 2.

1958 Amerio, Rosalba. "Lorenzo Monaco." In

Enciclopedia Universale dellArte. Edited by Istituto per la
collaborazione culturale. 15 vols. Florence, 1958-1967: 8(1958):701-702.
1960 Fachechi, Grazia Maria. "Lorenzo Monaca." In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 66(2006):82-87.
1965 Bellosi, Luciano. Da Spinello Aretino a Lorenzo Monaco.

Paragone 16, no. 187 (1965): 18-43.

Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-1400. Florence,
1975: 87-88, 132-136, 337-355 et passim.
1989 Eisenberg, Marvin.

Lorenzo Monaco. Princeton, 1989.
2004 Kanter, Laurence B. Lorenzo Monaco. In

Dizionario biografico dei miniatori italiani: secoli IX XVI. Edited by
Milvia Bollati. Milan, 2004: 399-401.
Lorenzo Monaco 774


2006 Tartuferi, Angelo, and Daniela Parenti, eds.

Lorenzo Monaco: dalla tradizione giottesca al rinascimento. Exh. cat.
Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, 2006.
Lorenzo Monaco 775


Lorenzo Monaco
Florentine, c. 1370 - c. 1425
Madonna and Child

1413
tempera on panel
overall: 116.3 55.6 cm (45 13/16 21 7/8 in.)
framed: 127 x 66.2 x 11.4 cm (50 x 26 1/16 x 4 1/2 in.)
Inscription: on the Child's scroll: EGO S[UM...];[1] across the bottom: AVE.G[RATIA?]
... AN[N]O.D[OMINI]. M.CCCC.XIII
[1] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, DC,
1979: 1:274, reads EGO S[UM LU]X M[UNDI], i.e., the words of John 8:12, but what
actually remains of the inscription does not allow more than an informed
conjecture about the original text. In Don Lorenzos Monteoliveto altarpiece of
1410, now in the Accademia in Florence, and in the more or less contemporary
altarpiece in the Galleria Comunale at Prato, the scroll reads EGO SUM VIA
VERITAS ET VITA (John 14:6).
ENTRY
The painting presents Mary with her son according to an original version of the
iconography of the Madonna of Humility.[1] Here, instead of being suckled by the
Virgin in a recumbent or seated position, the child stands on Marys knees, turning
towards the spectator while supporting himself with one hand on her shoulder in
an affectionate gesture and holding her veil with the other.[2] Clearly, the artist,
though using an iconographic type very common by then in Florence, wished to
place the emphasis not so much on the humility of Mary as on her grace, the
elegance with which she presents her divine son to the faithful. It was probably her
much elongated and slightly curving torsothe line of the curve continued in her
bowed headthat suggested the idea of representing the Christ child standing, his
body slightly inclined towards her; this permitted the painter to fuse mother and
child together in a single harmonious group [fig. 1]. Lorenzo Monaco was perhaps
the first to combine the motif of the standing Child, widespread in Florentine


painting of the period in representations of the Madonna and Child Enthroned, with
the iconographic scheme of the Madonna of Humility. He did so in paintings dating
for the most part to the phase of his full maturity.[3]
Ever since its first appearance in the art historical literature (Sirn 1905), the panel
has been commonly recognized as an autograph work by Lorenzo, with the sole
exceptions of Marvin Eisenberg (in Shapley 1966, citing Eisenberg verbal
communication; and Eisenberg 1989) and Bruce Cole (1980).[4] The former scholar,
initially (1954) inclined to accept the authorship of the Camaldolese artist, later
judged the painting scarcely worthy of Lorenzo and finally concluded (1989) that
the painter of the National Gallery Madonna would seem to have been a
distinctive assistant to Lorenzo Monaco who used the design of the master for the
principal contours of the Virgin, but introduced an opposing rhythm and a less
traditional technique.[5] Cole (1980), while recognizing that the quality of the
painting is very high, decided, for reasons not otherwise explained, to classify it as
a product of Lorenzos bottega.[6] In actual fact, the execution of the panel shows
all the customary accomplishment and finesse of Lorenzos technique, diminished
only by the damage and overpainting it has undergone; Eisenbergs opinion might
have been influenced by the paintings compromised condition.[7]
While the presence of a barbe, and thus of engaged frame moldings, around the
entire perimeter of the image might suggest that the Washington Madonna was an
independent devotional work, its size and its tall and narrow proportions differ
considerably from those of other self-standing images of the Madonna and Child
painted by Lorenzo. The painted surfaces of the latter generally measure just
under one meter high, while their width, in contrast to that of the Washington
Madonna, generally exceeds half the panel height. There are therefore good
reasons for supposing that our panel originally formed part of a relatively small
triptych, destined for the altar of a side chapel in a church. We may presume that
the Madonna and Child would have been flanked by paired saints on either side,
as in the triptych dated 1404 in the Pinacoteca of Empoli, whose central panel
similarly presents an image of the Madonna of Humility. A possible candidate as
the left lateral of the National Gallery of Art panel could be the panel of Saints
Catherine and John [fig. 2] now in the Princes Czartoryski Foundation Collections in
Krakow.[8]
Although the dark blue of the Virgins mantle has now altered, almost to the point
of looking black, the delicate palette of the painting is still striking and testifies to
Don Lorenzos total emancipation from tradition in his choice of colors: the


customary red dress of the Virgin is here abandoned in favor of a lilac damask,
while the transparent white veil is transformed into azure. To this is added the
delicate salmon red of the childs tunic, combined with the light blue of his long
undergarment (matching that of the Madonnas veil), the deep golden yellow of the
lining of her mantle, and the pale green of the marble pavement on which the
Virgins cushion is placed.[9] Precedents for the composition can be identified in
such works as the central panels of polyptychs no. 468 in the Galleria
dellAccademia in Florence, dated 1410, and that in the Galleria Comunale at
Prato,[10] perhaps slightly later in date. In both panels we also encounter the
tendency to prefer suffused colors that have been combined with great delicacy.
Both are images of the Madonna and Child Enthroned accompanied by angels, in
which one of the painters preoccupations seems to have been to fill all the
available space, either with the architectural structure of the throne or with the
figures of angels and the cloth of honor they support. In the color scheme of both
paintings a decisive role is assigned to Marys blue mantle, always complemented
and enlivenedas in our paintingby the sudden flash of the brilliant yellow silk
lining exposed by its undulating hems.
About 1413, at the time he painted the Washington Madonna, the artist not only
accentuated the slenderness of his figures and the aristocratic elegance of their
movements but also simplified the design and added spaciousness to his
compositions. Angularities and brusque changes in direction of the contours are
now eliminated, and a smoother, more placid rhythm is given to the outlines, here
and there enlivened by the small curlicues or serpentine undulations of the hems.
The figures, moreover, at least in part, are now delineated directly against the gold
ground and invested with a more monumental character. In this phase, the artist
seems to have preferred colder hues; he thus matched the blues of varying
intensity with delicate green. We find this combination also in the Madonna of
Humility dated 1415 in the church of SantErmete at Putignano (Pisa)[11] and in the
versions of the Madonna Enthroned in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in
Madrid,[12] the Bonnenfantenmuseum in Maastricht,[13] and the National Gallery of
Scotland in Edinburgh,[14] to cite some of the more significant examples of
paintings produced in or around the middle of the second decade.[15]
The stylistic data that characterize the panel in the Gallery and the Madonna
painted two years later in the Pisan church thus represent valuable points of
reference for a correct historical evaluation of the abovementioned works, which,
in contrast to what is sometimes affirmed, ought not to be far removed in date from


the middle of the second decade. They are the results of a phase in which the
charged tension of design and harshness of modeling are gradually abandoned. At
the same time, the distinctive features of Lorenzos late style are slow in appearing:
an emphasis on smooth sweeping lines, crescent- or sickle-shaped drapery folds,
and extreme lightness of modeling that dematerializes the physical substance of
flesh. Nor do we yet find in the paintings of this phase the unusual combinations of
pale pastel shades privileged by the artist in the latter years of his life.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Detail, Lorenzo Monaco, Madonna and Child, 1413,

fig. 2 Lorenzo Monaco, The Saints Catherine and John

the Baptist, 14101415, tempera on panel, Czartoryski
Museum, The Princes Czartoryski Foundation Collections,
Krakow
NOTES
[1] On the iconography of the Madonna of Humility, see cat. 22, n. 7.
[2] Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the
XIV Century (New York, 1954), 28, observed that the frontal posture of the
Child standing on his mothers knee is not seen before 1315, when it is
represented by Simone Martini, alluding to the Maest in the Palazzo
Pubblico in Siena dating to that year. However, albeit in a not entirely frontal
pose and not blessing but supporting himself on his mothers shoulder in a


way very similar to what we see in Lorenzo Monacos painting, the Christ
child is represented standing in the left lateral of a triptych by Duccio in the
Royal Collection of England, Hampton Court, Surrey, painted within the first
decade of the fourteenth century; see Luciano Bellosi, in Duccio: Siena fra
tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 188195.
[3] The motif of the standing child appears in the Madonna of Humility of the
Perkins bequest in the treasury of the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi,
probably still dating within the first decade of the fifteenth century, and
hence in works more chronologically advancedsuch as the panel no. 1123
formerly in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin; that of the abbey of Cava
de Tirreni (Salerno); or that formerly in the Schaeffer Galleries in New York,
in which the Madonna of Humility is transformed into a celestial vision set
against the gold ground and appearing to a group of saints.
[4] Osvald Sirn, Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strasbourg, 1905), 8889, 169, 186;
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 89; Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo
Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 172173; Bruce Cole, Sienese Painting from Its
Origins to the Fifteenth Century (New York, 1980), 6970.
[5] Marvin Eisenberg, The Origins and Development of the Early Style of
Lorenzo Monaco (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1954), 313 n. 31; Marvin
Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 173.
[6] Bruce Cole, Sienese Painting from Its Origins to the Fifteenth Century (New
York, 1980), 6970.
[7] In particular, Marvin Eisenbergs observation that a technique visible in the

Kress panel that is foreign to Lorenzo Monaco is the modeling in light and
shade of the Virgins face and the entire head of the Child raises the
suspicion that he was deceived by the skillful inpainting that has altered the
paintings original effect in these areas. Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco
(Princeton, 1989), 173.
[8] On the Krakow panel, see Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton,
1989), 92, fig. 153.
[9] It is difficult to know what color the Virgins dress and the Christ childs tunic
would have been originally, because the pigments, especially the red lake
pigments, have faded considerably. The green of the pavement was heavily
restored by Mario Modestini but seems to follow surviving traces of the
original color.
[10] See Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 163165, where
the polyptych was considered a product of Lorenzos bottega and dated
c. 14121414. In my view, it is a substantially autograph painting that should
be dated only slightly later than the polyptych in the Accademia.


[11] Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 160161; Daniela

Parenti, in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed.
Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 202203.
[12] Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 146147, with a dating
to c. 14221423; Mikls Boskovits and Serena Padovani, The
ThyssenBornemisza Collection: Early Italian Painting 12901470 (London,
1990), 114119, with a dating to 14151420. Angelo Tartuferi rejected the
latter proposal, but his argument puzzles me, in particular when he
compared the painting now in Madrid with what can be regarded as the
paradigm of Don Lorenzos final period, namely the Adoration of the Magi in
the Uffizi, Florence. Cf. Angelo Tartuferi, in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla
tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela
Parenti (Florence, 2006), 224226.
[13] See Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 136, (as workshop
of Lorenzo Monaco, c. 14181420), whose opinion was also confirmed by C.
E. de Jong-Janssen and D.H. van Wegen, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings
in the Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht, 1995), 6667. The Maastricht
painting, which has in the past suffered various maltreatments, is no longer
easy to assess, but in my view there are no cogent reasons to attribute it to
a hand other than Don Lorenzo himself or to detach it from the group of
paintings being discussed here.
[14] See Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 93, with a dating
to c. 1418. Tartuferi recognized that the Edinburgh panel was earlier than the
Thyssen-Bornemisza Madonna in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione
giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti
(Florence, 2006), 226.
[15] Among the various paintings belonging to the same phase as the
Washington Madonna of Humility, I would like to cite at least the magnificent
group of four patriarchs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
They are also typical products of the phase of transition between Don
Lorenzos initiation in the late Gothic style and that more simplified in design
but more probing in expression that began towards the end of the second
decade. Art historical assessment of these panels has varied: Marvin
Eisenberg suggested a date of c. 14081410, and Laurence Kanter also
substantially accepted that suggestion, adding to the group the Saint Peter
formerly in the Feigen collection in New York (recently the painting has
passed into the Moretti collection in Florence). This latter hypothesis, though
well argued, does not entirely convince; the Saint Peter, which is also
iconographically inconsistent with the figures of patriarchs, could be a
slightly later work than the four panels in New York, which seem to me
datable to c. 1410 or shortly after. See Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco
(Princeton, 1989), 151153; and Laurence B. Kanter, in Lorenzo Monaco:
Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, eds. Angelo Tartuferi and


Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 186190.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The painting was executed on a single-member panel with vertical grain; the wood
was lined with fabric below the white gesso ground. Red bole preparation was
applied to the areas to be gilded. The original frame is lost, and the panel has been
trimmed along all the edges, though the presence of a barbe around its entire
profile indicates that the image remains intact. Stephen Pichetto treated the
painting between 1940 and 1941, at which time the panel was thinned and
cradled.[1] The flesh is painted over a green underpainting. Initially the artist
painted the blue veil to cover Marys forehead, but later he changed his design to
allow her red-gold hair to reappear beneath her cloak. The pale blue of the veil is
still visible where her hair is parted. The halos, panel border, and cushion were
decorated with incised and punched designs. Mordant gilding was used to create
the gold designs on the clothing and the inscription.
The painting has suffered from neglect and also from deliberate vandalism: deep
vertical gouges are present in the figure of Christ and in the face of the Virgin. In
addition, many of the pigments have faded.[2] In 1905, it was reported to be much
darkened by dust and opacified varnishes. This state is probably shown by a
Giraudon photograph revealing the paint film worn and much darkened, with small,
scattered paint losses and scratches both in the figures and in the gold ground. A
reproduction published in 1909 likely illustrates an undocumented treatment that
took place in the meantime.[3] After Pichettos 19401941 treatment, the painting
was treated again in 1956 by Mario Modestini.[4] Inpainting is especially heavy in
the faces of the Madonna and child, as well as in the green pavement.
TECHNICAL NOTES
DC, 1979), 1:274. Stephen Pichetto also might have trimmed the edges at
this time.
[2] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the painting using FORS
spectral analysis, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), reflectance
spectroscopy, luminescence spectroscopy, and infrared reflectography at


0.4 to 2.5 microns. Infrared reflectography was performed using a Santa

Barbara Focalplane SBF187 InSb camera with H, J, and K astronomy filters
and a Sony XC77 Si-CCD camera (see report dated October 27, 2010, in
NGA conservation files).
[3] In describing the painting, Osvald Sirn noted that die Farbenstimmung
drfte dadurch gelitten haben, dass das Bild bis zum Herbst 1904 mit einer
verhrteten Schicht von Schmutz und Firnis bedeckt gewesen ist (the
appearance of the color suffered because until the autumn of 1904 it was
covered with a hardened layer of dirt and varnish). Osvald Sirn, Don
Lorenzo Monaco (Strasbourg, 1905), 89. This is the situation apparently
shown by the Giraudon photo no. 6491.
DC, 1979), 1:274, reported that Mario Modestini cleaned, restored, and
varnished it.
PROVENANCE
Masson collection, Amiens, by 1904.[1] (douard Larcade, Paris), by 1927. (Count

Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence), by 1938;[2] sold September 1939 to the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1943 to NGA. [1] Osvald Sirn, Don
Lorenzo Monaco, Strasbourg, 1905: 88-89. [2] Raimond van Marle (The
Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols., The Hague, 1923-1938:
9[1927]: 162) notes that at that time the painting was no longer in the Masson
collection. A manuscript annotation on a photo of the painting in the archives of the
Biblioteca Berenson at I Tatti, Florence, dated 30 November 1927, states it then
belonged to E. Larcade, Paris. Expertises by Giuseppe Fiocco and Wilhelm Suida
written in English (apparently for Contini-Bonacossi in expectation of the sale to
Samuel H. Kress; copies in NGA curatorial files) are dated May 1938. George
Pudelko (The stylistic development of Lorenzo Monaco, The Burlington Magazine
73 [1938]: 237-248 and 74 [1939]: 76-81) describes the painting as belonging to
Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi. [3] The painting was included on a bill of sale
between the Kress Foundation and Contini-Bonacossi dated 1 September 1939,
where it is described as formerly in the Musee Masson, Amiens and in the Larcade
Collection, Saint Germain (copy in NGA curatorial files).


EXHIBITION HISTORY
1900 Possibly Muse du Louvre, Paris, early 1900s.[1]
2006 Lorenzo Monaco (1370-1425), Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, 2006,

unnumbered catalogue.
EXHIBITION HISTORY NOTES
[1] Adolphe Giraudon's photograph (Giraudon number 6491) is annotated with the
information that the painting was in the Muse du Louvre, Paris; perhaps it was
temporarily exhibited there.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1905 Sirn, Osvald. Don Lorenzo Monaco. Strasbourg, 1905: 88-89, 169, 186.
1907 Suida, Wilhelm. "Lorenzo Monaco, Don." In Allgemeines Lexikon der
23(1929):391, 392.
1909 Sirn, Osvald. "Opere sconosciute di Lorenzo Monaco." Rassegna darte
9 (1909): repro. 36.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 9(1927):162.
1939 Pudelko, Georg. "The Stylistic Development of Lorenzo Monaco, 2." The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 74 (1939): 76-77, repro.
(repro.), 244.
repro. 136.
Washington, 1951: 33, repro. 28.
1954 Eisenberg, Marvin. "The Origins and Development of the Early Style of
Lorenzo Monaco." Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1954. Ann
Arbor, MI, 2011: 313 n. 31.
1958 Amerio, Rosalba. "Lorenzo Monaco." In Enciclopedia Universale



Florence, 1958-1967: 8(1962):702.
1958 Meiss, Millard. "Four Panels by Lorenzo Monaco." The Burlington
Magazine 100 (1958): 195 n. 18.
1960 Fachechi, Grazia Maria. "Lorenzo Monaco." In Dizionario biografico degli
66(2006):85.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 111, 315, 646, 664.
1972 "Lorenzo Monaco, Piero di Giovanni." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi
dei pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto
Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols. Turin, 1972-1976: 8(1975):44.
1400. Florence, 1975: 355.
repro. 375.
of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:274; 2:pl. 188, as Attributed to Lorenzo
Monaco.
1980 Cole Ahl, Diane. "Fra Angelico: A New Chronology for the 1420s."
New York, 1980: repro. 69-70.
Katalog der Gemlde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 50, 62
n. 17.


1989 Eisenberg, Marvin. Lorenzo Monaco. Princeton, 1989: 89, 90, 91, 147,
172-173, fig. 143.
1994 Kanter, Laurence B., Barbara Drake Boehm, Carl Brandon Strehlke,
Gaudenz Freuler, and Christa C. Mayer-Thurman. Painting and
Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450. Exh. cat. The
1:285; 2:punch chart 8.13.
Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main. Mainz, 2004: 64.
2004: repro. 230.
2004 Vries, Anneke de. "Schilderkunst in Florence tussen 1400 en 1430: een
onderzoek naar stijl en stilistische vernieuwing." Ph.D. dissertation,
Universiteit Leiden, 2004: 229, fig. 287.
2006 Skaug, Erling S. Note sulla decorazione a punzone nei dipinti su tavola
di Lorenzo Monaco. In Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al
Rinascimento. Edited by Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti. Exh. cat.
Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, 2006: 54.
2006 Tartuferi, Angelo, and Daniela Parenti, eds. Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla
tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento. Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia,
Florence, 2006: no. 32, 198-199, 212.
2006 Tartuferi, Angelo. Lorenzo Monaco: Una mostra e alcune osservazioni.
In Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento. Edited
by Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti. Exh. cat. Galleria
dellAccademia, Florence, 2006: 19.
2007 Caioni, Gabriele, ed. Dagli eredi di Giotto al primo Cinquecento. Exh.
cat. Galleria Corsini, Florence, 2007: 61, 63.


Margaritone d'Arezzo
Also known as
Margaritone di Magnano
Margarito di Magnano
Italian, active second and third quarter 13th century
BIOGRAPHY
The earliest painter from Arezzo to be known by name and whose works have
survived was celebrated by Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574), who came from
the same city and who dedicated a biography to him. He called the artist by the
augmentative Margaritone and, underlining his fame among the other artists of
his time, stated that he was not only a painter but also a sculptor and architect.[1]
Evidence to substantiate Margaritones activity in these latter fields is, however,
lacking. The only contemporary document known to us that mentions him was
dated 1262 and called him Margarito and specified his profession as painter.[2]
This profession is confirmed by several panel paintings bearing his signature. Only
one of these, Madonna and Child Enthroned and Four Stories of the Virgin in the
church of Santa Maria delle Vertighe at Monte San Savino, contains a date, now
fragmentary and variously read as 1269, 1274, and 1283. Vasari himself asserted, in
the first edition of his Vite, that the artist died in 1316 (an undoubtedly erroneous
date). For these reasons, Margaritone has often been characterized as a provincial
and retardataire painter.
As for the chronology of his works, many uncertainties still remain. His paintings
are mostly dated to years close to 1262, even though some art historians, following
the intuition of Roberto Longhi (1974),[3] are of the view that the stylistic features of
various works included in Margaritones oeuvre suggest dates of execution
preceding the mid-thirteenth century. According to an apparently trustworthy
tradition, one of the paintings signed by the painter, the Madonna from the church
of Santa Maria at Montelungo (Terranova Bracciolini, Arezzo), now in the Museo
Statale at Arezzo, was painted in 1250.[4] Indeed, Margaritones paintings
especially reveal stylistic affinities with the works of such painters as the Florentine
Bigallo Master, the Lucchese Bonaventura Berlinghieri, or the Umbrian Petrus, all of
them active just before or just after the mid-thirteenth century.[5] They were
exponents of a figural style that defined the robust forms of the figures with a
Margaritone d'Arezzo 788


pronounced contour line and in general showed little interest in effects of

volumetric relief. Only in the concluding phase of his career did Margaritone
respond to the more complex figurative language of the workshop of Simeone and
Machilone of Spoleto, in the search for expressive liveliness and more pronounced
dynamism of narrative. During this period, the artist would establish a partnership
with the painter, miniaturist, and sculptor Ristoro, with whom he signed, probably in
the early 1260s, the altarpiece of Monte San Savino, generally considered the
latest of his surviving works.[6]
[1] Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle

(Florence, 19661987), 2(1967):305. Apart from various pieces of information that
have been shown to be erroneous, the Aretine historian maintained that the artist
died at the age of seventy-seven. Therefore, if, as Vasari maintained, he died in
1316, his date of birth would have fallen in 1239.
[2] Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei pi eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed.
Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence, 18781885), 1(1878):359 n. 1.
[3] See Anna Maria Maetzke, in Arte nellAretino: Recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al
1974, ed. Lionello G. Boccia et al. (Florence, 1974), 15.
complete di Roberto Longhi, 14 vols. (Florence, 19611984), 7(1974):34, considered
Margaritone the evocatore di unantichissima corrente copto-siriaca (evocator of
an ancient Coptic-Syriac current), a hypothesis that seems scarcely credible today.
On the other hand, he rightly pointed out suo evidente rapporto con una corrente
di arte fiorentina cui appartengono taluni maestri della met del secolo, in primis il
Maestro del Bigallo (his evident relationship with a current of Florentine art to
which certain midcentury masters belonged, primarily the Maestro del Bigallo). On
the chronology of the painter, see also Ada Labriola, Ricerche su Margarito e
Ristoro dArezzo, Arte cristiana 75 (1987): 145160.
[5] On the Bigallo Master, see Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270
(Florence, 1993), 8995. On Bonaventura Berlinghieri, see Boskovits, Origins, 73
74; Paolo Roberto Novello, Berlinghieri, Bonaventura, in Allgemeines
Meiner, 87 vols. (Munich, 19922015), 9(1994):467468. On Petrus, see Filippo


Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989),
1:282; Boskovits, Origins, 72.
[6] See Anna Maria Maetzke, Nuove ricerche su Margarito dArezzo, Bollettino
darte 58 (1973): 102105. The miniatures of the manuscript entitled La
composizione del mondo colle sue cascioni, ed. Alberto Morino, (Florence, 1976),
probably should also be attributed to the same painter; cf. also Antonio Caleca,
Restoro dArezzo: Le idee di un artista, 1282, Critica darte 50, no. 5 (1985): 42
44.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Weigelt, Curt H. "Margarito D'arezzo." In

1907-1950: 24(1930):88-89.
1924 Dami, Luigi. Opere ignote di Margarito dArezzo e lo sviluppo del suo
stile.
Dedalo 5 (1924-1925): 537-549.
1929 "Margaritone." In
Enciclopedia Italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti. Edited by Istituto
Giovanni Treccani. 36 vols. Rome, 1929-1939: 22(1934):285.
1949 Garrison, Edward B.

Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: an Illustrated Index. Florence, 1949:
22-23.
1960 Fachechi, Grazia Maria. "Margarito (Mararitone) d'Arezzo." In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 70(2008):106-109.
1972 "Margarito o Margaritone de Magnano da Arezzo." In

Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dallXI
al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols.
Turin, 1972-1976: 8(1975):188-189.


1973 Maetzke, Anna Maria. Nuove ricerche su Margarito dArezzo.

Bollettino dArte 58 (1973): 95-112.
1986 Ricci, Stefania. "Margarito d'Arezzo." In

1987 Labriola, Ada. Ricerche su Margarito e Ristoro dArezzo.

Arte Cristiana 75 (1987): 145-160.
1991 Antetomaso, Ebe. Margarito. In

1996 Richardson, John. "Margarito d'Arezzo." In

London, 1996: 20(1996):407-408.
2010 Monciatti, Alessio. Margarito, lartista e il mito. In

Arte in terra dArezzo: il Medioevo. Edited by Marco Collareta and Paola
Refice. Florence, 2010: 213-224.


Margaritone d'Arezzo
Italian, active second and third quarter 13th century
Madonna and Child

Enthroned with Four
Saints
c. 1240/1245
tempera on panel
overall: 97.3 49.9 1.3 cm (38 5/16 19 5/8 1/2 in.)
height (main panel, without extension for head and halo): 73.6 cm (29 in.)
top section (extension for head and halo): 26.5 23.5 cm (10 7/16 9 1/4 in.)
framed: 102.2 x 55.9 x 5.7 cm (40 1/4 x 22 x 2 1/4 in.)
Inscription: across the bottom: MARGARIT[VS DE A]RITIO ME FECIT (Margaritus of
Arezzo made me) [1]
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the signature using cross-
sections and found a layer containing lead white between the gesso and the paint.
This layer was not present in cross-sections taken from the main body of the
painting. In addition, there were numerous layers of paint in each signature cross-
section. This indicates that the signature has been repainted several times. It is
unclear whether there was originally a signature in this area, as is found in almost
all of Margaritos paintings that have come down to us. If there was, the current
inscription may not bear any resemblance to it (see report dated April 24, 2007, in
NGA conservation files). Alessio Monciattis comparative paleographical analysis
(2010), however, showed the inscription very similar to those existing on the
artists other paintings. See Alessio Monciatti, Margarito, lartista e il mito, in Arte
in terra dArezzo: Il Medioevo, edited by Marco Collareta and Paola Refice,
Florence, 2010: 213-224.
ENTRY
The Madonna is portrayed in a rigidly frontal position, seated on a throne without

any backrest and of a shape similar to those that mainly appear in paintings of the
first half of the thirteenth century.[1] She holds the child in front of her, in a similarly
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints 792


frontal position. The Christ child lifts his right hand in the gesture of blessing and
holds a scroll in his left, alluding to the Christian revelation. The iconography, of
Byzantine origin, is known as the Virgin Nikopoios (Victory Maker). It frequently
appears in the apsidal decoration of churches of the middle Byzantine period and
was widespread also in panels in central Italy between the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.[2] In such paintings it was typical to present Mary, as in the image here,
with the haloed head projecting upwards from the upper margin of the rectangular
panel.[3] It was also usual practice to paint golden stars on the maphorion or
mantle covering her two shoulders, and often on the veil covering her head,
alluding to the popular etymology of her name.[4] The crown, on the other hand,
alludes to the Marian attribute of regina coeli; it is of a particular form and
decoration that often appears in the paintings by Margaritone.[5]
In representations of similar type, the figures of saints, if present at all, always

appear, as they do here, on a scale considerably smaller than that of the Virgin and
child; they hover against the gold ground to the sides of the central image.[6] They
have been variously identified, but it is probable that the elderly monk in the black
habit and with a book in his hand represents Saint Benedict, and that the two
female saints holding lamps in their hands represent the martyrs Flora and Lucilla,
whose mortal remains are venerated in the abbey dedicated to them in Arezzo. As
for the youthful beardless saint facing Saint Benedict, we can do no more than
conjecture: he could be the disciple preferred by Jesus, Saint John the Evangelist,
as is usually suggested, but he could also be Eugenius, companion in martyrdom of
the two female saints below.[7]
It is a measure of the change in taste over the last two centuries that the panel, to
which Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle and James Archer Crowe in 1886 conceded
only that it is one of the least ugly paintings left by this painter, was hailed by
Robert Lehman forty years later (1928) as a supreme achievement of the art of the
pre-giottesque period.[8] It was, remarked Lehman, a work in which the painter
has contributed overwhelming force and grandeur to the quiet dignity and
symmetry of the Byzantine tradition, while Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca
(1951) in the relevant entry of their Enciclopedia, placed it among Margaritones
opere pi belle (most beautiful works).[9] As for the authorship of the work,
without doubting the authenticity of the signature, some art historians have
suggested that it could be a workshop variant, hence not a fully autograph
painting.[10] The date of execution is mainly placed between 1250 and 1270,
though occasionally pushed back to c. 1235/1245.[11] Such considerable variations


in date are uncommon even in the study of thirteenth-century painting. To throw

light on the question, let us first try to establish the relative chronology of the
various versions of the Madonna painted by Margaritone and attempt on this basis
to arrive at the dating of the individual works.
The stylistic affinities among the Madonna Enthroned from Montelungo (now in the
Museum in Arezzo), that of the National Gallery in London, and the panel discussed
here have often been emphasized. These versions are sharply differentiated from
a fourth representation of the theme [fig. 1], the one painted for the church of Santa
Maria delle Vertighe outside Monte San Savino (near Arezzo). There, not only is the
child shown in three-quarter profile, but the chrysography of his garment also is
used in a different way: it serves not just to embellish the figure but also to
emphasize the volumetric substance of the forms. The chiaroscuro modeling of the
faces also suggests that, at the time of the execution of the Santa Maria delle
Vertighe panel, Margaritone was familiar with and tried to emulate certain
innovative features of Byzantine neo-Hellenism disseminated in Tuscany by Giunta
Pisano and other masters closely related to him around the mid-thirteenth
century.[12] The same Madonna is also differentiated from Margaritones other
versions of the theme by the less elongated forms of the bodies and faces and the
treatment of the drapery, which, instead of appearing as a kind of decorative
pattern applied over the flattened forms, envelops the bodies, allowing us to
glimpse the brilliant red of the lining of the Virgins mantle and even the shape of
her throne. Moreover, in the Madonna of Monte San Savino, Margaritone abandons
the archaic device of the seat as a compact block and presents us instead with a
throne of more slender and more fanciful form, with the seat supported by figures
of lions.[13]
There can be little doubt, therefore, that the Madonna from Monte San Savino
should be several years later in date than the others, and that they in turn are close
to one another, not only in pictorial idiom but probably also in date of execution.
Nonetheless, some differences can be observed among the three similar versions
of the Virgin Nikopoios painted by Margaritone. The Madonna in London presents
the protagonist with more robust forms than the others, and here too Mary is
seated on a throne supported by lions. She is wearing a vermilion red dress, in
contrast to the deep violet, perhaps intended to imitate imperial purple,[14] in the
panels in Arezzo and Washington. The diversity of the figures of the angels that
flank Mary in the panels in London and Arezzo should also be noted: in the latter,
the angel in the upper left, despite his similar pose, seems more static, and his


forms are rendered in more summary form than in the other. I believe, in
conclusion, there are grounds for deducing that the London altarpiece is more
advanced in style though chronologically closer to the other two than to the panel
from Monte San Savino.
Though they resemble each other closely, some differences can be observed
between the paintings in Arezzo and Washington. The oval face of the Madonna
[fig. 2] is more elongated in the version in the National Gallery of Art, and the tiny
figures of the lateral saints seem more rigid and the drawing of their forms more
summary. In the Madonna now in Washington, moreover, there are as yet no signs
of the attempts detectable in the panel in Arezzo to represent spatial depth by
emphasizing the forward projection of the Virgins knees; he does this by the
expediency of flanking areas in full light with those in shadow. In the panel
discussed here the artist makes no such attempt: he essentially limits himself to the
use of linear means to indicate the drapery folds. This suggests that it belongs to
an earlier phase in Margaritos career.
How can these observations be reconciled with our current knowledge of the
development of Tuscan painting in the thirteenth century and with the very few
dates known to us on the activity of the Aretine master? The fragmentary date of
the Monte San Savino panel, which in its present state can only be read as
M.C.C.L[...]III,[15] has been conjecturally integrated as 1269, 1274, and 1283. The
reminiscences of the manner of Giunta Pisano detectable in the painting, and the
circumstance that the Pisan master, already famed in 1236, is documented only
down to 1254,[16] suggest, however, that preference be given to the date 1269.
This preference becomes even more compelling if we think of the activity in
Arezzo, during the seventh decade, of artists of far more advanced style than that
evinced by Margaritone and Ristoro dArezzo.[17] As for the dating transmitted by a
seventeenth-century inscription (1250) for the Madonna from Montelungo, even if it
cannot be considered as certain it seems plausible, since it would place the
execution of the panel at a sufficiently wide interval from the image of Monte San
Savino. Whatever the case, the analysis of the style suggests that the Washington
Madonna dates to a phase preceding the panel from Montelungo. The type of the
image itself as well as the stylistic data underline its kinship with works by the
Sienese Master of Tressa, datable to the third decade of the century,[18] and the
Florentine Bigallo Master, whose comparable panels probably date to the years
around 12301240.[19] Both in his parsimonious use of shadow zones in the
modeling and in his choice of the type of throne for the scene of Christ Sitting in


Judgment, the painter of archaizing tendency who frescoed the cycle of the chapel
of San Silvestro in the monastery of the Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome in
1246 [20] would seem to indicate a slightly more advanced stage in stylistic
development. Therefore, based on the evidence both of historical context and of a
plausible reconstruction of the internal development of Margaritones style, it
would seem that the Madonna in the Gallery probably was executed at a date
close to or not long after 1240.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Margaritone and Ristoro d'Arezzo, Madonna and

Child Enthroned and Four Stories of the Virgin, 1260s,
tempera on panel, Santa Maria delle Vertighe, Monte San
Savino (Arezzo). Image courtesy of the Soprintendenza
per i Beni Architettonici e Paesaggistici e per il Patrimonio
Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico per la provincia di
Arezzo
fig. 2 Detail of Madonna, Margaritone d'Arezzo, Madonna

and Child Enthroned with Four Saints, c. 1240/1245,
NOTES
[1] In his study on the typology of thrones, James H. Stubblebine classified the
one represented in Margaritones panel in his first group, that of thrones
without backrest, essentially flat and consisting of a series of alternately
projecting and receding bands decorated with abstract designs. This form
generally appears in paintings datable within or not much later than the mid-
thirteenth century, yet Stubblebine believed that the painting (in his view
executed in the third quarter of the century) could also be placed in it,
because of the archaizing tendencies of its master, in his view sufficiently
removed from a vital, creative center, to miss most of the progressive
trends of the art of his time. See James H. Stubblebine, The Development
of the Throne in Dugento Tuscan Painting, Marsyas 7 (19541957): 26. But,
apart from the consideration that Arezzo in the thirteenth century could


justly be considered a very lively cultural center (cf. Wieruszowski 1953;

repro. in Wieruszowski 1971), the thrones of the versions of the Madonna
now respectively in Arezzo and Washington are very similar to those
reproduced in such works as the so-called Madonna dagli occhi grossi in
the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in Siena, datable to the second decade
(cf. Butzek 2001), or the Pala di San Zanobi in the Museo dellOpera del
Duomo in Florence, executed within the 1220s (cf. Boskovits 1993). See
Helene Wieruszowski, Arezzo as a Center of Learning and Letters in the
Thirteenth Century, Traditio 9 (1953): 321391; Helene Wieruszowski,
Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy, Storia e letteratura (Rome,
1971), 387474; Monica Butzek, Per la storia delle due Madonne delle
Grazie nel Duomo di Siena, Prospettiva 103104 (2001): 97109; Mikls
vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270 (Florence, 1993), 8995.
The difference between the thrones of these earlier images and that
painted by Margaritone consists merely in the slight bending upwards of the
upper section of the throne, a device that should probably be understood
as an attempt at foreshortening and hence a vague allusion to the three-
dimensionality of the thrones seat. By contrast, works securely dated after
the midcentury, such as Coppo di Marcovaldos Madonna of 1261 in the
church of the Servi in Siena, or that attributed both to Dietisalvi di Speme
and to Guido da Siena in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, executed one
year later, present thrones supported by massive legs formed of the
superimposition of elements of geometric form and others imitating plant
motifs. Cf. Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
(Florence, 1993), 510523; and Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di
Siena, vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 2223. The same
features are also found in other images datable to the same years, such as
the mosaic Madonna in the scarsella (chancel) of the Baptistery of Florence
or Meliores Pala at Panzano. Cf. Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 2, The Mosaics of the Baptistery of
Florence (Florence, 2007), 224240; and Boskovits, Corpus, sec. 1, vol. 1,
631641. Whatever value one wants to attribute to this evidence, the form of
a throne similar to the one described in the panel now in the National
Gallery of Art strongly suggests a date not much later than the mid-
thirteenth century.
[2] Cf. Olenka Z. Pevny, in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the
Middle Byzantine Era, A.D. 8431261, ed. Helen C. Evans and William D.
Wixom (New York, 1997), 140141.

(Florence, 1949), 8995, listed no fewer than thirty examples of this type of
image, a number certainly lower than that of the paintings of this kind now


known. Significantly, the panels now cited in this category are all, with the
exception of seven, Tuscan in origin. Garrisons datings now seem too late.
There are good grounds for assuming that the great majority of the panels
in question date roughly to the years between the second half of the twelfth
and approximately the mid-thirteenth century.
[4] Cf. Carlo Cecchelli, Mater Christi, 4 vols., Oriente e Occidente (Rome, 1946),
1:158159. The popularity of this attribute probably derives at least in part
from the well-known Marian hymn Ave maris stella; see Hermann Adalbert
Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus sive Hymnorum, canticorum, sequentiarum
circa annum MD usitatarum collectio amplissima (Halis, 1841), 204206.
[5] The image of Mary as queen was familiar and widespread in Roman art
since the sixth century. The iconography of the regina coeli was used ever
more frequently in the early medieval period; cf. Gerard A. Wellen, Das
Marienbild der frhchr. Kunst, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed.
Engelbert Kirschbaum and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, 1971), 3:158. In
this case, too, hymns like the Salve Regina undoubtedly contributed to the
dissemination of representations of Mary with the crown on her head. See
Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, Salve regina, in Dictionnaire
darchologie chrtienne et de liturgie (Paris, 1950), 15-1:714724; on the
images, see Marion Lawrence, Maria Regina, The Art Bulletin 7 (1925):
150161. In an article on the subject, Sonia Chiodo observed that the
peculiar type of crown present in Margaritones versions of the Madonna
corresponds to the imperial type that also appears in some seals of the Holy
Roman Emperor Frederick II. She attributed a possible political significance
to the use of the motif and linked its appearance with the period of
Guglielmino degli Ubertini (12481289) as bishop of Arezzo. Guglielmino
was an ardent supporter of the pro-papal Guelph party in the investiture
controversy. See Sonia Chiodo, Maria regina nelle opere di Margarito
dArezzo, in Medioevo: La chiesa e il palazzo; Atti del convegno
internazionale di studi, Parma, September 2024, 2005, ed. Arturo Carlo
Quintavalle (Milan, 2007), 598603.
[6] As in some panels of the Bigallo Master in the Villa la Quiete near Florence
and in the Museum at Certaldo. Cf. Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and
Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of
Florentine Painting, 11001270 (Florence 1993), 312315, 350352; Rosanna
Caterina Proto Pisani, ed., Il Museo di Arte Sacra a Certaldo (Bagno a Ripoli
2001), 28. The same arrangement of disembodied saints hovering to the
sides of the central image is also found, however, in a few other paintings
dating as late as the second half of the century.
[7] Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, Geschichte der
italienischen Malerei, ed. Deutsche Original-Ausgabe, 6 vols. (Leipzig,
18691876), 1:156, and later editions, thought that the saints in question
were Bruno and Benedict above and two Cistercian monks below. Lionello


Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 7 and later edition,
accepted the identity of Saint Benedict in the black-habited figure in the
upper right but identified the figure facing him on the left side as Saint John
the Evangelist and the two female saints in the lower order as Mary
Magdalene and Martha. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel
Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 49, conjecturally proposed
John the Evangelist for the saint in the upper left and referred to the two
female saints in the lower row as two martyr saints. Fern Rusk Shapley,
Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIIIXV
Century (London, 1966), 313, passim, identified the upper saints as John
and Benedict and conjectured that the female figures in the lower row were
two of the wise Virgins (cf. 25 Mt:113). The pointed cowl of the saint in the
upper right might make one think of Saint Francis. On the other hand, the
wide sleeves of the saints habit and the fact that he is not wearing the cord
around his habit that Franciscans used as a belt suggests that he is a
Benedictine monk, probably the founder of the Benedictine order. As for the
saint facing him on the opposite side, there are no attributes or other
features that might help to identify him, other than his youth. Given that the
panel is by a painter from Arezzo, the two women with the lamps in their
hands and wearing the crown of martyrdom can be identified as Saints Flora
and Lucilla, much venerated in that city and its area. They are also
represented with the same attributes and with the crown on their head in
the panel by Margaritone and Ristoro at Monte San Savino and in a
Quattrocento dossal still preservedthough now in fragmentary statein
the church in Arezzo dedicated to the two female saints; cf. Anna Maria
Maetzke, in Arte nellAretino: Recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al 1974, ed.
Lionello G. Boccia et al. (Florence, 1974), 25; and George Kaftal, Saints in
1952), 641642. Their presence would perhaps permit the hypothesis that
the young saint not clearly identifiable could be Eugenius, on whom see
Giuseppe Palazzini, Lucilla, Flora, Eugenio e compagni, in Bibliotheca
sanctorum, 12 vols. (Rome, 1967), 8:275276.
[8] Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, Storia della pittura
in Italia dal secolo II al secolo XVI, 11 vols. (Florence, 18861908), 1:291;
Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 1.
[9] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 1;
Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3
vols. (Milan, 1951), 2:1661.
[10] According to Anna Maria Maetzke, the panel in the National Gallery of Art
potrebbe essere solo una derivazione di bottega, i.e., a workshop product
derived from the prototype represented by the Madonna of Montelungo
now in the Museo Statale dArte Medievale e Moderna, Arezzo. See
Maetzke, in Arte nellAretino: Recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al 1974, ed.


Lionello G. Boccia et al. (Florence, 1974), 16. Subsequently, Hanna Kiel called
the Madonna in Washington a weak variant of that of Montelungo, while
Stefania Ricci classified it, albeit conjecturally, as a product of Margaritos
shop. Cf. Hanna Kiel, Review of Arte nellAretino, recuperi e restauri dal
1968 al 1974, Pantheon 33 (1975): 174175; Stefania Ricci, Margarito
dArezzo, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:634.
[11] Edward Garrison (1949), the first to tackle the problem of dating, proposed a
date of c. 1270, followed by NGA (1965), Fern Rusk Shapley (1966), and NGA
(1985); Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (1955, 1969) suggested 1260, and Anna
Maria Maetzke (1974), c. 1250. In a later moment, Shapley too (1979)
preferred an earlier dating, 12501270, while Ada Labriola (1987) indicated
c. 1240 as the most probable date. Mikls Boskovits (1993) pushed back the
date even further and proposed the years between the fourth and fifth
decade of the century. John Richardson (1996), for his part, restated the
later dating, between 1265 and 1275. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian
Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 94;
Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 83; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the
3; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue
(Washington, DC, 1985), 250; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Pittura del
Dugento a Firenze (Florence, 1955), 35; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, ed.,
LArte in Italia, vol. 3, Dal secolo XII al secolo XIII (Rome, 1969), 942; Anna
Maria Maetzke, in Arte nellAretino: Recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al 1974, ed.
Lionello G. Boccia et al. (Florence, 1974), 16; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue
of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:301; Ada Labriola,
Ricerche su Margarito e Ristoro dArezzo, Arte cristiana 75 (1987): 148;
sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270 (Florence, 1993),
73 n. 145; John Richardson, Margarito dArezzo, in The Dictionary of Art,
ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 20:407.
[12] I refer to Giuntas style in his phase of full maturity, when the painter
strongly felt the classicizing tendencies of Byzantine painting. Another
Tuscan painting realized shortly after the mid-thirteenth century, in which
the influence of Byzantine neo-Hellenism is strongly felt and which is often
considered an isolated expression of the byzantinizing tendency in Sienese
art, is the Pala del Battista, no. 14 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. Cf.
Angelo Tartuferi, Giunta Pisano (Soncino, 1991), 2324; Mikls Boskovits,
Sulle tracce di un grande pittore toscano di met Duecento, Arte cristiana
98 (2010): 241252.
[13] The lion supports allude, of course, to the throne of King Solomon, with
stays [arm rests] on each side of the sitting place, and two lions standing by


the stays (2 Chron 9:18). From the point of view of the typological
development of the throne, this type is a more fanciful variant of the kind
that appeared around the midcentury, which is no longer a compact form
but supported by legs (cf. note 1 above).
[14] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the paint in the
Madonnas robe of the Gallery painting using x-ray fluorescence
spectrometry (XRF). The analysis indicated that dye-based pigments such as
red lake and indigo probably were used in this area (see report dated July
27, 2006, in NGA conservation files).
[15] The date has recently been interpreted as M.CCL[]III by Grazia Maria
Fachechi, Margarito (Margaritone) dArezzo, in Dizionario biografico degli
italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2008), 70:108.
[16] In 1236, Giunta signed the now lost painted crucifix in the church of San
Francesco at Assisi, and in August 1254 was among those who swore an
oath of fidelity to the archbishop of Pisa; cf. Angelo Tartuferi, Giunta Pisano
(Soncino, 1991), 910. A recently discovered document of 1265 speaks of a
piece of land belonging to the artist; this might imply, but cannot prove, that
he was still alive at the time. Cf. Miria Fanucci Lovitch, Artisti attivi a Pisa fra
XIII e XVIII secolo (Pisa, 1991), 161.
[17] The painted crucifix attributable to the Master of Santa Chiara (or Master of
Donna Benedetta) in the church of San Francesco at Arezzo, and that of
Cimabue in the church of San Domenico in the same city, probably date to
the 1260s or shortly thereafter. Cf. Filippo Todini, Pittura del Duecento e del
Trecento in Umbria e il cantiere di Assisi, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento
e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:382; Luciano
Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 3944.
[18] Luciano Bellosi and more recent studies placed the now known oeuvre of
the anonymous master between the second and fifth decades of the
thirteenth century. See Luciano Bellosi, in Collezione ChigiSaracini:
Sassetta e i pittori toscani tra XIII e XV secolo, ed. Luciano Bellosi and
Alessandro Angelini (Siena, 1986), 1115; and Silvia Colucci, in La collezione
Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano
Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 3543.
[19] See Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine

(Florence, 1993), 312316.
[20] For these frescoes, see Antonio Iacobini, La pittura e le arti suntuarie: Da
Innocenzo III a Innocenzo IV (11981254), in Roma nel Duecento: Larte
nella citt dei papi da Innocenzo III a Bonifacio VIII, ed. Angiola Maria
Romanini (Turin, 1991), 237403. As far as can be deduced from comparison
with his paintings of a previous decade in Anagni Cathedral, the master who
frescoed the chapel of San Silvestro in 1246 could not have been young at


that time. His identification with the so-called Maestro ornatista of Anagni
still remains a topic of discussion, but the stylistic relationship of those mural
cycles is generally recognized. See Enrico Parlato and Serena Romano,
Roma e Lazio: Il Romanico (Milan, 2001), 131.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The wooden support is formed of two panels: a larger rectangular one, made from
at least two planks of vertical grain, and a smaller, roughly circular panel for the
Virgins halo. The halo extension has a point where it attaches to the main panel.
The reverse of the main panel is reinforced with a cradle. A vertical crack runs
through the center of the halo extension, which was excavated to a concave
shape. Another long crack passes vertically through the entire main panel.
Woodworm tunneling can be seen at its edges and on its reverse. The reverse of
the panel is coated with a heavy layer of wax.
Before the execution of the painting, the panel was covered with a fabric interleaf
and a thick layer of gesso. The Virgins halo and the areas around the figure were
covered by silver leaf, patinated to look like gold. It is unclear if the gilded areas
were prepared with a bole. The childs halo was also probably silver gilt, but now
no leaf remains.[1] The paint was applied rather thickly and smoothly.[2]
The silver leaf is heavily worn, and much of it appears to have been scraped away,
revealing the ground. The leaf that remains has tarnished. The paint has suffered
losses at the bottom and top edges, especially in the areas around the corners of
the main panel. Paint losses also occur in the Virgins face, mostly along the crack,
but also in her left cheek and above her left eye. The crown of the Virgin and the
contours of the part of the mantle covering her head have been reinforced. There
also is inpainting (especially in the feet and heads) in the small figures of saints at
the sides of the central group. An old, undated photo shows the panel inserted in a
heavy, probably nineteenth-century frame whose shape followed the contours of
the panel; a reproduction published in 1928 illustrates an apparently different
frame. The only recorded restoration treatment (slight cleaning and restoration) is
the one that Stephen Pichetto performed in 1944.[3]


TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the painting with x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), and silver was identified in the
background, the Madonnas halo, and the edges of Christs halo (see report
dated September 28, 2004, in NGA conservation files).
[2] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the paint with x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). Analysis did not show the presence of any
red or blue pigments in the Madonnas purple robe, indicating that dye-
based pigments probably were used. These pigments likely have faded,
leading one to believe that the Madonnas robe was originally purple (see
report dated July 27, 2006, in NGA conservation files).
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:302. The photograph published by Robert Lehman
shows the panel in a condition similar to its current state; Robert Lehman,
The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 1. Sometime
earlier it must have already been treated. In fact, an old photograph shows
the Madonna inserted in a heavy frame and with some small differences in
the appearance of the painted surface. The most remarkable of these is that
the cowl covering the head of Saint Benedict does not have the pointed top
now visible.
PROVENANCE
Executed for the church of a Benedictine monastery in the area of Arezzo, possibly
for the Badia delle Sante Flora e Lucilla near the city walls;[1] probably (art market,
Rome); acquired by William Blundell Spence [18141900], Florence and London, by
1859;[2] Ralph Nicholson Wornum [18121877], London, by 1865.[3] Augustus Henry
Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers [18271900], Rushmore House and King Johns House, Tollard
Royal, Wiltshire, by 1894;[4] by descent to his grandson, George Henry Lane Fox
Pitt-Rivers [18901966], Hinton St. Mary, Dorset, by 1926.[5] (Robert Langton
Douglas [18641951], London); (Arthur Ruck, London);[6] sold to Philip Lehman
[18611947], New York, by 1928; sold June 1943 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation,
New York;[7] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] This is suggested by the presence in the
background of the painting of three saints identifiable as Benedict, Flora, and
Lucilla. On the two latter saints and their cult, see Giuseppe Palazzini, Lucilla,
Flora, Eugenio e compagni, in Bibliotheca sanctorum, 15 vols., Rome, 1961-2000:
8(1967):275-276. [2] On Spence, a painter, collector and dealer, see Donata Levi,
William Blundell Spence a Firenze, in Studi e ricerche di collezionismo e


museografia. Firenze 1820 1920, Pisa, 1985: 85-149. On 27 July 1859, Spence
offered for sale to Lord Lindsay three pictures he had received from Rome shortly
before, stating that one of them was signed by Margarito. John Fleming ("Art
Dealing in the Risorgimento II - III, The Burlington Magazine 121 (1979): 503 n. 62)
plausibly identifies this otherwise undescribed painting with NGA 1952.5.12; see
also Hugh Brigstocke, Lord Lindsay as a collector, Bullettin of the John Rylands
University Library of Machester 64, n 2 (1982): 321 n. 4. Lord Lindsay did not buy
the panel, which evidently remained for some time with Spence. [3] Wornum was
Keeper of the National Gallery, London, from 1854 until his death. He lent the
painting to an exhibition at the British Institution in 1865. [4] The names of Wornum
and Pitt-Rivers are given by Oskar Wulff (Zwei Tafelbilder des Duecento in Kaiser
Friederich Museum, Jahrbuch der Kniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen,
37 (1916): 92 n. 6) and by Robert Lehman (The Philip Lehman Collection, New York
and Paris,1928: no. 1). Lehman lists first the Pitt-Rivers collection and then that of
Wornum. However, Wornum died in 1877, and, as Daniela Parenti kindly pointed
out to Mikls Boskovits, it was only in 1880 that Augustus Henry Lane Fox assumed
the surname Pitt-Rivers and took up residence at Rushmore. The painting is
described in 1894 by Roach Le Schonix as the earliest European picture displayed
by Pitt-Rivers in King Johns House at Tollard Royal as part of a valuable series of
small original pictures illustrating the history of painting from the earliest times. . . .
(Notes on Archaeology in Provincial Museums. No. XXXVIIThe Museums at
Farnham, Dorset, and at King Johns House, Tollard Royal, The Antiquary 30
[JulyDecember 1894]: 166171). [5] The painting is described as among those seen
on 19 June 1926, by staff members of Duveen Brothers, Inc. (Duveen Brothers
Los Angeles: Scouts Books--England, Things Seen, 1922-1935, reel 71, box 201,
folder 1; kindly brought to the attention of NGA by an e-mail, 7 July 2004, from
Maria Gilbert of the Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance, Getty
Research Institute, in NGA curatorial files). [6] Denys Sutton, "Robert Langton
Douglas. Part III," Apollo CIX, no. 208 (June 1979): 459 (fig. 22), 468, provides the
information that Douglas sold the painting to Ruck, but implies the sale took place
before the 1920s, which is not correct (see note 5). [7] The bill of sale for the Kress
Foundations purchase of fifteen paintings from the Lehman collection, including
NGA 1952.5.12, is dated 11 June 1943; payment was made four days later (copy in
NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale all indicate that
Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (18921963) was owner of the paintings, but it
is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,


New York, whether Robert made the sale for his father or on his own behalf. See
Laurence Kanters email of 6 May 2011, about ownership of the Lehman collection,
in NGA curatorial files.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1865 Pictures by Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, French, and English Masters,
British Institution, London, 1865, no. 75, as The Madonna and Child, enthroned
with Saints Bruno and Benedict, and Two Cistercian Nuns as Wise Virgins.

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n. 3.
1886 Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Storia della
pittura in Italia dal secolo II al secolo XVI. 11 vols. Florence, 1886-1908:
1(1886):291.
1907 Weigelt, Curt H. "Margarito dArezzo." In Allgemeines Lexikon der
24(1930):88.
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6.
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3 vols. Milan, 1951: 2:1661, 1662 repro.
1951 Salmi, Mario. "Postille alla mostra di Arezzo." Commentari 2 (1951): 174.
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1955: 33 fig. 47, 35.
Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 3, fig. 1
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Rome, 1960+: 70(2008):108.
1961 Berti, Luciano. Il Museo di Arezzo. Itinerari dei musei, gallerie e
monumenti dItalia 103. Rome, 1961: 13.
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3.30.


Hochaltarretabels. Munich, 1962: 127.

1969 Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico, ed. LArte in Italia. Vol. 3 (of 10), Dal secolo
XII al secolo XIII. Rome, 1969: 942.
1970 Bellosi, Luciano, Giuseppe Cantelli, and Margherita Lenzini Moriondo,
eds. Arte in Valdichiana: dal XIII al XVIII secolo. Exh. cat. Fortezza del
Girifalco, Cortona, 1970: 3.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 120, 646, 665.
1972 "Margarito o Margaritone di Magnano da Arezzo." In Dizionario
Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX
secolo. Edited by Alberto Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols. Turin,
1972-1976: 8(1975):188.
1973 Maetzke, Anna Maria. "Nuove ricerche su Margarito dArezzo." Bollettino
darte 58 (1973): 107 fig. 39.
1974 Boccia, Lionello G., Carla Corsi, Anna Maria Maetzke, and Albino Secchi,
eds. Arte nellAretino: recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al 1974. Exh. cat. San
Francesco, Arezzo. Florence, 1974: 16.
1975 Kiel, Hanna. "Review of Arte nellAretino, recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al
1974." Pantheon 33 (1975): 174-175.
1977 Cristiani Testi, Maria Laura. "Modello e Invenzione nel Dugento e nel
Trecento: da Villard de Honnecourt a Nicola Pisano, da Giotto a Cennino
Cennini." Studi storici e geografici 1 (1977): 157-158.
1979 Fleming, John. "Art Dealing in the Risorgimento, 2." The Burlington
Magazine 121, no. 917 (1979): 503, n. 62.
1979 Fleming, John. "Art Dealing in the Risorgimento, 3." The Burlington
Magazine 121, no. 918 (1979): 579.
1979 Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols.
Washington, 1979: 1:301-302; 2:pl. 215.
459 [177] fig. 22, 468 [186].
1981 Belting, Hans. Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und
Funktion frher Bildtafeln der Passion. Berlin, 1981: 72, 73 fig. 16.
1982 Brigstocke, Hugh. "Lord Lindsay as a Collector." Bulletin of the John


Rylands University Library of Manchester 64, no. 2 (1982): 321 n. 4.

1984 Cristiani Testi, Maria Laura. "Moduli compositivi tra XII e XIII secolo."
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1986 Ricci, Stefania. "Margarito dArezzo." In La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e
il Trecento. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:634.
1987 Maetzke, Anna Maria. Il Museo statale darte medievale e moderna in
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1990 Grabski, Jzef, ed. Opus Sacrum: Catalogue of the Exhibition from the
Collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson. Exh. cat. Zamek Krlewski,
Warsaw. Vienna, 1990: 29.
1991 Antetomaso, Ebe. "Margarito." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale.
8(1997):202-204.
1993: 73 n. 145.
1996 Maetzke, Anna Maria, Laura Speranza, and Stefano Casciu, eds. Mater
Christi: altissime testimonianze del culto della Vergine nel territorio
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Balsamo (Milan), 1996: 37.
1996 Richardson, John. "Margarito dArezzo." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York, 1996: 20:407.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Margarito di Magnano." In La pittura in Europa. Il
2:569.
2003 Monciatti, Alessio. "Vera beati Francisci effigies ad vivum expressa a
Margaritono Aretino pictore sui aevi celeberrimo: origine e
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il Medioevo. Edited by Marco Collareta and Paola Refice. Florence,
2010: 213, repro. 215.


Martino di Bartolomeo
Also known as
Martino di Bartolomeo di Biagio
BIOGRAPHY
Sienese painter and miniaturist, Martino probably was born around 1365 and must
have been trained in his hometown, perhaps in the bottega of Jacopo di Mino del
Pellicciaio. It is likely, too, that at the beginning of his career he was also in contact
with a painter from Lucca, Angelo Puccinelli, who is known to have been working in
Siena around 1380.[1] According to a document of 1393, Martino resided in Pisa in
that year,[2] and he continued to dwell there until the early years of the new
century. At the same time he was also working in Lucca, where he illuminated the
choir-books of the cathedral in the mid-1390s.[3] The frescoes signed by the artist
with stories of the Old Testament in the church of San Giovanni at Cascina (Pisa)
date to 1398. In 1402, Martino produced a polyptych, commissioned from him
together with Giovanni di Pietro, a painter from Naples, for the Pisan church of
Santa Chiara. In the following year, another polyptych was signed by Martino alone,
for the Spedale dei Trovatelli, the Pisan foundlings hospital (both works are now in
the Museo Nazionale in Pisa). With their figures of ponderous physique who pose
with solemn but rather wooden composure in clearly defined spaces, Martinos
works during this period reveal that he was influenced by some artists then active
in Lucca and Pisa, such as Spinello Aretino, Antonio Veneziano, and the Orvietan
painter Piero di Puccio.
In 1405, Martino was once again back in his hometown, where he painted the now
lost frescoes in the chapel of San Crescenzio in Siena Cathedral. He was also
entrusted with other commissions of great prestige, such as the decoration of the
ceilings of some rooms in the Palazzo Pubblico and perhaps also the laterals of a
polyptych that still remain in the seat of Sienese government. Another polyptych,
now dismantled and dispersed, comes from Asciano; its central panel, a Madonna
and Child bearing the date 1408, is now in a private collection, while the lateral
saints are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (no. 120). Dating to a slightly later
phase are the panels with stories of Saint Stephen in the Stdelsches Kunstinstitut
in Frankfurt, perhaps with a provenance from the Sienese church of
Martino di Bartolomeo 811


SantAgostino,[4] and two additional dispersed polyptychs: the main panels of one
are now in the Pinacoteca in Siena (no. 160), and those of the other are in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[5] Dating to 1425 is the great polyptych
that originally adorned the altar of the butchers guild in the church of SantAntonio
Abate a Fontebranda, again in Siena; it too is dispersed among various museums
and private collections.[6]
Working side by side with Taddeo di Bartolo after his return to Siena, at the time
they were both decorating rooms in the Palazzo Pubblico, Martino developed a
more graceful style and his compositions became more animated; they were
enriched with observations taken from everyday life and lightened by a more fluid
linear style. Yet in principle Martino preferred an imposing classicizing manner to
the more ornamental complexities of the late-Gothic style that enchanted his
colleagues of the younger generation. It would be this characteristic that would
distinguish in an ever more decisive way his rather repetitive works in the final
decades of his life. Still active in 1432, two years later the artist made his last will
and testament. By April 1435, he was dead.
[1] On Angelo Puccinelli, cf. Andrea De Marchi, in Sumptuosa tabula picta: Pittori a
Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento, ed. Maria Teresa Filieri (Livorno, 1998), 148159;
Stefan Weppelmann, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di
[2] See Miria Fanucci Lovitch, Artisti attivi a Pisa fra xiii e xviii secolo (Pisa, 1991),
205.
[3] See Ada Labriola, in Sumptuosa tabula picta: Pittori a Lucca tra gotico e
rinascimento, ed. Maria Teresa Filieri (Livorno, 1998), 208214.
[4] Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, Seven Scenes of the Life of Saint Stephen by
Martino di Bartolomeo in Frankfurt, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and
Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt (Washington, DC, 2002), 314339.
[5] The Sienese polyptych, generally dated c. 1410, has been recognized as part of
the same altarpiece to which belongs the predella now divided between the El
Paso Museum of Art and the Johnson Collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art;
cf. Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 12501450, in the John G. Johnson
Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 242247. The
four lateral panels of a polyptych, apparently with a provenance from Orvieto and
now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, are presumably of similar date; see


Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central
Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
(New York, 1980), 3335.
[6] See Enrica Neri Lusanna, in Die Kirchen von Siena, ed. Peter Anselm Riedl and
Max Seidel, 3 vols. (Munich, 19852006), 1, pt. 1: 282283; Ada Labriola, in Maestri
senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and
Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 95101.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Weigelt, Curt H. Martino Di Bartolomeo. In

1907-1950: 24(1930):180-181.
1960 Becchis, Michela. "Martino di Bartolomeo." In

79+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 71(2008):298-300.
1966 Shapley, Fern Rusk.

Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV
Century. London, 1966: 65.
1981 Carli, Enzo.

La pittura senese del Trecento. Milan, 1981: 253-255.
1982 Ciatti, Marco. In

1992 Molten, Carol Montfort. "The Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo."

Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1992.
1998 Labriola, Ada. In

Sumptuosa tabula picta: pittori a Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento. Edited
by Maria Teresa Filieri. Livorno, 1998: 202-207.


1999 Benezit 1999, 9:301
2008 Fattorini, Gabriele. Il Polittico dei Carnaioli di Martino di Bartolomeo e

Francesco di Valdambrino.
Nuovi studi 14 (2008): 5-38.


Deacon Saint, with Saint

Anthony Abbot [right
panel]
c. 1415/1420
tempera on panel
original panel: 102.87 44.13 4.13 cm (40 1/2 17 3/8 1 5/8 in.)
overall (with added wood strips): 107 53.98 4.13 cm (42 1/8 21 1/4 1 5/8 in.)
depth (indicates warp of the panel): 7.62 cm (3 in.)
Gift of Samuel L. Fuller 1950.11.1.c
ENTRY
This panel was originally part of a triptych that also included Saint Peter, with Saint
James Major [left panel] and Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle
panel]. The image of the Madonna and Child recalls the type of the Glykophilousa
Virgin, the affectionate Madonna. She rests her cheek against that of the child,
who embraces her. The motif of the childs hand grasping the hem of the neckline
of the Virgins dress seems, on the other hand, to allude to the theme of
suckling.[1] The saints portrayed are easily identifiable by their attributes: Peter by
the keys, as well as by his particular facial type; James Major, by his pilgrims staff;
Anthony Abbot, by his hospitaller habit and T-shaped staff.[2] But the identity of the
deacon martyr saint remains uncertain; he is usually identified as Saint Stephen,
though without good reason, as he lacks that saints usual attributes. Perhaps the
artist did not characterize him with a specific attribute because the triptych was
destined for a church dedicated to him.[3]
F. Mason Perkins saw the three panels in a private collection in London in 1924 and
then published them under the name of Martino di Bartolomeo, thus confirming the
attribution formulated by the panels owner.[4] The proposal seemed convincing to
various scholars but not to the authors of the catalogs of the National Gallery of
Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony Abbot [right panel] 815


Art, who, for reasons difficult to explain, registered the attribution to Martino with a
margin of doubt; Carol Montfort Molten (1996) also maintained that
reservation.[5] Thus, after the publications of Perkins and Raimond van Marle (1924,
1934), only Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri (1972), Mojmir S. Frinta (1998),
and Silvia Colucci (2005) have cited the triptych as a work by Martino.[6]
As for its date of execution, most of the opinions expressed on the matter have
accepted van Marles (1924) hypothesis.[7] He asserted that the triptych should
date to c. 14001410, probably following the artists period of activity in Pisa, which
ended in 1405. Fern Rusk Shapley (1979), however, was of the view that if the
triptych were indeed an autograph work by Martino, it ought to date earlier than
1403.[8] For her part, Monfort Molten (1996) placed the Gallery panels among the
works of Martino di Bartolomeo postdating 1410.[9] She argued, however, that in
the Gallery triptych there is less affinity with the elegant and graceful qualities of
the Saint Barnabas altarpiece,[10] or with the Palazzo Pubblico
Triptych.[11] Therefore, this work represented, according to Molten, something of
an anomaly in Martinos work, and the circumstance would make probable, in her
view, the intervention of a studio assistant.[12]
The doubts about Martinos authorship of the triptych have never been clearly
explained, nor does the judgment of the ostensibly limited qualitative level of the
Washington panels seem well founded. It may be admitted that Martino was not
one of the leading masters active in Lucca, Pisa, and Siena between the end of the
fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. In particular, his frescoes in
the oratory of San Giovanni Battista at Cascina, undoubtedly executed with the
help of assistants but proudly signed as an autograph work and dated
1398,[13] propose very schematic compositions and evince signs of some haste in
execution, testifying to a quality that cannot be said to be outstanding. The
polyptych now in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa, also signed by Martino and dated
five years later,[14] is finer, but the forms of its robust figures, metallic in sheen and
modeled with sharp chiaroscuro contrasts, seem rather far removed from the
stylistic features of the triptych being discussed here. So the attempt to insert the
Washington panels in Martinos Pisan phase cannot be found convincing. In those
years, Martino seems especially to have based his severe forms on models derived
from such masters as Antonio Veneziano and Piero di Puccio. His paintings are
filled with figures whose draperies seem starched and whose human grandeur is
mainly expressed by physical bulk.


The artists style changed after his return to Siena and after his frescoes in the Sala
di Balia at the Palazzo Pubblico (14041407) in that city.[15] In the polyptych dated
1408 now divided between the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena and a private
collection,[16] the painter shows he has resumed contact with the Sienese
figurative tradition and especially with Taddeo di Bartolo (who also was involved in
the pictorial decoration of the Palazzo Pubblico). Martinos style now becomes
more graceful and more animated. He seeks greater verisimilitude in softer
complexions and in the silky fluency of hair and beards, and tries to imbue his
figures with greater vitality through more complex and articulated movements.
Martino also must have been struck by the imaginative pictorial narratives of
Bartolo di Fredi, by now fully attuned to the late Gothic style, and possibly he
attempted to keep abreast of the figurative language of some painters in the
younger generation.
This must, however, have been a relatively brief phase. In paintings that can be
dated to his last decades of life, Martino, without forgetting the experiences of the
years between roughly 1405 and 1415, and without wholly rejecting the models
proposed by Taddeo di Bartolo (with whom he fell out; indeed, Martino was fined in
1412 for slandering him),[17] seems to return to the ideals he had pursued in his
earliest works, abandoning complex poses and simplifying the more animated
profiles of his characters. His paintings are once again populated by solemn
personages of massive physique, even though he now uses a soft and sfumato
chiaroscuro to model their forms and makes some attempt to express the emotions
that animate them. These developments are particularly evident in the four busts of
the Evangelists [fig. 1] [fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4], recently (and rightly) proposed as
components of the dispersed polyptych from the Sienese church of SantAntonio
Abate in Fontebranda, formerly signed by the artist and dated 1425,[18] but similar
aspects seem to be detectable in the Gallery panels [fig. 5]. The delicate modeling
of the flesh parts, the vivacity and tension of the facial expressions, the vigor with
which the powerful hands clasp the objects they hold, and the clear-cut definition
of the contours of the bodies suggest for these panels a date of execution perhaps
slightly earlier than the polyptych of 1425, approximately in the years 14151420.
They are the products, I believe, of the same phase in which Benedetto di Bindo
and Gregorio di Cecco, exponents of the younger generation, were the culturally
most advanced painters on the Sienese artistic scene,[19] and in which the very
youthful Stefano di Giovanni (known as Sassetta (Sienese, probably 1392 - 1450))
was about to express a full-fledged Renaissance figurative style.




COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Martino di Bartolomeo, Saint Mark, 14251426,

tempera on panel, private collection. Image: Robilant +
Voena, London, Milan & St. Moritz fig. 2 Martino di Bartolomeo, Saint John the Evangelist,
14251426, tempera on panel, private collection. Image:
Robilant + Voena, London, Milan & St. Moritz


fig. 3 Martino di Bartolomeo, Saint Matthew, 14251426, fig. 4 Martino di Bartolomeo, Saint Luke, 14251426,
tempera on panel, private collection. Image: Robilant + tempera on panel, private collection. Image: Robilant +
Voena, London, Milan & St. Moritz Voena, London, Milan & St. Moritz


fig. 5 Detail of Saint Peter, Martino di Bartolomeo, Saint

Peter, with Saint James Major, c. 1415/1420, tempera on
panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Samuel
L. Fuller
NOTES
[1] The post-Byzantine term of Glykophilousa Virgin is used in the art historical
literature to indicate a subtype of a wider iconographic group known under
the name of Eleousa (compassionate) Virgin, in which the theme of affection


between mother and son is predominant. Cf. Gregor Martin Lechner,

Maria, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols.
(Stuttgart, 2005), 6:17114; also Nancy evenko Patterson, Virgin eleousa,
in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Aleksandr Petrovich Kazhdan
(New York, 1991), 3:2171. For the gesture of the child as allusion to suckling,
cf. Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during
the XIV Century(New York, 1954), 146148.
Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 800, 508, 6164, respectively.
[3] The dalmatic worn by the youthful saint indicates merely that he was a
deacon, while the palm branch in his hand is the symbol of martyrdom; he
therefore represents a martyr deacon saint, not necessarily Stephen or
Vincent, with whom F. Mason Perkins attempted to identify him. F. Mason
Perkins, Su alcune pitture di Martino di Bartolomeo, Rassegna darte
senese 18 (1924): 12.
[4] See Provenance note 1.
[5] See National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and
Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 74, 158;
National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary
Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1975), 216217; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue
of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:302303. All cited
the painting as attributed to Martino di Bartolomeo. Fern Rusk Shapley
added, If by him, the date is probably earlier than his polyptych in the
Museo Civico, Pisa, signed and dated 1403, since, she explained, the latter
is somewhat more lively in expression. See also Carol Montfort Molten, The
Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1992),
8990.
[6] F. Mason Perkins, Su alcune pitture di Martino di Bartolomeo, Rassegna

darte senese 18 (1924): 12; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the
Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th
Century (The Hague, 1924), 590; Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura
648 n; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-
MA, 1972), 122; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late
Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998) 326, 408; Silvia
Colucci, L'iconografia del crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt: Una questione
aperta, in Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: Un
capolavoro riscoperto, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica
Randon (Siena, 2005), 48.


vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 590.
DC, 1979), 1:302303.
[9] Carol Montfort Molten, The Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo (PhD
diss., Indiana University, 1992), 89.
[10] The altarpiece in question consists of the Madonna and Child with Saints
Lawrence, Barnabas, Augustine, and Ansano, now in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena (no. 160); a Crucifixion, now in the El Paso Museum of Art
(no. 61.1.7, Samuel H. Kress Collection); and four stories of Saint Barnabas in
the Philadelphia Museum of Art (no. 194525120). See Carl Brandon
and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 242247.
[11] The three panels in question (Saints Stephen, Mary Magdalene, and
Anthony Abbot) come from a dispersed polyptych reframed to form an
ensemble and hence cited as a triptych. Cf. Bernard Berenson, Italian
Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3
vols. (London, 1968), 2: fig. 433; Fabio Bisogni, Marco Ciampolini, and
Elisabetta Avanzati, Guide to the Civic Museum of Siena (Siena, 1986), 119.
The date 1408 attributed to these paintings seems devoid of foundation; see
Carol Montfort Molten, The Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo (PhD
[13] See Maria Laura Cristiani Testi, Affreschi biblici di Martino di Bartolomeo in
San Giovanni Battista di Cascina (Pisa, 1978).
[14] See Enzo Carli, Il Museo di Pisa (Pisa, 1974), 6364.
[15] Gabriele Borghini, La decorazione, in Palazzo pubblico di Siena: Vicende

costruttive e decorazione, ed. Cesare Brandi (Siena, 1983), 226, figs.
270273.
[16] The four panels of no. 120 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena,
respectively representing Saints James, Catherine of Alexandria, Mary
Magdalene, and Ansano, have been convincingly linked with a Madonna
and Child formerly in the Bonichi collection at Asciano and later in the
Fossati Bellani collection in Milan, which bears the date 1408. For these
paintings see, respectively, Piero Torriti, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena,
vol. 1, I dipinti dal XII al XV secolo (Genoa, 1977), 217; and Luciano Berti,
Note brevi su inediti toscani, Bollettino darte 37 (1952): 256258.
[17] In August 1412, Martino was forced to pay a fine for cierte parole che il
detto maestro Martino disse ingiuriose a maestro Taddeo di Bartolo
(certain derogatory words that the said master Martino addressed to master


Taddeo di Bartolo). See Scipione Borghesi Bichi and Luciano Banchi, Nuovi
documenti per la storia dellarte senese (Siena, 1898), 112; Carol Montfort
Molten, The Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo (PhD diss., Indiana
[18] See Ada Labriola, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di

The paintings in question, formerly belonging to the Society of the
Cincinnati, Anderson House, Washington DC, were sold at auction at
Christies, London, July 11, 2001, lot 72.
[19] For Benedetto and his frescoes painted in San Domenico in Perugia
between 1415 and 1417, cf. Giordana Benazzi, Le opere darte del
Medioevo, in La Basilica di San Domenico di Perugia, ed. Giuseppe Rocchi
Coopmans De Yoldi and Giulio Ser-Giacomi (Perugia, 2006), 333334; for
Gregorio, the perceptive essay by Luciano Bellosi (Gregorio di Cecco di
Luca) in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti
darte (Florence, 1982), 346348.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel and its companions Saint Peter, with Saint James Major [left panel] and
Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel], now separated,
originally formed a triptych, each element of which was painted on a single
wooden plank with vertical grain. Though severely warped, the panels still maintain
their original thicknesses of 3.23.4 cm. Margins of bare wood beyond the painted
surface indicate that each panel once had an engaged frame. The three panels
retain wide margins along the bottom and pointed top. On the two saints the
vertical margins were completely removed, while on the Madonna the vertical
margins are very narrow. At some point after the panels were cropped, modern
pieces of wood were added along the pointed top and the sides of the three
panels.
Fabric patches were applied to the knotholes of the wood before the application of
the gesso ground. The pointed arched top of the painted area is decorated on the
inside with gilt pastiglia cusps. Half-length figures, framed below by pastiglia arcs,
are painted in the spandrels at the top of each panel. The ground and halos were
originally silver gilt,[1] though hardly any of the original silver leaf remains, and
much of it has been replaced with gold.[2] The gilded areas were prepared with
red bole; the gables of the panels, halos, and borders of the garments have


punched decoration. The punch marks of the gables are now largely modern
restoration. The paint was applied smoothly and thinly. Green underpainting is
visible underneath the flesh.[3]
The painted surface is in a fair state of preservation, whereas the wooden support
has suffered extensive worm tunneling in the past. The three panels were treated
between 1984 and 1989. The treatment revealed a diagonal scratch in the face of
the deacon saint and numerous scattered small losses in the painted surface of all
panels.[4] Particularly disturbing are the small, now inpainted lacunae around the
lips of the Madonna and of the child. The bust of Saint James in the upper part of
panel A is very much abraded. In 1993 the frames were replaced. The new frames
cover the outer, unpainted edges of the panels and enlarge their dimensions on all
sides.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the remnants of the
original gilding using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), and they were
found to be silver (see report dated July 24, 1984, in NGA conservation
files).
[2] It is unclear at what point the silver leaf was replaced with gold. However,
the significant craquelure pattern in the gold leaf indicates that it is rather
old.
[3] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the pigments using x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) (see report dated July 26, 1984, in NGA
[4] Photographs in the curatorial files of the NGA Italian Renaissance painting
department, dated May and July 1984, respectively, show the panels after
having the varnish and inpaint removed and before the losses were
inpainted again.
PROVENANCE
Private collection, London, by 1924.[1] Samuel L. Fuller [c. 1876-1963], New York;[2]
gift 1950 to NGA. [1] See F. Mason Perkins, Su alcune pitture di Martino di
Bartolomeo, Rassegna dArte Senese 18 (1924): 5-12. The author does not divulge
the name of the collector, but since he mentions that it was the collector himself


who had suggested the attribution to Martino di Bartolomeo, the owner was
undoubtedly a connoisseur and probably an amateur dealer such as Robert
Langton Douglas or Edward Hutton, both active in London. A note from Ellis
Waterhouse, written 22 July 1980, and recorded in NGA curatorial files, says, I
have old Langton Douglas photographs of these. [2] See Fern Rusk Shapley,
Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:303.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Weigelt, Curt H. "Martino di Bartolomeo." In Allgemeines Lexikon der

Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 24(1930):181.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):590.
1924 Perkins, F. Mason. "Su alcune pitture di Martino di Bartolomeo."
Rassegna darte senese 18 (1924): 12, repro.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):646, 648 n.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 312, 370, 403, 440, 647.
1992 Molten, Carol Montfort. The Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo. PhD
diss. Indiana University, 1992. Ann Arbor, MI, 1996: 89-90, 260.
2005 Colucci, Silvia. "Liconografia del crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt: una
questione aperta." In Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umilt di Paolo di
Giovanni Fei: un capolavoro riscoperto. Edited by Alessandro Bagnoli,
Silvia Colucci and Veronica Radon. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale,
Siena, 2005: 48.


Madonna and Child with the Blessing

Christ, and Saints Peter, James Major,
Anthony Abbott, and a Deacon Saint
[entire triptych]
c. 1415/1420
tempera on panel
Inscription: middle panel, on Christ's book: Ego S / um lu / x m / undi / [et] via / veritas / et vita / quise / gui ... (I am the light
of the world and the way, the truth and the life; a conflation of John 8:12 and 14:6) [1]
[1] See John 8:12: Ego sum lux mundi: qui sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris, and 14:6: Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita:
nemo venit ad patrem, nisi per me. The grammatical errors of the inscription very likely are the result of retouching in that
area, which has been heavily abraded in the past.
Gift of Samuel L. Fuller 1950.11.1.a-c
ENTRY
This triptych's image of the Madonna and Child recalls the type of the
Glykophilousa Virgin, the affectionate Madonna. She rests her cheek against that
of the child, who embraces her. The motif of the childs hand grasping the hem of
the neckline of the Virgins dress seems, on the other hand, to allude to the theme
of suckling.[1] The saints portrayed are easily identifiable by their attributes: Peter
by the keys, as well as by his particular facial type; James Major, by his pilgrims
Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Peter, James Major, 827
Anthony Abbott, and a Deacon Saint [entire triptych]

staff; Anthony Abbot, by his hospitaller habit and T-shaped staff.[2] But the identity
of the deacon martyr saint remains uncertain; he is usually identified as Saint
Stephen, though without good reason, as he lacks that saints usual attributes.
Perhaps the artist did not characterize him with a specific attribute because the
triptych was destined for a church dedicated to him.[3]
margin of doubt; Carol Montfort Molten (1996) also maintained that reservation.[5]
Thus, after the publications of Perkins and Raimond van Marle (1924, 1934), only
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri (1972), Mojmir S. Frinta (1998), and Silvia
Colucci (2005) have cited the triptych as a work by Martino.[6]
the Saint Barnabas altarpiece,[10] or with the Palazzo Pubblico Triptych.[11]
Therefore, this work represented, according to Molten, something of an anomaly
in Martinos work, and the circumstance would make probable, in her view, the
intervention of a studio assistant.[12]
help of assistants but proudly signed as an autograph work and dated 1398,[13]
propose very schematic compositions and evince signs of some haste in

Bartolo di Fredi, by now fully attuned to the late-Gothic style, and possibly he
younger generation.
chiaroscuro to model their forms and makes some attempt to express the
emotions that animate them. These developments are particularly evident in the
four busts of the Evangelists [fig. 1] [fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4], recently (and rightly)
proposed as components of the dispersed polyptych from the Sienese church of
SantAntonio Abate in Fontebranda, formerly signed by the artist and dated
1425,[18] but similar aspects seem to be detectable in the Gallery panels [fig. 5].
The delicate modeling of the flesh parts, the vivacity and tension of the facial

expressions, the vigor with which the powerful hands clasp the objects they hold,
and the clear-cut definition of the contours of the bodies suggest for these panels
a date of execution perhaps slightly earlier than the polyptych of 1425,
approximately in the years 14151420. They are the products, I believe, of the same
phase in which Benedetto di Bindo and Gregorio di Cecco, exponents of the
younger generation, were the culturally most advanced painters on the Sienese
artistic scene,[19] and in which the very youthful Stefano di Giovanni (known
as Sassetta (Sienese, probably 1392 - 1450)) was about to express a full-fledged
Renaissance figurative style.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES




L. Fuller
NOTES


senese 18 (1924): 12.
8990.


vol. 2,The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 590.
DC, 1979), 1:302303.

270273.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The three panels Saint Peter, with Saint James Major [left panel], Madonna and
Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel], and Deacon Saint, with Saint
Anthony Abbot [right panel], now separated, originally formed a triptych, each
element of which was painted on a single wooden plank with vertical grain.
Though severely warped, the panels still maintain their original thicknesses of
3.23.4 cm. Margins of bare wood beyond the painted surface indicate that each
panel once had an engaged frame. The three panels retain wide margins along the
bottom and pointed top. On the two saints the vertical margins were completely
removed, while on the Madonna the vertical margins are very narrow. At some
point after the panels were cropped, modern pieces of wood were added along
the pointed top and the sides of the three panels.

sides.
TECHNICAL NOTES
files).
old.
inpainted again.
PROVENANCE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):590.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):646, 648 n.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 312, 370, 403, 440, 647.
Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1992. Ann Arbor, MI,
1996: 89-90, 260.
Siena, 2005: 48.


the Blessing Christ [middle
panel]
c. 1415/1420
tempera on panel
overall (with added wood strips): 120.65 60.96 4.13 cm (47 1/2 24 1 5/8 in.)
depth (indicates warp of the panel): 8.57 cm (3 3/8 in.)
Inscription: on Christ's book: Ego S / um lu / x m / undi / [et] via / veritas / et vita /
quise / gui ... (I am the light of the world and the way, the truth and the life; a
conflation of John 8:12 and 14:6) [1]
[1] See John 8:12: Ego sum lux mundi: qui sequitur me non ambulat in tenebris,
and 14:6: Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita: nemo venit ad patrem, nisi per me. The
grammatical errors of the inscription very likely are the result of retouching in that
area, which has been heavily abraded in the past.
Gift of Samuel L. Fuller 1950.11.1.b
ENTRY
This panel was originally part of a triptych that also included Saint Peter, with Saint
James Major [left panel] and Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony Abbot [right panel].
The image of the Madonna and Child recalls the type of the Glykophilousa Virgin,
the affectionate Madonna. She rests her cheek against that of the child, who
embraces her. The motif of the childs hand grasping the hem of the neckline of
the Virgins dress seems, on the other hand, to allude to the theme of
suckling.[1] The saints portrayed are easily identifiable by their attributes: Peter by
the keys, as well as by his particular facial type; James Major, by his pilgrims staff;
Anthony Abbot, by his hospitaller habit and T-shaped staff.[2] But the identity of the
deacon martyr saint remains uncertain; he is usually identified as Saint Stephen,

though without good reason, as he lacks that saints usual attributes. Perhaps the
artist did not characterize him with a specific attribute because the triptych was
destined for a church dedicated to him.[3]

younger generation.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES




L. Fuller
NOTES


the XIV Century(New York, 1954), 146148.
senese 18 (1924): 12.
8990.


DC, 1979), 1:302303.

270273.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel and its companions Saint Peter, with Saint James Major [left panel] and
Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony Abbot [right panel], now separated, originally
formed a triptych, each element of which was painted on a single wooden plank
with vertical grain. Though severely warped, the panels still maintain their original
thicknesses of 3.23.4 cm. Margins of bare wood beyond the painted surface
indicate that each panel once had an engaged frame. The three panels retain wide
margins along the bottom and pointed top. On the two saints the vertical margins
were completely removed, while on the Madonna the vertical margins are very
narrow. At some point after the panels were cropped, modern pieces of wood
were added along the pointed top and the sides of the three panels.

sides.
TECHNICAL NOTES
files).
old.
inpainted again.
PROVENANCE


EXHIBITION HISTORY
1968 Loan to display with permanent collection, Museum of Fine Arts, St.
Petersburg, Florida, 1968-1976 (middle panel of the triptych only).
BIBLIOGRAPHY

19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):590.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):646, 648 n.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 312, 370, 403, 440, 647.
Washington, 1985: 251, repro. 230 (incorrectly identified as repro. of
1937.1.11, Lippo Memmi, Madonna and Child).
1992 Molten, Carol Montfort. The Sienese Painter Martino di Bartolomeo. PhD
diss. Indiana University, 1992. Ann Arbor, MI, 1996: 89-90, 260.


Siena, 2005: 48.

Saint Peter, with Saint

James Major [left panel]
c. 1415/1420
tempera on panel
overall (with added wood strips): 106.05 54.61 4.13 cm (41 3/4 21 1/2 1 5/8 in.)
depth (indicates warp of the panel): 6.67 cm (2 5/8 in.)
Gift of Samuel L. Fuller 1950.11.1.a
ENTRY
This panel was originally part of a triptych that also included Madonna and Child,
with the Blessing Christ [middle panel] and Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony
Abbot [right panel].The image of the Madonna and Child recalls the type of the
Glykophilousa Virgin, the affectionate Madonna. She rests her cheek against that
of the child, who embraces her. The motif of the childs hand grasping the hem of
the neckline of the Virgins dress seems, on the other hand, to allude to the theme
of suckling.[1] The saints portrayed are easily identifiable by their attributes: Peter
by the keys, as well as by his particular facial type; James Major, by his pilgrims
staff; Anthony Abbot, by his hospitaller habit and T-shaped staff.[2] But the identity
of the deacon martyr saint remains uncertain; he is usually identified as Saint
Stephen, though without good reason, as he lacks that saints usual attributes.
Perhaps the artist did not characterize him with a specific attribute because the
triptych was destined for a church dedicated to him.[3]
Saint Peter, with Saint James Major [left panel] 852




younger generation.




COMPARATIVE FIGURES






L. Fuller
NOTES



senese 18 (1924): 12.
8990.

Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century
(The Hague, 1924), 590; Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana,
vol. 2, La scuola senese del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 646, 648 n;
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-


DC, 1979), 1:302303.

270273.



Luca) in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte
(Florence, 1982), 346348.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel and its companions Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ
[middle panel] and Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony Abbot [right panel], now
separated, originally formed a triptych, each element of which was painted on a
single wooden plank with vertical grain. Though severely warped, the panels still
maintain their original thicknesses of 3.23.4 cm. Margins of bare wood beyond
the painted surface indicate that each panel once had an engaged frame. The
three panels retain wide margins along the bottom and pointed top. On the two
saints the vertical margins were completely removed, while on the Madonna the
vertical margins are very narrow. At some point after the panels were cropped,
modern pieces of wood were added along the pointed top and the sides of the
three panels.


sides.
TECHNICAL NOTES
files).
old.
inpainted again.
PROVENANCE


BIBLIOGRAPHY

19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):590.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):646, 648 n.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 312, 370, 403, 440, 647.
Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1992. Ann Arbor, MI,
1996: 89-90, 260.
Siena, 2005: 48.


Master of Citt di Castello

BIOGRAPHY
It was F. Mason Perkins, the great American connoisseur, friend of Bernard

Berenson, and benefactor of the Sacro Convento Francescano in Assisi, who
recognized, a century ago, a first nucleus of the catalog of this anonymous master,
generally considered a follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 -
1318/1319). Perkins thus reunited, by attributing to the same hand, the Maest in the
church of San Domenico in Citt di Castello (now in the Pinacoteca Comunale) with
polyptych no. 33 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena and a fragmentary Madonna
and Child formerly at Crevole near Siena and now in the Museo dellOpera del
Duomo in Siena.[1] In the following decades this brief catalog was enlarged and
modified, but no evidence emerged to identify the anonymous painter or better
define the chronology of his oeuvre. None of the paintings attributed to him are
dated. But the hypothesis of earlier studiesthat the artists activity extended to
the first three decades of the fourteenth centuryno longer seems correct
today.[2] Art historians now tend to push his career back in time: they detect his
hand in paintings dating to the last decade of the thirteenth century. Furthermore,
a group of paintings gathered under the conventional name of the Casole Fresco
(or Aringhieri or Albertini) Master and classified, tellingly, by some scholars under
the label akin to the Master of Citt di Castello, has now been reassigned to
him.[3]
The art historical debate on the problems of defining and dating the masters work
is still open. What can be asserted with some confidence is that the master of the
Maest of Citt di Castello must have been a well-established painter, with a long
career behind him, by c. 1305, the date almost unanimously accepted for the
painting after which he is named. His stylistic peculiarities, in particular his figures
distinguished by marked volumetric effect, executed with pronounced chiaroscuro
modeling and soft brushwork, are clearly recognizable in the Maest and suggest
that the artist not only was trained in the circle of Duccio but must also have been
in contact with other great masters: according to some, with Giotto (Florentine, c.
1265 - 1337) himself; according to others, more plausibly, with Roman painters of
the late thirteenth century.[4] Particularly significant works in the group of paintings
Master of Citt di Castello 864


generally assigned to the Master of Citt di Castello include the Madonna in a

private collection, only recently published;[5] another Madonna and Child in the
Detroit Institute of Arts; the great painted crucifix at Montecerboli; and the
Crucifixion in the Manchester City Art Gallery, which probably represents the end
point of his career, perhaps no later than 13151320. Apart from the Manchester
Crucifixion, the only narrative compositions hitherto attributed to the artist are the
frescoes in the chapel of the former Palazzo Vescovile in Pistoia.[6]
The inclusion in the oeuvre of the Master of Citt di Castello of the group of
paintings assigned to the Casole Fresco Master is admissible only if the paintings
in questionthe fresco Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels and Donors in
the museum at Casole dElsa, the Maest no. 565 of the National Gallery in
London, and the panels nos. 18 and 592 of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Sienaare
considered the results of an early phase in the artists career, datable to the last
decade of the thirteenth century or a little later. Combining archaizing features with
a new classicizing approach, the group might have been preceded, in turn, by the
Maest (Madonna and Child with Four Angels), which is, in my opinion, the Master
of Citt di Castellos earliest surviving work.
[1] Frederick Mason Perkins, Alcuni appunti sulla Galleria delle Belle Arti di Siena,
Rassegna darte senese 4 (1908): 5152.
[2] For example, Cesare Brandi, La Regia Pinacoteca di Siena (Rome, 1933), 169
172; Cesare Brandi, Duccio (Florence, 1951), 148150; James H. Stubblebine,
Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:85.
[3] Edward Garrison (1949) considered the portable triptych no. 70 in Christ Church
Picture Gallery, Oxford, the earliest known work of the Master of Citt di Castello,
with a dating of 13001310. Alessandro Bagnoli (2003) accepted the attribution but
pushed the dating back to the last decade of the thirteenth century. A closely
related group of paintings (affine al Maestro di Citt di Castello: see Brandi 1951)
was called Casole Fresco Master by James Stubblebine (1979), who augmented it
with some paintings that others excluded. Mikls Boskovits (1982) proposed the
fusion of the catalog of the Casole Master with that of the Master of Citt di
Castello. Gaudenz Freuler (2001) accepted the hypothesis but reconstructed the
artists career in a different way. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque
Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 138; Alessandro Bagnoli, in
Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et
al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 314315; Cesare Brandi, Duccio (Florence,


1951), 141, 149; James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2
vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:110116; Mikls Boskovits, Review of Duccio di
Buoninsegna and His School by J.H. Stubblebine; and Duccio di Buoninsegna by J.
White, The Art Bulletin 64 (1982): 497; Gaudenz Freuler, Duccio et ses
contemporains: Le matre de Citt di Castello, Revue de lart 134 (2001): 2750.
On the problem of the frescoes of the chapel of Saint Nicholas in the Collegiata of
Casole dElsa, see Alessandro Bagnoli, La cappella funebre del Porrina e del
vescovo Ranieri e le sue figurazioni murali, in Marco Romano e il contesto artistico
senese fra la fine del Duecento e gli inizi del Trecento, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2010), 92111.
[4] Cesare Brandi, Duccio (Florence, 1951), 150, assumed the Master of Citt di
Castellos conoscenza attiva del Cavallini. The present writer thinks rather of an
influence like that of the so-called Master of the Cattura, one of the frescoers of the
upper church of San Francesco in Assisi, or the artist of the transept of Santa Maria
Maggiore in Rome. According to Alessandro Bagnoli (2003), however, the Master
must also have succumbed to the influence of contemporary Florentine painting,
since he had a conoscenza . . . approfondita e diretta del primo Giotto;
Alessandro Bagnoli, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed.
[5] Cf. Gaudenz Freuler, Duccio et ses contemporains: Le matre de Citt di

Castello, Revue de lart 134 (2001): 37, fig. 10.
[6] Cf. Ada Labriola, Gli affreschi della cappella di San Niccol nellantico Palazzo
dei Vescovi a Pistoia, Arte cristiana 76 (1988): 247266.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1908 Perkins, F. Mason. Alcuni appunti sulla Galleria delle Belle Arti di
Siena.
Rassegna dArte Senese 4 (1908): 5152.
1923 Marle, Raimond van.

The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague,
1923-1938: 2(1924):80-85.



Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian
Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 2:249.
1977 Cole, Bruce.

Agnolo Gaddi. Oxford, 1977.
1979 Stubblebine, James H.

Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School. 2 vols. Princeton, 1979: 1:85-89.
2001 Freuler, Gaudenz. Duccio et ses contemporains: le matre de Citt di

Castello.
Revue de lArt 134 (2001): 27-50.
2003 Bagnoli, Alessandro. In

Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico. Edited by
Alessandro Bagnoli, Roberto Bartalini, Luciano Bellosi, and Michel
Laclotte. Milan, 2003: 314-326.


Master of Citt di Castello

Maesta (Madonna and

Child with Four Angels)
c. 1290
tempera on panel
overall: 240 150 2.4 cm (94 1/2 59 1/16 15/16 in.)
framed: 252.4 x 159.4 x 13.3 cm (99 3/8 x 62 3/4 x 5 1/4 in.)
ENTRY
This panel, of large dimensions, bears the image of the Maest represented
according to the iconographic tradition of the Hodegetria.[1] This type of Madonna
and Child was very popular among lay confraternities in central Italy; perhaps it
was one of them that commissioned the painting.[2] The image is distinguished
among the paintings of its time by the very peculiar construction of the marble
throne, which seems to be formed of a semicircular external structure into which a
circular seat is inserted. Similar thrones are sometimes found in Sienese paintings
between the last decades of the thirteenth and the first two of the fourteenth
century.[3] Much the same dating is suggested by the delicate chrysography of the
mantles of the Madonna and Child.[4]
Recorded for the first time by the Soprintendenza in Siena c. 1930 as tavola
preduccesca,[5] the work was examined by Richard Offner in 1937. In his
expertise, he classified it as school of Duccio and compared it with some roughly
contemporary panels of the same stylistic circle. Offner concludes that it belonged
to a slightly more primitive period than the Maest of Duccio, namely the first
decade of the fourteenth century.[6] In the early 1950s, when the painting began
to reemerge from its long oblivion, various scholars, perhaps at Bernard
Berensons suggestion, pointed out its kinship with the Badia a Isola Maest,[7] a
classification that also convinced Gertrude Coor Achenbach (1960) and Enzo Carli
(1965).[8] In the National Gallery of Art, however, the panel was cataloged simply as
Follower of Duccio, and this classification was in general accepted in the art
Maesta (Madonna and Child with Four Angels) 868


historical literature. Berenson (1968) noted that the anonymous artist was close to
the Master of Citt di Castello, while James Stubblebine (1979) considered him a
provincial follower of the same Master. Stubblebine, who attempted to
reconstruct the oeuvre of this artist, invented for him the name San Quirico dOrcia
Master.[9] The paintings kinship with the so-called Master of 1310 was also
proposed (Conti 1981) but almost immediately rejected (Bacchi 1987).[10] In the
more recent literature, the painting generally has been cited under the
conventional name of Master of San Quirico dOrcia (Martini 1997, Bagnoli 2003,
Schmidt 2005) or attributed to the Master of Citt di Castello (Boskovits 1982,
Freuler 2001, Freuler 2004).[11]
Before discussing the attribution, an effort should be made to define the

chronological frame within which the Washington panel was painted. This can best
be done by examining what is no doubt its most peculiar feature, the throne on
which the Virgin is seated. Elaborate in construction, it is undoubtedly built of
marble. This was a novel feature in late thirteenth-century Tuscan paintings. Marble
thrones, hitherto used in Roman painting, appear for the first time in Siena in the
great rose window designed by Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 -
1318/1319) for the cathedral (c. 12871288) and in the frescoes of the upper church
of San Francesco in Assisi painted by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) and his
companions in the years around 1290.[12] The massive thrones that appear in
various paintings of the period were then developed further: they became more
elaborate, more lavish in ornament, more richly articulated, and also more rational
and optically convincing. During the first decade of the fourteenth century, painted
thrones assume ever more pronounced Gothic features. In this development, the
Maest painted by Duccio for Siena Cathedral (c. 13081311) may be considered a
sure point of chronological reference. Though the marble throne on which that
Madonna sits still lacks gothicizing features, its elaborate intarsia paneling,
moldings, and foliated friezes suggest that it should date to a phase subsequent to
that of the Washington painting.
None of the panels with which the Gallery painting has been compared [13] is
securely datable, but the list of the analogies so far pointed out can be extended
with the addition of one or two other works that can be dated approximately and
usefully compared with the Washington Madonna. Historical considerations
suggest, for example, that the fresco in the chapel of Saint Nicholas adjacent to the
Collegiata at Casole dElsa, attributed by recent studies either to a so-called Casole
Master (also known as Master of the Albertini) or to the Master of Citt di Castello,


postdates 1296 and probably predates 1312.[14] In that work [fig. 1], Marys throne
may be considered a further variant of the massive marble structures derived from
Duccios rose window in Siena Cathedral; despite its heavy structure, its richly
articulated forms, illuminated by a light flowing into the painting from the left, and
its backrest surmounted by a kind of gabled baldachin reveal that this is a work
executed probably not later than the years around 1300 and hence close to the
other version of the Madonna and Child now in the National Gallery in London,
usually given to the same artist. To better define the chronology of the Washington
panel it will be useful also to take into consideration some Sienese frescoes of the
school of Duccio that can be dated c. 1305. The thrones that appear in these
frescoes, though still classicizing in style, are more rational in design, more
elaborate in structure, than that of the painting being discussed here.[15]
Returning to the problem of the hand that painted the panel in Washington, it
should be premised that the attribution to the Badia a Isola Master, which the art
historical literature has since abandoned, did have the merit of suggesting an early
date for our painting. Recent studies recognize the Badia a Isola Maest as the
work of an exponent of the first generation of followers of Duccio. A late dating, to
the second decade of the fourteenth century or after, does not seem justified for
the painting discussed here, whose halo style recalls the Badia a Isola Maest
.[16] Various other clues suggest an earlier date: for example, the fact that the light
here (as in the Badia a Isola Maest) does not come from a single source, as it
does in paintings realized by Duccio and his close followers in the years around
1310. The markedly elongated proportions of Mary in turn recall such examples as
Duccios Madonna in the Kunstmuseum in Bern or the protagonists of the Maest
of the Casole Master. The blessing gesture of the child, with his arm stretched out
to the left, is characteristic of paintings dating to the final years of the thirteenth
century, without the foreshortening that the frontal blessing of the Madonna of the
National Gallery in London implies.[17]
On the other hand, the Washington Maest should not be retained in the
stylistically incoherent group collected under the name of San Quirico dOrcia
Master.[18] Indeed, with the possible exception of one painting, the Madonna of the
Detroit Institute of Arts, the shared authorship of the works hitherto linked with the
Washington Maest seems very much open to doubt. So, may the Maest in the
Gallery be assigned outright to the Master of Citt di Castello, who most scholars
have recognized as the artist of the Detroit panel? The hypothesis is plausible, on
two conditions: first, that the chronology of this painter be revised;[19] and second,


that the works formerly assigned to the Casole (or Aringhieri or Albertini) Master be
included in his catalog. If, as I suggest above, the Maest in the National Gallery in
London belongs to the figurative culture of the last decade of the thirteenth
century, Maest no. 18 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena [fig. 2] and the Casole
dElsa fresco should date slightly later, around 1300, in view of their tendency
towards a more pronounced classical style. The artists career could then have
continued, without any improbable changes of direction, with paintings generally
given to the Master of Citt di Castello, the earliest of which seems to be the
Madonna and Child in a private collection recently published by Gaudenz Freuler
(2001),[20] followed by the Maest of Citt di Castello itself. Such a sequence
would seem to be corroborated by Mojmir Frintas (1998) examination of the punch
marks used in them: he has identified the use of this punch both in the panels
attributed to the Casole Master and in the works of the Master of Citt di
Castello.[21]
If, as I am inclined to believe, the Washington panel was a product of the same
workshop, it should be assigned the earliest possible date in the masters career: it
is the result, presumably, of an initial phase in the artists development in which not
all the characteristic features of his fully fledged style have yet appeared. This, as
well as the much compromised condition of the panel, may explain some
stylistically anomalous features, such as the angels that flank the Virgins throne:
with their long necks, melancholy expressions, and thin yet incisive contours, they
lack the corporeal, almost sculptural modeling and the typically soft chiaroscuro we
associate with the Master of Citt di Castello. On the other hand, better preserved
passages, in particular the face of the angel in the upper left and the bust of the
child, are comparable to corresponding details in panels in the Casole Master
group, for example the Maest in London and the Madonna no. 592 in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. The placid undulation of the contours of the figure
of the enthroned Mary also recalls paintings usually included in the same oeuvre.
Some compositional devices found in the oeuvre of the Casole Master that recur in
the Washington panel also seem significant. I allude to the distinctive undulating
curves of the exposed pale silk lining that enlivens the large, uniform expanse of
the Madonnas dark blue mantle. The Virgins conduct is also worth noting: she is
draping a precious embroidered cloth around the body of her son, and pressing a
hem of the fabric between her right forefinger and thumb in both the London and
Washington versions of the Maest [fig. 3].[22] Therefore we can propose, albeit
with due caution, that the Maest in the Gallery and those from Casole dElsa in
London and Siena, as well as the namepiece in Citt di Castello and the other


works that art historians have gathered around it, constitute three successive
phases in the career of the same distinctive and accomplished exponent of
Sienese painting at the turn of the century.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Sienese, Maest, c. 1300, fresco, Chapel of Saint

Nicholas, Collegiata, Casole d'Elsa
fig. 2 Master of Citt di Castello, Maest, c. 1300, tempera

on panel, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Image courtesy of
the Ministerio per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali


fig. 3 Detail of Madonna, Master of Citt di Castello,

Maest (Madonna and Child with Four Angels), c. 1290, fig. 4 Sienese, Maest, c. 1300, fresco, Church of San
tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Lorenzo al Colle Ciupi at Monteriggioni. Image courtesy of
Samuel H. Kress Collection the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism,
Superintendence of Fine Arts and Landscape for the
provinces of Siena, Grosseto, and Arezzo
NOTES
[1] See Gregor Martin Lechner, Maria, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen

Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel (Stuttgart, 2005), 6:5871. The Maest is a type of
image emphasizing the regal dignity of the Christ child, shown in the arms of
his mother, who is enthroned and flanked by angels.
[2] This is also suggested by the historical vicissitudes of the painting, which
seems not to have had any fixed ecclesiastical ownership but to have
passed from churches in San Quirico dOrcia to private owners and back
again, without leaving any trace in the inventories relating to the churches in
question. But almost all large-size panels of the Maest painted in central


Italy between the thirteenth and early years of the fourteenth century, in
general taller than they are wide, were commissioned by lay confraternities.
See Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem
Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 433446; Mikls Boskovits, in Duecento:
Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano
Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 274275.
[3] See below note 15.
[4] The term chrysography (from the Greek chrysographia, meaning writing
with gold letters) comes from studies on the decoration of manuscript. Cf.
Ronald Baxter, Chrysography, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34
vols. (New York, 1996), 7:245247. In the art historical literature it is used as
an alternative to gold grisaille to denote the gilded highlights of garments in
paintings. Cf. Otto Demus, Byzantine Art and the West (New York, 1970),
103, 235; Kurt Weitzmann, The Icon: Holy Images, Sixth to Fourteenth
Century (London, 1978), 92. This use of gold, especially the golden
calligraphy used to highlight the folds of drapery, was borrowed from
Byzantine art and spread in Tuscan painting around the mid-thirteenth
century but gradually disappeared in the course of the second decade of
the following century or shortly thereafter.
[5] Cf. Provenance note 2.
[6] Matteo Panzeri (1996) published the expertise dated August 30, 1937, in
which Offner proposed that the panel belonged to unepoca un po pi
primitiva della Maest di Duccio, vale a dire il primo decennio del Trecento
(a slightly more primitive period than Duccios Maest, that is to say the first
decade of the fourteenth century). Offner compared the panel, which he
likely knew only from a photograph, with a series of paintings, thus
circumscribing in a convincing way the artistic ambience in which it was
painted. He noted its kinship with paintings by artists of the first generation
of the followers of Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 -
1318/1319), such as the so-called Casole Master, of whom he cited works in
the National Gallery in London (no. 565) and in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in
Siena (no. 592); a Maest by the Master of Badia a Isola (now in the Museo
di Colle Val dElsa); a similar panel of the same subject in the Museo Civico
at Citt di Castello; and another panel of the Madonna attributable to Segna
di Bonaventura, formerly in the Platt collection in Englewood, New Jersey,
and now in the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (no. 1959.15.17).
See Matteo Panzeri, La tradizione del restauro a Bergamo tra XIX e XX
secolo: Mauro Pellicioli, un caso paradigmatico, in Giovanni Secco Suardo:
La cultura del restauro tra tutela e conservazione dellopera darte; Atti del
convegno internazionale di studi, Bergamo, March 911, 1995, supplemental
volume 98 of Bollettino dArte (Rome, 1996), 111112.
[7] In the posthumous edition of Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the


Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London,

1968), 2:120, the painting was classified as the anonymous work of an artist
close to the Master of Citt di Castello. Nonetheless, prior to its acquisition
by the Kress Foundation, Berenson apparently held a different view. In a
letter of January 28, 1953, to his agent Gualtiero Volterra, Alessandro
Contini-Bonacossi included photographs of the works of art he intended to
sell to the Kress Foundation and informed him delle impressioni di B.B (of
B. B.s opinions) about them. The works in question include one attributed to
the Maestro di Badia a Isola quadro importantissimo che diventerebbe uno
dei pezzi centrali di qualunque museo, see Elsa de Giorgi, Leredit
Contini Bonacossi: Lambiguo rigore del vero (Milan, 1988), 197. That this
was the Gallery's painting is proven by its description in other letters as
Madonna col Bambino e quattro angeli. Subsequently (letter of Rush Kress
to Contini-Bonacossi, May 14, 1953) the painting was also indicated as
Duccio, Pala daltare della Madonna of Spoleto, but clearly this was a
mistake on the writers part. In fact, the Madonna of Spoleto is the panel
generally attributed to the Badia a Isola Master that belonged to the
collection of Claudio Argentieri in Spoleto in the 1930s, then circulated on
the art market, and finally ended up in the collection of Vittorio Cini in
Venice. See Federico Zeri, Mauro Natale, and Alessandra Mottola Molfino,
Dipinti toscani e oggetti darte dalla Collezione Vittorio Cini (Vicenza, 1984),
1011. As evinced by the documentation in NGA curatorial files, William
Suida also had classified the panel as a work of the Badia a Isola Master at
the time of its acquisition by the Kress Foundation, and Sandberg-Vaval
seems to have accepted this attribution as well.
[8] Gertrude Coor, The Early Nineteenth-Century Aspect of a Dispersed

Polyptych by the Badia a Isola Master, The Art Bulletin 42 (1960): 143 n. 6;
Enzo Carli, Ricuperi e restauri senesi: I, Nella cerchia di Duccio, Bollettino
darte 50 (1965): 97, 99 n. 2.
[9] Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and
North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2:120. James H. Stubblebine,
Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:8991,
gathered under the name San Quirico dOrcia Master the Gallery Maest;
the Madonna and Child in the Detroit Institute of Arts (no. 24.96) usually
given to the Master of Citt di Castello; and a fragmentary panel of the same
subject, formerly in the storerooms of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena
and now in the museum at Buonconvento. Cf. also note 18 below.
[10] Alessandro Conti, La miniatura bolognese: Scuole e botteghe, 12701340

(Bologna, 1981), 53 n. 39. Pierpaolo Donati reconstructed the catalog of this
anonymous Pistoian master around an altarpiece dated 1310 in the Museum
in Avignon; cf. Pier Paolo Donati, Per la pittura pistoiese del Trecento, 1,
Paragone 25, no. 295 (1974): 426; Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench,
Peinture italienne: Muse du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), 127128.


Andrea Bacchi (1986), on the other hand, thought the panel in Washington
more likely to be the work of a Pisan master of the early fourteenth century.
Andrea Bacchi, Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento nel Pistoiese, in La
(Milan, 1986), 1:317318.
[11] See Laura Martini, Le vicende costruttive della chiesa di San Francesco, in
San Quirico dOrcia: La Madonna di Vitaleta; Arte e devozione, ed. Laura
Martini (San Quirico dOrcia, 1997), 1314, 19 n. 5; Alessandro Bagnoli, I
pittori ducceschi, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico,
ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 297, 302
n. 23; Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal
Devotion in Tuscany, 12501400 (Florence, 2005), 181, 202 n. 44, 348; and
Mikls Boskovits, Review of Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School by J.H.
Stubblebine; and Duccio di Buoninsegna by J. White, The Art Bulletin 64
(1982): 497. Though he did not specifically discuss the Washington panel,
Gaudenz Freuler too included it implicitly in the catalog of the Master of
Citt di Castello. Cf. Gaudenz Freuler, Duccio et ses contemporains: Le
matre de Citt di Castello, Revue de lart 134 (2001): 28; Gaudenz Freuler,
Duccio alle origini della pittura senese, Kunstchronik 57 (2004): 589590.
He argued, in fact, that the works gathered by Stubblebine under the name
of the San Quirico Master should be reassigned to the Citt di Castello
Master.
[12] Documents of 1287 and 1288 speak of the great rose window about to be
realized for Siena Cathedral, the glass for which was then being bought. Cf.
Luciano Bellosi and Alessandro Bagnoli, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione
Milan, 2003), 162179. The throne of the Coronation of the Virgin
represented in the center of the windows upper tier recalls the type of
throne in the Madonna Rucellai in the Uffizi, Florence, commissioned in
1285, but in contrast it is no longer of wood but of marble. The new type of
throne, which would inspire Sienese painters of the following decades, is
characterized by its high concave back placed between two robust
quadrangular pillars, and by a seat flanked by projecting elements and
adorned with panels of Cosmatesque ornament. It is heralded by the
thrones of the four Evangelists in the rose windows spandrels. It seems to
me improbable that this type of throne could have been borrowed from
some work of the youthful Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337), as conjectured
in the above-cited catalog; the model should rather be sought in
contemporary Roman painting. Cf. Mikls Boskovits, Da Duccio a Simone
Martini, in Medioevo: La chiesa e il palazzo; Atti del convegno
[13] Apart from the panels that Offner cited as comparanda (cf. note 6 above)


and the small Maest now in the Cini collection in Venice (cf. note 7), we
should also cite those that Stubblebine attributed to a so-called San Quirico
dOrcia Master (cf. note 9), as did Alessandro Bagnoli, I pittori ducceschi, in
Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro
Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 297, 302 n. 23. The latter
accepted, it seems, the proposition that the master who painted the
Washington panel was also responsible for the one now at Buonconvento.
To these two paintings he added a fresco (fig. 4) in the church of San
Lorenzo al Colle Ciupi at Monteriggioni, a painting of fine quality and great
interest that undoubtedly belongs to the milieu of the master of the
Washington panel, but I am unable to recognize in it a work by the same
hand. I wonder whether it belongs to the earliest phase of the Goodhart
Duccesque Master (alias Master of the Gondi Maest).
[14] Cf. Giovanna Damiani, in Mostra di opere darte restaurate nelle province di
Siena e Grosseto (Genoa, 1981), 2:2024; Alessandro Bagnoli, Museo della
Collegiata, in Museo archeologico e della Collegiata di Casole dElsa, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli and Giuseppina Carlotta Cianferoni (Florence, 1996),
6162; Julian Gardner, Duccio, Cimabue and the Maestro di Casole: Early
Sienese Paintings for Florentine Confraternities, in Iconographica:
Mlanges offerts Piotr Skubiszewski, ed. Robert Favreau and Marie-
Hlne Debis (Poitiers, 1999), 110111; Alessandro Bagnoli, La cappella
funebre del Porrina e del vescovo Ranieri e le sue figurazioni murali, in
Marco Romano e il contesto artistico senese fra la fine del Duecento e gli
inizi del Trecento, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2010),
92111. Of the two kneeling donors depicted in the fresco, the one to the left
is Bernardino called Porrina, a famous lawyer of the time, who had died by
1309; the one to the right, his brother Ranieri, who was bishop of Cremona
and died in 1312. It cannot be excluded that, as Bagnoli believed, the fresco
postdates 1312, with a commemorative intention; but far more probable
seems the hypothesis of Damiani and Gardner that the chapel, site of the
fresco, was erected, as was often the case, to enhance the importance of
the donors while still alive, probably shortly after Ranieris preferment to the
see of Cremona in 1296.
[15] The peculiar motif of the pronouncedly forward-projecting sides of the

throne, forming a semicircle around the seat on which the Madonna is
enthroned and supporting a high concave backrest, must have
characterized the Madonna no. 565 in the National Gallery in London before
the lower part of the panel was sawn off. Julian Gardner (1999) argued for a
relatively late date for this painting, c. 1315, because he believed that the
figure of the blessing Christ child standing on his mothers knees derived
from Simone Martinis famous Maest in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. But
the child in the London panel (as shown in particular by his crossed legs)
assumes a pose more similar to that of the Christ child in the Badia a Isola


Maest (cf. note 8 above), a work probably dating to c. 1290 and therefore
appreciably earlier in date than Simones fresco. See Julian Gardner,
Duccio, Cimabue and the Maestro di Casole: Early Sienese Paintings for
Florentine Confraternities, in Iconographica: Mlanges offerts Piotr
Skubiszewski, ed. Robert Favreau and Marie-Hlne Debis (Poitiers, 1999),
111. The London Madonna is, I think, later than the Badia a Isola panel, but
should not be placed beyond c. 1300. An archaic feature of the marble
throne in the Badia a Isola Maest, shown frontally and with an arched
opening on its front side (like the thrones of the Evangelists in the rose
window in Siena Cathedral), is that its foot-rest is seen laterally, as in the
Coronation in the same window. So the type of throne may be compared
with that we see in some of Duccios earlier paintings, still falling within the
thirteenth century (cf. the Madonna no. 873 in the Kunstmuseum of Bern).
Around 1300, a new type of throne was being used: firmer in structure and
classicizing in style. This is exemplified by the Madonna frescoed on the
arch of the Due Porte at Stalloreggi (Siena), which James Stubblebine (1979)
unconvincingly attributed to the Casole Fresco Master and Bellosi to
bottega di Giotto. In fact, the fresco is Sienese, close to Memmo di
Filipuccio. Cf. James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His
School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 1:114; Luciano Bellosi, Il percorso di
Duccio, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed.
The chronology of these paintings seems to be confirmed by some works
with thrones of archaicizing type dating to the early years of the fourteenth
century, such as that depicted in the Martyrdom of Saint James in the mural
cycle of the former Palazzo Vescovile in Pistoia attributed to the Citt di
Castello Master. Cf. Ada Labriola, Gli affreschi della cappella di San Niccol
nellantico Palazzo dei Vescovi a Pistoia, Arte cristiana 76 (1988): 247266
and fig. 4. Another example of similar ornament is that of the Madonna and
Child Enthroned painted by Memmo di Filippuccio in the church of San
Jacopo at San Gimignano, for which see Enzo Carli, Ancora dei Memmi a
San Gimignano, Paragone 14, no. 159 (1963): 3132. Both thrones are
morphologically close to the architectural details of the frescoes on the
internal faade of the Collegiata in the same town, for which Memmo was
paid in 1305. See Gianna Coppini, San Gimignano: Sogno del Medioevo
(San Gimignano, 2000), 50.
The close kinship between the type of throne represented in the
Washington panel and some paintings of the Goodhart Duccesque Master
also should be underlined. Cf. James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di
Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 2: figs. 257259.
Alessandro Bagnoli, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo
gotico, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003),
366368, compared the throne in one of the works of this anonymous
master, that now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, with the


structure painted in the Washington Maest and proposed for the former a
date close to Duccios Maest in Siena. The proposal is plausible. However,
the works of the Goodhart Duccesque Master renovate the form of the
throne in the Washington Madonna, replacing the semicircular seat with a
rectangular one and making the structure as a whole more rational. These
changes, together with some new elements of gothicizing taste, imply for
the panel in the Bargello a date decidedly later than the Maest in the
National Gallery of Art.
[16] Enzo Carli, Ricuperi e restauri senesi. I. Nella cerchia di Duccio, Bollettino
darte 50 (1965): 97, considered the Washington panel a sequel to the
former Argentieri Maest (now in the Cini collection in Venice) and seemed
to imply for itsince he believed that the Cini Maest had been executed
forse ancora entro il Duecento (perhaps still within the thirteenth
century)a dating no later than the first decade of the fourteenth century.
Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, 1979), too, followed by subsequent catalogs of the
National Gallery of Art, proposed early 14th century, while James
Stubblebine (1979) detected in the panel some familiarity with the works of
Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345) and therefore proposed a
date for it of c. 1320. Andrea Bacchi (1986) reverted to the years around the
turn of the century (a cavallo fra Duecento e Trecento), while Julian
Gardner (1999), without explicitly suggesting a date, compared the painting
with the old-fashioned composition of the Madonna no. 565 in the London
National Gallery, in his view datable to c. 1315. Recently, Alessandro Bagnoli
(2003) also placed the Washington panel among the casi tardivi e
provinciali di coloro che furono sostanzialmente insensibili alle novit dei
maestri pi moderni e dipinsero ben avanti nel Trecento tenendo fede a
modelli ormai superati (retardataire and provincial cases of those who were
substantially insensible to the innovations of more modern masters and
who, painting well into the fourteenth century, remained faithful to outdated
models). See Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
1:172174; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings and Sculpture:
Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 37; National Gallery of Art, European
Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 137; James H.
1979), 1:8991; Andrea Bacchi, Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento nel
Pistoiese, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:317318; Julian Gardner, Duccio,
Cimabue and the Maestro di Casole: Early Sienese Paintings for Florentine
Confraternities, in Iconographica: Mlanges offerts Piotr Skubiszewski,
ed. Robert Favreau and Marie-Hlne Debis (Poitiers, 1999), 112;
Alessandro Bagnoli, I pittori ducceschi, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione


Milan, 2003), 297.
[17] A similar position of the child is frequently found in Italian paintings of the
thirteenth century. In Siena, we find it as early as 1262 (cf. the Madonna and
Child no. 16 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena). The motif was
abandoned in the phase of Duccios full maturity and that of his followers at
the turn of the century. It was replaced by a more modern motif of the Christ
child who expresses affection for his mother or pulls toward himself a hem
of her veil, or raises his hand in the gesture of blessing frontally, with his arm
shown in foreshortening.
[18] James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols.

(Princeton, 1979), 1:8991, noted the Washington Madonnas affinity with the
half-length Madonna in the Detroit Institute of Arts (no. 233), which most art
historians have attributed to the Citt di Castello Master. He also gave a
panel now in the Museum at Buonconvento to his San Quirico Master. Not
easily classifiable in stylistic terms, the latter, decidedly Duccesque in
composition (to which Victor Schmidt compared the small Madonna no. 873
in the Kunstmuseum of Bern), is distinguished by aristocratically elongated
forms and by some peculiar harshness in the definition of the faces. Cf.
Victor Schmidt, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 180. These are
characteristics it shares with a vaguely Duccesque Madonna now in the
Salini collection in Sienaa work undeniably of far earlier datepublished
by Gaudenz Freuler (2001) as marking the exordium of the Citt di Castello
Master. See Gaudenz Freuler, Duccio et ses contemporains: Le matre de
Citt di Castello, Revue de lart 134 (2001): figs. 1, 30. As for the Maest in
Monteriggioni cited in note 13 above, Bagnoli rightly compared the richly
articulated mantle and dress of the Madonna with Duccios gravely
damaged Maest in Massa Marittima, a painting probably produced by the
middle of the second decade. But despite its massive forms, the timidly
gothicizing architecture of the throne in the Monteriggioni fresco suggests a
significantly later date for the fresco than for the Washington panel. See
Alessandro Bagnoli, I pittori ducceschi, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione
Milan, 2003), 297.
[19] Though they reconstructed the career and oeuvre of the artist in different
ways, the recent studies by Freuler and Bagnoli concurred in assigning
some key works of the Master of Citt di Castello to the first decade of the
fourteenth century. These include the namepiece itself, the Maest in the
Pinacoteca Comunale in Citt di Castello; the dismantled polyptych
presumably comprising the figures of saints nos. 2932 in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena; the Madonna and Child in the Museo dellOpera, Siena;
and polyptych no. 33, also in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena. These
prestigious commissions indicate, of course, that the anonymous master


was already at this precocious date a well-established artist. See Gaudenz

Freuler, Duccio et ses contemporains: Le matre de Citt di Castello,
Revue de lart 134 (2001): 2750; Gaudenz Freuler, Duccio alle origini della
pittura senese, Kunstchronik 57 (2004): 576594; Alessandro Bagnoli, La
cappella funebre del Porrina e del vescovo Ranieri e le sue figurazioni
murali, in Marco Romano e il contesto artistico senese fra la fine del
Duecento e gli inizi del Trecento, ed. Alessandro Bagnoli (Cinisello Balsamo,
Milan, 2010), 92111.
[20] Gaudenz Freuler, Duccio et ses contemporains: Le matre de Citt di

Castello, Revue de lart 134 (2001): 3537 and fig. 10. Perhaps rightly, he
dated the painting to c. 1300; Alessandro Bagnoli preferred an immediately
preceding phase. See Alessandro Bagnoli, in Duccio: Siena fra tradizione
Milan, 2003), 315.
[21] Mojmir S. Frinta identified the same penta-lobe rosette punchmark in the
Maest no. 565 in the National Gallery in London and in the Maest no. 18 in
the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena, both paintings usually attributed to the
Casole Master, and in the Maest in the picture gallery at Citt di Castello
and numerous other paintings attributed to the Master of Citt di Castello.
Cf. Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel
and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 442. Alessandro Bagnoli (2003)
admitted the presence of the same punch mark in the two stylistic groups
but did not think that this necessarily implied they were the work of a single
master: it would prove, he argued, semmai, luso comune dello stesso
strumento o lappartenenza ai due pittori di un utensile identico (if anything,
the common use of the same instrument or the possession by the two
painters of an identical tool). However, the circumstance that this punch
appears only in these works and not in the paintings of other contemporary
masters seems to support the identification between the Casole Master and
the Citt di Castello Master. See Alessandro Bagnoli, I pittori ducceschi, in
Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico, ed. Alessandro
Bagnoli et al. (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2003), 294. Again according to
Frinta (1998, 489), the hexa-rosette motif used in the Washington panel
recurs in the Madonna no. 583 of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena and in
a Madonna della Misericordia from the parish church of Vertine in Chianti,
now on loan to the same Pinacoteca. Recent studies have underlined the
affinity of these two works and have related them to Simone Martinis
formative period; indeed, many scholars now consider the former to be a
work of the young Simone himself. The other is a more problematic painting:
though some attribute it to Simone, it was probably produced in the shop of
Memmo di Filippuccio. Cf. Bagnoli 2003, 422424; Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 344. It is not easy to evaluate with any
precision the significance of this data, still less to explain the fact,


ascertained by Frinta, that the same hexa-rosette punch also appears in the
Pietro Cavallini-attributed Epitaph of Bishop Umbert dOrmont now in the
collection of the Arcivescovado of Naples.
[22] The Virgins gesture of draping the body of the infant Jesus, who wears a
transparent chemise, in a precious red cloth, is repeated in the fresco in
Casole.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The painting was executed on a panel composed of four boards with vertical grain,
on which strips of woven fabric were laid. The panel, which has a gable of obtuse
angle shape, is enclosed in an engaged frame whose left-hand vertical section
seems to be original. The panel maintains what seems to be its original thickness
(2.4 cm). The reverse of the panel is covered with remains of a gesso coating and a
sparse layer of red paint. A wooden batten, which is part of the original structure,
runs across the reverse of the panel approximately 60 cm from the top. The trace
of a second horizontal batten (approximately 90 cm from the bottom) is also visible;
the batten itself is lost, but the area formerly covered by it is uncovered by paint or
gesso and retains the clipped iron nails with which it was formerly attached. The
panel was prepared with a layer of gesso over the fabric.[1] Infrared reflectography
at 950680 nm [2] revealed underdrawing in the figures hands and feet and a
verdaccio under the flesh tones.[3] The paint layers of the obverse, applied over a
gesso preparation, appear to be tempera; the gold ground is laid over a red bole
preparation.
In the earliest known photograph of the painting [fig. 1], from c. 1930, the panel
appeared worm eaten and irregularly broken at the edges, especially on the right
side (looking from the obverse).[4] In a subsequent treatment, sawdust was used to
plug holes in the wooden support and its various vertical checks. Numerous
wooden butterflies also were inserted in the boards to bridge the joins and
checks. The panel now appears in stable condition, but each of the four boards has
a vertical convex warp, and the panel overall has a horizontal convex warp. The
panel is badly damaged along the bottom 10 cm: the paint and gesso are almost
completely lost from this area. The painted surface has suffered from neglect and
ill treatment and has been subjected to restorations on various occasions. There is
a large amount of inpaint and overpaint on the painting.[5] The areas that are not
heavily overpainted are the Madonnas face, the Christ childs face and torso, and


the upper left angels face and hands. The Madonnas robe is reinforced, as are the
trim on the angels robes and the throne cushions. The Christ childs hair and
swaddling cloth are heavily restored. The face of the lower right angel is almost
entirely restoration, as is the bottom 30 cm of the panel. The angels wings are
completely overpainted. In addition, a thick, yellowed varnish covers the surface.
A very clumsy and apparently early restorer, possibly as early as the fourteenth
century, reinforced the design of the faces and the childs drapery; added a flower
to his left hand; overpainted the Virgins coif, transforming it into a veil; and
modified the structure of the throne, covering the convex shape of its central part
behind the Madonnas legs with a plain checkered surface.[6] The execution of a
second series of halos, smaller than the original ones, probably can be traced back
to this same intervention. The smaller halos cover only a part of the older ones and
have no incised decoration. At some point, perhaps in the early nineteenth
century,[7] an arched top was given to the panel with the addition of modern wood;
this may have been to fit it in a nichelike recess in the wall of a church. This
enlargement is still visible in the abovementioned photograph of about 1930. By
1937 the panel had been treated again, probably by Mauro Pellicioli.[8] It was
probably during Pelliciolis treatment that the earlier restorations were removed,
revealing the original composition of the halos, throne, faces, and drapery, as well
as the original angled shape of the panel. The restorer Vannoni in Florence treated
it again, in c. 1952; his work probably addressed the wooden support and possibly
the framing.[9] Since then no further conservation work has been done.


fig. 2 Johann Anton Ramboux, sketch of Maest

(Madonna and Child with Four Angels), here attributed to
the Master of Citt di Castello, c. 18301840, Stdelsches
fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 19281930, Master of Citt di Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt
Castello, Maest (Madonna and Child with Four Angels),
c. 1290, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art,
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the painting using x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) and scanning electron microscopy/energy
dispersive spectrometry (SEM/EDS) of cross-sections. This analysis
determined that the preparation layers are calcium sulfate (see report dated
January 19, 2010, in NGA conservation files).


[2] Infrared reflectography was performed with an infrared hyperspectral

camera operating at 9601680 nm and a Mitsubishi M600 focal plane array
camera operating at 1 to 5 microns.
[3] The use of black, yellow, and white pigments in the verdaccio was
confirmed by the abovementioned analysis (see report dated January 19,
[4] The reference is to a photograph made when the panel still belonged to a
private collector in San Quirico dOrcia c. 1930 (see Provenance). A print of
the negative, from the Archive of the Soprintendenza of Florence (no. 11273),
is in the NGA curatorial files.
[5] The NGA scientific research department analysis showed zinc, indicating
areas of restoration, in many spectra and samples (see report dated January
19, 2010, in NGA conservation files).
[6] Some of the retouches illustrated by the photograph referred to above are
so rough (especially the drapery of the Christ child and the flower in his
hand) as to make one wonder if it is not the work of an amateur realized in a
relatively recent period; however, a detail like the checkered front side of
the throne would seem to be hardly later than the fourteenth century. In any
case the painting is documented in this state by the 1930 photograph and in
a sketch (fig. 2) made by Johann Anton Ramboux (17981866), whose
Sammlung von Umrissen dienend zur Geschichte der bildenden Knste des
Mittelalters in Italien in den Jahren 18181822 und 18331843
aufgenommen, consisting of ten volumes of copies and sketches and now
in the library of the Stdelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main, contains
a drawing of the Washington painting (vol. 3, fol. 20, no. 507). During his first
Italian visit (18181822), Ramboux was able to visit Siena and neighboring
territories only briefly; therefore, the sketch of the Washington Madonna
probably dates to his later visit in the years 18331843. Cf. Hans Joachim
Ziemke, Ramboux und die sienesische Kunst, Stdel Jahrbuch 2 (1969):
255300.
[7] The arched top of the panel, already in a fragmentary state, is visible in the
Soprintendenza photograph (mentioned in note 4 above), as well as in
Rambouxs sketch. The unusual doubling of the halos is probably a
consequence of the need to regild them and yet to be sparing with the gold.
[8] The painting, in a state still similar to that shown by the photo of c. 1930,
appears without the arched top and with a few cleaning tests in the faces of
the Virgin and the child, in the hand of the lower right side angel, and in the
left side of the throne in a set of photographs probably made by the mid-
1930s (copies in NGA curatorial files). In his expertise dated August 30, 1937
(see Entry note 6 and Panzeri 1996), Richard Offner stated that the photo of
the picture he had in hand scopre solamente in parte la superficie originale
la quale . . . ancora molta ridipinta (only partly reveals the original surface,


which is still heavily repainted). The same photograph had been sent to
Bernard Berenson by Wildensteins, New York (to whom the panel may have
been offered for sale), on November 3, 1937 (copy in the Berenson Library at
Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies,
Florence). The restoration is credited to Pellicioli by Panzeri. Photos of the
painting during cleaning are in the Giannino Marchig collection of the Getty
Research Institute in Los Angeles (ND 614, box 933, photos 114497114500).
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:173. The person in question was in all probability
Ferruccio Vannoni, a frame maker who worked for Stephen Pichetto. See
Gianni Mazzoni, Quadri antichi del Novecento (Vicenza, 2001), 21, 40 note
20 and passim.
PROVENANCE
Possibly the church of San Francesco in San Quirico dOrcia (Siena).[1] Pompeo
Lemmi (or Lammi?), San Quirico dOrcia; Giacobbe Preziotti, San Quirico dOrcia, by
c. 1930;[2] (Italian art market);[3] Baron Alberto Fassini, Tivoli; Corinna Uberti Trossi,
Livorno, by 1949; (Ettore Sestieri, Rome), by 1951;[4] (Count Alessandro Contini-
Bonacossi, Florence), by 1953;[5] sold 1954 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation,
New York;[6] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] The panels original provenance is uncertain. It
was recorded by Johann Anton Ramboux (1798-1866) in the first half of the
nineteenth century, whose Sammlung von Umrissen dienend zur Geschichte der
bildenden Knste des Mittelalters in Italien in den Jahren 1818-1822 und 1833-1843
aufgenommen, consisting of ten volumes of copies and sketches and now in the
library of the Stdelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main, contains the drawing
(vol. 3, fol. 20, no. 507) of the Washington painting. During his first Italian visit
(18181822) Ramboux was able to visit Siena and neighboring territories only
briefly; therefore, the sketch of the NGA painting probably dates to his later visit in
the years 18331843 (see Hans Joachim Ziemke, Rambiux und die sienesische
Kunst, Stdel Jahrbuch N.S. 2 [1969]: 255-300). Ramboux notes the painting as
present in a cloister of the principal church of San Quirico (Tafel . . . welche sich in
einem Kreuzgang der Hauptkirche zu S. Quirico befindet), probably referring to
the Collegiata. This church, however, never had a cloister (see A. Canestrelli, La
Pieve di S. Quirico in Osenna, Siena monumentale 1 [1906]: 5-21). On the other
hand, in the early decades of the twentieth century the panel was considered to
have come from San Francesco in San Quirico dOrcia, a church situated in the
center of town and originally provided with such a structure. The Franciscans are


known to have established a community at an early date in San Quirico; their

presence there is recorded ever since the thirteenth century (Luigi Pellegrini,
Insediamenti francescani nellItalia del Duecento, Rome, 1984: 179). Their convent
was suppressed in 1783 (Laura Martini, Le vicende costruttive della chiesa di San
Francesco, in San Quirico dOrcia. La Madonna di Vitaleta: arte e devozione, San
Quirico dOrcia [Siena], 1997: 19). The panel may then have been transferred to the
Collegiata, or to some other site, but in fact, we have no further information about it
until c. 1930. Describing the works of art contained in the church of San Francesco
in 1865, Francesco Brogi (Inventario generale degli oggetti darte della provincia di
Siena, Siena, 1897) fails to cite the Gallery's painting, nor is it included in the list
relating to the church of the Collegiata of San Quirico that he himself drew up.
Evidently by that time the panel had been removed from the church and was either
in private hands or in some small oratory; because it was the property not of the
church but of a lay confraternity, its owners could have moved it from its former
location. The arrival of the painting in (or its restitution to) San Francesco is
conceivable after 1865, when the bishop of Montalcino entrusted the church to the
Pia Commissione di Santa Maria di Vitaleta to undertake the necessary work of
restoration and refurbishment of the building, later renamed Santa Maria di
Vitaleta. This same commission later brought a suit against the possessors of the
painting in 1930, claiming its restitution. The panel, therefore, which does not figure
among the sacred furnishings entrusted by the Curia of Montalcino to the Pia
Commissione at the time of the transfer of the church (in 1865), could have been
reinstated to it only some time later and could have remained there for a number of
years, sufficiently long enough for the inhabitants of the town to remember it (see
Martini 1997). [2] The tavola preduccesca cited in the documentation in the
archive of the Soprintendenza of Siena is described as presso il Sig. Lemmi; Fern
Rusk Shapley (Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979:
1:173) speaks of Pompeo Lammi. In the suit brought to claim property rights over
the painting, however, the owner of the painting is named as Giacobbe Preziotti
(Martini 1997, 19 n. 6). [3] In November 1936, again according to the information
gleaned by Laura Martini, the Ministry for National Education notified the
Soprintendenza that property rights had been confirmed to belong to the private
citizens who then owned the painting, and its export authorized. Probably following
this decision, the restoration of the panel began and the painting was offered for
sale on the Italian art market. [4] Shapley 1979, 1:173 places the panel in the Fassini
collection and with the dealer Ettore Sestieri. A catalogue of the collection, then
only recently formed, of barone Alberto Fassini exists, published without a date in


the early 1930s, but it does not include this painting among those distributed
among his various houses. Gertrude Coor Achenbach (The early nineteenth-
century aspect of a dispersed polyptych by the Badia a Isola Master, The Art
Bulletin 42 [1960]: 143), who places the painting shortly after World War II in a
private collection near Tivoli, refers, probably, to that of Alberto Fassini. Elisa de
Giorgi (Leredit Contini Bonaccossi, Milan, 1988: 197) reports the presence of the
painting in the Uberti Trossi collection. [5] The date of the paintings purchase by
Contini-Bonacossi is unknown, but it must have been in his possession by 1953,
when he proposed, with some insistence, to sell it to the Kress Collection (see De
Giorgi 1988). [6] On 7 June 1954, the Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini-
Bonacossi for sixteen paintings, including NGA 1961.9.77, which was listed as
Madonna and Child and Four Angels by Master of Badia a Isola. In a draft of one of
the documents prepared for the count's signature in connection with the offer, this
painting is described as one "which came from my personal collection in Florence."
Contini-Bonacossi accepted the offer on 30 June 1954; the final payment for the
purchase was ultimately made in early 1957, after his death in 1955. (See copies of
correspondence in NGA curatorial files.) The painting was not given to the NGA
until 1961, and in a letter to Evelyn Sandberg Vaval of 1 August 1960 (copy in NGA
curatorial files), Fern Rusk Shapley continues to express doubts about it,
wondering whether the Maest was good enough to warrant our making an effort
. . . to get it for the National Gallery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1960 Coor, Gertrude. "The Early Nineteenth-Century Aspect of a Dispersed

Polyptych by the Badia a Isola Master." The Art Bulletin 42 (1960): 143 n.
6.
1961 Davies, Martin. National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools.
2nd ed. London, 1961: 177.
1965 Carli, Enzo. "Ricuperi e restauri senesi. I. Nella cerchia di Duccio."
Bollettino darte 50 (1965): 97, 99 n. 22, fig. 39.
1967 Zeri, Federico. "Early Italian Pictures in the Kress Collection." The



Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 68, 315, 647, 667.
1979 Stubblebine, James H. Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School. 2 vols.
Princeton, 1979: 1:89-91, figs. 198-200, 595.
1981 Conti, Alessandro. La miniatura bolognese: scuole e botteghe, 1270-
1340. Bologna, 1981: 53 n. 39.
1982 Boskovits, Mikls. "Review of Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School by
J. H. Stubblebine; and Duccio di Buoninsegna by J. White." The Art
Bulletin 64 (1982): 497.
1986 Bacchi, Andrea. "Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento nel Pistoiese." In
Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 1:317, 318.
1988 De' Giorgi, Elsa. Leredit Contini Bonacossi: lambiguo rigore del vero.
1st ed. Milan, 1988: 197, 206-209.
1990 Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: i dipinti. 3rd ed. Genoa,
1990: 46.
1996 Panzeri, Matteo. "La tradizione del restauro a Bergamo tra XIX e XX
secolo: Mauro Pellicioli, un caso paradigmatico." In Giovanni Secco
Suardo: la cultura del restauro tra tutela e conservazione dellopera
darte. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Bergamo, March 9-11,
1995. Bollettino dArte, Supplemento al N 98. Rome, 1996: 105, figs. 17-
18, 111-112.
1997 Martini, Laura. "Le vicende costruttive della chiesa di San Francesco." In
San Quirico dOrcia. La Madonna di Vitaleta: arte e devozione. Edited
by Laura Martini. Exh. cat. Chiesa di S. Maria in Vitaleta, San Quirico
dOrcia, 1997: 13-14, 15 (repro), 19 n. 5.
1999 Gardner, Julian. "Duccio, Cimabue and the Maestro di Casole: Early


Sienese Paintings for Florentine Confraternities." In Iconographica:

mlanges offerts Piotr Skubiszewski. Edited by Robert Favreau and
Marie-Hlne Debis. Poitiers, 1999: 112.
Laclotte, eds. Duccio: Siena fra tradizione bizantina e mondo gotico.
Exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Siena; Museo dellOpera del Duomo,
Siena. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2003: 297, repro. 298, 302 n. 23, 366.
in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 181, 202 n. 44, 348.
2010 Bagnoli, Alessandro. "La cappella funebre del Porrina e del vescovo
Ranieri e le sue figurazioni murali." In Marco Romano e il contesto
artistico senese fra la fine del Duecento e gli inizi del Trecento. Edited
by Alessandro Bagnoli. Exh. cat. Museo Archeologico e della Collegiata,
Casole dElsa. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2010: 100.
Ramboux, Johann Anton. Sammlung von Umrissen dienend zur
Geschichte der bildenden Knste des Mittelalters in Italien in den
Jahren 1818-1822 und 1833-1843 aufgenommen. 10 vols. Stdelsches
Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main, n.d.: 3:fol.20, no. 507.


Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes

Also known as
Borgo Crucifix Master
Umbrian, active 1260s and 1270s
BIOGRAPHY
In 1922, Osvald Sirn coined the conventional name for the painter, presumably
Umbrian by origin and training. The Swedish art historian was the first to recognize
the common authorship of a painted crucifix now in the Treasury of the Basilica of
San Francesco in Assisi, two paintings of the same subject in Bologna, and the
fragments The Mourning Madonna and The Mourning Saint John being discussed
here.[1] To this first nucleus of works, Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval some years later
(1929) added the crucifix in the church of Santa Maria in Borgo at Bologna, now
exhibited at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in that city; and three painted crucifixes, in
the Fornari collection at Fabriano (now in Camerino in the possession of the Cassa
di Risparmio di Macerata), the Pinacoteca of Faenza, and the Museo Civico (now
Collezioni Comunali dArte) in Bologna.[2] This catalog, which still seems
essentially coherent today,[3] continued to grow in the following decades but has
often been divided into various groups under different conventional names. Thus,
the two panels in the National Gallery of Art and another fragment with the bust of
Christ, which probably belonged originally to the same work, are usually attributed
to a Borgo Crucifix Master; the crucifix in Assisi and another crucifix painted on
both sides now in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne, to a Blue Crucifix
Master; while the rest of the catalog, considered Bolognese or Umbrian in
figurative culture, is attributed to one or the other of these masters or left in
anonymity.[4] In recent years, however, scholars have reaffirmed the unity of the
group originally linked together under the name of the Master of the Franciscan
Crucifixes and have recognized the misleading character of the other proposed
conventional names.[5]
The anonymous painter was probably trained in Assisi around 12551265, under
the influence of such artists as the Master of Santa Chiara, author of the great
painted crucifix in the church of Santa Chiara in the Umbrian town, datable to
c. 1260,[6] and the Master of Saint Francis (Umbrian, active third quarter 13th
century), responsible for the frescoes in the nave of the lower church of San
Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes 892


Francesco and the design of some of the stained glass in the upper church.[7] But
he must also have been in contact with some local artists who followed in the
footsteps of Giunta Pisano and who were then active in Spoleto and its environs,
such as the Master of San Felice di Giano.[8] At a later stage in his career, the
Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, who (as far as we are able to judge) was
almost always active for Franciscan churches and therefore was perhaps a
member of that order, worked in the Marches and Emilia-Romagna, settling in
Bologna, where he not only executed a number of painted crucifixes but also
painted a fresco in the church of Santo Stefano and influenced the activity of local
painters and miniaturists.[9]
[1] Osvald Sirn, Toskanische Maler im xiii. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), 219225. In
proposing the name of Meister der Franziskaner-Kruzifixe, Sirn defined the
figurative culture from which the artist sprang as Umbro-Pisan.
[2] Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval excluded from her regrouping one of the crucifixes of
San Francesco at Bologna, which she thought unclassifiable on account of its
extensive overpainting, but she associated the portable cross in Smith College at
Northampton, Massachusetts, with the paintings thus far included in the group.
Eschewing the conventional name introduced by Sirn, Sandberg-Vaval argued
that the anonymous artist was Bolognese in origin and had gone to Assisi to work
but later returned to his hometown. See Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta
italiana e liconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 844858.
[3] As Edward Garrison noted (1949), the only element alien to the catalog
assembled by Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval is the crucifix in the Collezioni Comunali in
Bologna; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated
Index (Florence, 1949), 208.

(Florence, 1949), 13 (Blue Crucifix Master), 14 (Borgo Crucifix Master), 208, 209, 211
(Bolognese anonymous works), and 213 (Umbrian anonymous work); and
subsequently by various other scholars.
[5] Mikls Boskovits (2000) emphasized that Santa Maria in Borgo was not the
original site of the painted crucifix now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and
that the blue pigment used in painted crucifixes was a very widespread
iconographic tradition in the thirteenth century. See Mikls Boskovits, in Duecento:
Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei


(Venice, 2000), 186. See also Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna,
catalogo generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini,
Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 4144;
Anna Tambini, Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza, vol. 1, Le origini (Faenza, 2006),
7482.
[6] See Elvio Lunghi, Maestro di Santa Chiara, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e
il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:610611.
[7] See Elvio Lunghi, Maestro di San Francesco, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento
e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:624625; for the
artists designs for stained glass, see Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die
Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer
Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), 5378.
[8] See Giordana Benazzi, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale
dellUmbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi
(Florence, 1994), 6667.
[9] See Mikls Boskovits, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed.
Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 196197; Massimo Medica,
La citt dei libri e dei miniatori, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a
Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 125.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1922 Sirn, Osvald.

Toskanische Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1922: 219-225.
1929 Vaval, Evelyn Sandberg.

La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della Passione. Verona, 1929:
844-858.

13, 14, 208, 209, 211, 213.


1986 Lunghi, Elvio. Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu. In

2000 Vannucchi, Giovanni, Mikls Boskovits, and Silvia Giorgio. In

Duecento: forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna. Edited by Massimo
Medica and Stefano Tumidei. Exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico,
Bologna. Venice, 2000: 186-203.
2002 Giorgio, Silvia. Maestro dei Crocifissi Francescani. In

vols. Milan, 2002: 2:534.
2004 Giorgio, Silvia. In Pinacoteca Nazionale (Bologna).

Catalogo generale. Vol. 1 (of 5),
Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia. Edited by Jadranka Bentini, Gian
Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian. Venice, 2004: 41-44.
2006 Tambini, Anna.

Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza. Vol. 1 (of 4),
Le origini. Faenza, 2006: 74-82.



The Mourning Madonna

c. 1270/1275
tempera on panel
original panel: 81 31.7 cm (31 7/8 12 1/2 in.)
overall: 82.4 x 33.5 cm (32 7/16 x 13 3/16 in.)
framed: 90.8 x 40.6 x 6 cm (35 3/4 x 16 x 2 3/8 in.)
ENTRY
Because of their relatively large size, this panel and its companion, The Mourning
Saint John the Evangelist, have been considered part of the apron of a painted
crucifix.[1] As their horizontal wood grain suggests, they undoubtedly formed the
lateral terminals of a painting of this type, probably that belonging to the church of
Santa Maria in Borgo in Bologna (now exhibited at the Pinacoteca Nazionale of that
city), as Gertrude Coor was the first to recognize [fig. 1].[2] Another fragment of the
work, a tondo with the bust of the Blessing Christ [fig. 2], was in the possession of
the art dealer Bacri in Paris around 1939.[3]
The two panels represent, respectively, the mother of Jesus and his favorite
disciple in the typical pose of mourners, with the head bowed to one side and the
cheek resting on the palm of the hand.[4] As is seen frequently in Italian paintings
of the late thirteenth century, Mary is wearing a purple maphorion over a blue
robe,[5] and Saint John a steel-blue garment and purple-red mantle.[6] In
The Mourning Madonna 896


publishing them (1922), Osvald Sirn noted the stylistic affinity of the two panels
with the Bolognese crucifix [fig. 3]. He inserted them in the catalog of the Master of
the Franciscan Crucifixes,[7] a painter of mixed Umbrian-Pisan culture of the
second half of the thirteenth century, whose oeuvre he himself had reconstructed.
For his part, Raimond van Marle (1923) considered the fragments works of an
Umbrian artist of the school of the Master of San Francesco.[8] Robert Lehman, in
compiling the catalog of his fathers collection (1928), accepted Sirns opinion but
proposed the date of c. 1250 for the two fragments.[9] In 1929, Evelyn Sandberg-
Vaval undertook a far more thorough examination of the problem of the two
fragments and their stylistic affinities. Emphasizing the Umbrian component in the
painters figurative culture, she stated that he was active in the years close to
1272 [10] and had worked extensively in Emilia-Romagna.
While most art historians have accepted Sirns view and the conventional name
he coined for the master,[11] advocates of a contrary thesis have not been lacking.
There are those who support the thesis that the two fragments are Pisan in
derivation, or even propose Giunta Pisano as the master of the crucifix.[12] Other
art historians insist that the painter was Bolognese and exclude from his oeuvre
the paintings of Umbrian provenance.[13] Today, however, there seems no good
reason to deny the common authorship of the oeuvre mainly consisting of
crucifixes first assembled by Sirn, or to reject the name he attached to it, Master
of the Franciscan Crucifixes.[14]
The chronological sequence of the works attributable to the anonymous master is

still under discussion. Useful clues can be deduced, however, from a comparison
between some passages, such as the figure of the mourning Saint John, that
frequently recur in his paintings. In my view, the pictorial treatment of the apostle in
the crucifixes in the Treasury of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, the
Pinacoteca of Faenza, the bank in Camerino, and the Pinacoteca Nazionale in
Bologna not only confirm that these works were all painted by the same master but
also suggest that their order of execution must have been that listed above. In the
four versions of the image of Saint John, the design seems to gain in fluidity and
the contours in movement, while the forms become more segmented, or ruffled, by
the increasingly close-set alignment of the drapery folds. At the same time, the
pose of the apostle gradually assumes the hanchement so dear to Gothic taste.
These changes are present, of course, in the works of other contemporary artists
and provide points of reference for the dating of our two panels. Thus, the figure of
Saint John in the painting in Assisi seems to be close in style to that executed by


the Master of Santa Chiara between 1253 and 1260 (crucifix in the Basilica of Santa
Chiara at Assisi),[15] while the version of the same image now in the National
Gallery of Art seems more closely comparable, both in elegance of proportions and
in pose, to the mourning Saint John by the Master of San Francesco, part of the
painted crucifix in the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia, dated
1272.[16] The period of time indicated by these works ought also to circumscribe
the years of activity of the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes. On the other hand,
the more lyrical manner of this master in comparison with the Umbrian masters
cited above suggests that during the years spent in Umbria he was especially in
contact with such painters as the Master of San Felice di Giano, the master of the
crucifix (no. 17, unfortunately undated) in the Pinacoteca of Spoleto.[17] His style
clearly differs from that of the Bolognese followers of Giunta Pisano,[18] and this
circumstance in itself seems to rebut the hypothesis that he had been trained in
the Emilian city. Yet it cannot be excluded that the artistic climate of Bologna could
have stimulated successive developments in his career, especially the towns vital
and increasingly sophisticated tradition of producing miniatures for illuminated
manuscripts, along with the influence of the sculpted Arca in the church of San
Domenico, completed not long before the crucifix under discussion.[19]
That the two fragments formed part of the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale
in Bologna must remain a hypothesis that only proper scientific and technical
analysis of the panels could corroborate. Yet the dimensions and pictorial
treatment of the panels now divided among the galleries of Bologna and
Washington and a private collection provide strong arguments to support the view
that they originally belonged together. As for the measurements, the two panels in
the Gallery, slightly cropped to the sides, are very similar in size to the upper
terminal of the Bolognese crucifix [fig. 4].[20] A virtual identity can also be seen in
the pictorial treatment of these works. They all reveal the same search for a stylistic
balance between Giuntesque formulae and a tendency towards the new needs of
elegance and softness in the modeling of the figure. The similarity between the
rapid brushstrokes that create the forms in the figures of the Madonna [fig. 5] and
Saint John and in the crucifix in Bologna seems to me evident. All three panels,
moreover, reveal the same manner of producing relief effects by sudden flashes of
light, using the same technique of applying delicate touches of white to the green
underpaint preparation. The effect of this pictorial freedom and of the graceful and
humanizing rendering of the figures would not fail to stimulate the Bolognese
miniaturists active in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.[21]




COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Bust of the

Blessing Christ, c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, now lost
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a painted crucifix, formerly in San

Francesco, Bologna, by the Master of the Franciscan
Crucifixes (color images are NGA objects): a. Painted
Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels (above)
and the Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen
(added by Jacopo di Paolo) (fig. 3); b. The Mourning
Madonna; c. The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist; d.
Bust of the Blessing Christ (fig. 2)


fig. 4 Detail of upper terminal, Master of the Franciscan

Crucifixes, Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between
Two Angels, c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Bologna
fig. 3 Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Painted Crucifix

with the Madonna between Two Angels (above) and the
Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen (added by
Jacopo di Paolo), c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel,
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna


fig. 5 Detail, Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, The

Mourning Madonna, 1270/1275, tempera on panel,
Collection


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a painted crucifix, formerly in San Francesco, Bologna, by the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes:
a. Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels (above) and the Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen
(added by Jacopo di Paolo) (Entry fig. 3)
b. The Mourning Madonna
c. The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist
d. Bust of the Blessing Christ (Entry fig. 2)


NOTES
[1] See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated

Index (Florence, 1949), 174176, and, on the genre of the painted crucifixes,
Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter
der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 400406.
[2] Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated

Index (Florence, 1949), 221, considered the panels to belong to the apron
(tabellone) of a painted crucifix (i.e., the lateral compartments flanking the
body of Christ). Gertrude Coor was the first to recognize that the fragments
belong to the crucifix of Santa Maria in Borgo; she orally communicated this
conclusion to Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:312 n. 4. Previously, Giulia Sinibaldi, in Pittura
Firenze del 1937, ed. Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti (Florence, 1943), 151,
had proposed that the two paintings belonged to the crucifix formerly in the
choir and now in the Library of the Convent of San Francesco; but cf. in this
regard Silvia Giorgi, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna,
ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 200201.
[3] It was Edward Garrison who recognized that the fragment, which measures
40 cm in diameter, belonged to his Borgo Crucifix Master. The panel, with
a provenance from the Oertel collection in Dresden, was stolen from the
dealer Bacri in 1939 and has never been rediscovered. See Edward B.
1949), 219. Gertrude Coor proposed that it originally formed part of the
Santa Maria in Borgo crucifix in a verbal communication to Fern Rusk
1:312 n. 4.
[4] This was a gesture of sorrow already familiar in classical art and widespread
in medieval art. See Moshe Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and
Early Renaissance Art (New York, 1976), 129 n. 15; Franois Garnier, Le
langage de limage au Moyen Age, vol. 1, Signification et symbolique (Paris,
1982), 181184.
[5] The maphorion was a sort of shawl used in Byzantium both in male and
female costume; see Harry Khnel, ed., Bildwrterbuch der Kleidung und
Rstung: Vom Alten Orient bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter (Stuttgart,
1992), 168169. A common element in Byzantine and Byzantinizing
representations of the Madonna, an example of maphorion was preserved
as a much-venerated relic in the Blancherna monastery in Istanbul; see
Averil Cameron, The Early Cult of the Virgin, in The Mother of God: The
London, 2000), 1113.


[6] The distinctive colors of the saint are generally an azure (or blue) tunic and a
pink (or red) mantle; cf. Margrit Lisner, Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in
Giottos Arenafresken: Farbgebung und Farbikonographie mit Notizen zu
lteren Aposteldarstellungen in Florenz, Assisi und Rom, Zeitschrift fr
Kunstgeschichte 53 (1990): 334.
[7] Ihr Zusammenhang mit dem bolognesen Kruzifix geht berzeugend sowohl
aus der Figurenzeichnung wie aus dem Typen und der Faltenbehandlung
vor, Osvald Sirn, Toskanische Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922),
222.
vol. 1, From the 6th until the End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 402.
[9] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), nos.
59, 60.
[10] Recognizing that establishing a common authorship for the various painted
crucifixes with a provenance from Umbria and Emilia-Romagna was
problematic, Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval asserted that it was at least plausible
to assume they were works of un unico maestro. . . probabilmente
Bolognese . . .che si sarebbe recato ad Assisi...e poi tornato a Bologna
portando con s...gli insegnamenti del Maestro di San Francesco (a single
master, probably Bolognese, who would have gone to Assisi and later
returned to Bologna, bringing with him the teachings of the Master of Saint
Francis). Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia
della Passione (Verona, 1929), 857.
[11] August L. Mayer, Die Sammlung Philip Lehman, Pantheon 5 (1930): 115;
National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress
Collection (Washington, DC, 1945), 45; Robert Langton Douglas, Recent
Additions to the Kress Collection, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 88 (1946): 85; Alfred M. Frankfurter, Supplement to the Kress
Collection in the National Gallery (New York, 1946), 15; Hans Vollmer,
Meister des hl. Franziskus von Assis, in Allgemeines Lexikon der
bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme,
Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1950), 37:105; Fern Rusk
Shapley and John Shapley, Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1957), 13, pl. 3; Fern
Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 4; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue
of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:312313; Burton B.
Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 287,
646, 665; Pietro Scarpellini, Le pitture, in Il tesoro della Basilica di San
Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto (Assisi,
1980), 4041 (though he referred to the work under the alternative name of


Maestro Crocifissi Blu); Anna Tambini, Pittura dallAlto Medioevo al

Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forl (Faenza, 1982), 3435 (who
adopted as the conventional name for the group Maestro di Santa Maria in
Borgo); Elvio Lunghi, Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu, in La Pittura in Italia: Il
Filippo Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento, 2 vols.
(Milan, 1989), 1:125; Angelo Tartuferi, Giunta Pisano (Soncino, 1991), 82, 94;
Patricia Lurati, in Sauver Assise, ed., Giovanni Morello (Milan, 1998), 50 (all
with the name Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu, to whom Todini and Tartuferi
denied the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna); Laurence B. Kanter
and Pia Palladino, in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni
Morello and Laurence B. Kanter (Milan, 1999), 64; Daniele Benati et al.,
in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica
and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 106 n. 42, 125, 186, 194, 197200, 201,
203, 210; Silvia Giorgi, Maestro dei Crocifissi Francescani, in La pittura in
2:534; Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo generale,
vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero
Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 43; Anna
Tambini, Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza, vol. 1, Le origini (Faenza,
2006), 75, 79. The only clearly dissenting opinion seems to be that of
Berenson, who wrote the name of Coppo di Marcovaldo as the master on
the back of the photograph sent to him for his examination (copy in NGA
curatorial files), but Joanna Cannon also considered the attribution scarcely
convincing. See Joanna Cannon, The Era of the Great Painted Crucifix:
Giotto, Cimabue, Giunta Pisano, and their Anonymous
Contemporaries, Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 576.
[12] See Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 5; Lionello
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 6; Luigi Coletti, I
Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 24 (to be attributed almost
certainly to Giunta). Recently, Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca
suggested Giuntas authorship, though with a question mark and without
mentioning the Washington panels. See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino
Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a
Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 73, 7475.
[13] Giulia Sinibaldi, in Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento: Catalogo della
mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937, ed. Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti
(Florence, 1943), 149, 151 (who classified the panels as works of a Bolognese
Giuntesque painter, to be distinguished from the master of the Umbrian
paintings to whom Osvald Sirn and Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval connected
them); and Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An
Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 14, 221 n. 605 (who attributed to the


Borgo Crucifix Master only the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna,
the fragments being discussed here, and the tondo placed on top of the
cimasa formerly in the possession of the dealer Bacri in Paris). Osvald
Sirn, Toskanische Maler im xiii. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), 223, 224; Evelyn
Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della
Passione (Verona, 1929), 845, 855, 857, 884.
[14] Apart from the fragmentary fresco representing the Madonna and Child
Enthroned and Saint Peter, which I have added to the catalog of the painter,
two panels of a dismantled diptych have also been recognized as works of
the same master: the one leaf representing the Crucifixion now in the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and its companion panel, Madonna and
Child, in a private collection, identified by Filippo Todini. Cf. Mikls
Boskovits, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed.
Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 196; Ferdinando
Bologna, La pittura italiana delle origini (Rome, 1962), 79; and Filippo Todini,
Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento in Umbria e il cantiere di Assisi, in La
(Milan, 1986), 2:376 fig. 577. The name Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes
also is now generally accepted in the catalogs of the Pinacoteca Nazionale
in Bologna, whereas the conventional name of Maestro del Crocifisso di
Borgo had been preferred in the past. See Rosa DAmico, La Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Bologna (Venice, 2001), 1214; and Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco
Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti
Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 4144.
[15] On this work, see Elvio Lunghi, La decorazione pittorica della chiesa, in La
basilica di Santa Chiara in Assisi (Ponte San Giovanni, Perugia, 1994),
151164.
[16] On the painting, see Serena Romano, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della
Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina
and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 6365.
[17] For essential information on the Master of San Felice di Giano, see Giordana
Benazzi, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale
dellUmbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria
Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 6667. The crucifix in the Museo in Spoleto is
reproduced in Filippo Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo
Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989), 2: figs. 26, 27.
[18] I refer to the painted crucifix in the Collezioni Comunali dArte in Bologna,
which Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval (1929) ascribed to the catalog of the Master
of the Franciscan Crucifixes but which is generally classified in the more
recent literature as a work of an anonymous Bolognese master, or the
crucifix in the church of Santa Croce at Villa Verucchio near Forl. See


Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della

Passione (Verona, 1929), 855; Silvia Giorgi, in Duecento: Forme e colori del
Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice,
2000), 210212; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An
Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 217.
[19] See Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Nicola Pisanos Arca di San Domenico and Its
Legacy (University Park, PA, 1994).
[20] In the absence of the original frame, it cannot be established how the
panels now in Washington were joined to the crucifix of which they formed
part. But if we consider that the width of the two lateral terminals in both the
crucifix in the Muzzarelli Chapel of San Francesco in Assisi and in that in the
Pinacoteca at Faenza is the same as the height of the upper terminal, it
seems significant that the terminal still joined to the cimasa of the crucifix in
the Pinacoteca of Bolognathe Madonna and Two Angelshas
measurements very close to those of the Gallery's panels, namely, 33 84
cm. I wish to thank Dr. Paola Checchi for kindly measuring this part of the
crucifix for me.
[21] Massimo Medica, La citt dei libri e dei miniatori, in Duecento: Forme e
colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei
(Venice, 2000), 123125, pointed out the probable influence of the Master of
the Franciscan Crucifixes on Bolognese miniatures of the time.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Both this painting and its companion, The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist,
were executed on wood panels formed from at least three members with
horizontal grain.[1] The joins in both paintings line up with one another. One of the
joins runs through the panels at the heights of the figures hips and another slightly
below their knees. A third join or check runs through the top of the figures head in
both panels, though it is more prevalent in Saint John the Evangelist. The panels
were prepared with gesso, and the backgrounds of both panels are gilded. Incised
lines demarcate areas to be gilded from those to be painted, and the gilded areas
were prepared with red bole. The paint was applied with bold, deliberate
brushstrokes. The halos are delineated by incised lines and decorated with
punched dots and freely inscribed curvilinear motifs. The decorative gold borders
on the Virgins robe are mordant gilded.
The panels are in fair state. During a treatment by Stephen Pichetto in 1944, they
were thinned and attached to secondary panels with auxiliary cradle supports. The


panels (together with their secondary support and cradle) are now 4.5 cm thick.
Strips of wood have been attached to the edges of the panels, probably during the
1944 treatment. The fact that the halos of both figures are slightly truncated at the
top and the Madonnas robe cut off at the bottom suggests that the painted surface
has been slightly cropped above and below in both panels. It is possible that the
panels were trimmed on the other sides, too. Several large checks can be seen in
the figure of the Virgin, at the height of her right arm, and below the lowest join line
in the lower part of her robe. The painted surface is somewhat worn in both panels,
with darkened inpainting evident along some of the joins. The gold ground is badly
abraded, especially around the edges, more so in the Madonna panel than in that
of Saint John. The Madonnas robe and much of Saint Johns clothing have been
heavily glazed or overpainted, most likely during an undocumented treatment
carried out probably when the two panels appeared on the art market sometime
before 1922.[2] The varnish applied in 1944 has discolored slightly.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Because the panel was thinned, mounted on an auxiliary wood panel, and
then cradled, it is difficult to see clearly the join lines in the original panel in
x-radiographs, but a slight horizontal disruption in the curve of the panel (on
the front) occurring through the figures heads, hips, and below their knees
suggests join lines in these areas. The joins are located at approximately 18
cm and 42 cm from the bottom edge in both panels.
[2] On Stephen Pichettos intervention, see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of

the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:313 n. 8. She reported
that the panels were cradled, cleaned, restored, and varnished on this
occasion; however, the photographs published by Sirn in 1922 show the
two fragments practically in the same state as they are at present. The 1944
restoration therefore must have been preceded by an earlier one and must
have been rather light as far as the painted surface is concerned. Saint John
the Evangelist must have been treated at least one other time prior to
Pichettos treatment. In the photograph published by Robert Lehman in
1928, the join in the center of the panel is considerably cracked and open.
However, this was repaired in the photographs taken prior to Pichettos
treatment. Interestingly, the join is not cracked in the photograph published
by Sirn in 1922. Either Lehman used an old photograph or the join opened
up between 1922 and 1928. See Osvald Sirn, Toskanische Maler im XIII.
Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), pl. 82; Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 60.


PROVENANCE
The two fragments (NGA 1952.5.13 and .14) were originally lateral terminals of a
painted Crucifix presumably made for the church of San Francesco, Bologna,
sometime after 1254 and before 1278;[1] the Crucifix is known to have been in the
Lombardi Malvezzi Chapel in that church in 1577,[2] and was transported to the
Bolognese church of Santa Maria in Borgo in 1801 (perhaps by which time its two
lateral terminals might have been removed);[3] purchased, probably in Italy, by
Osvald Sirn [18791966], Stockholm, by 1922.[4] Philip Lehman [18611947], New
York, by 1928; purchased June 1943 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New
York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] Writing around 1385-1390, Fra Bartolomeo da Pisa in
his treatise De conformitate describes the case of a friar who was reprimanded by
the Father General of his order and went to complain in front of the Crucifix in the
church of San Francesco in Bologna, which is said to have consoled him in reply.
Frater iste dicitur fuisse magister Joannes Peccam Anglicus, adds the author (see
Fra Bartolomeo da Pisa, De conformitate vitae Beati Francisci ad vitam Domini
Jesu, Analecta Franciscana 4 [1906]: 521-522). The friar in question was the
celebrated Franciscan theologian John Peckham, who arrived in Italy from England
in 1276 and stayed there till 1279. Lucas Wadding (Annales minorum, vol. 5 [1642],
ed. G.M. Fonseca, Quaracchi, 1931: 58) also reports the episode, inserting it in
events of the year 1278. Albeit with the necessary caution, this year, or at least the
period of time covered by Peckhams residence in Italy, can thus be considered a
terminus ante quem for the execution of the painting, which indeed seems datable
to the 1270s on stylistic grounds. Perhaps 1254, when the apse of the church
collapsed, can be considered a terminus post quem for the Crucifix, as Silvia Giorgi
suggests (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Catalogo generale-I, ed. J. Bentini,
G.P. Cammarota, and D. Scaglietti Kelescian, Venice, 2004). In 1299 it was
apparently on the choir-screen of the church (Donal Cooper, Projecting Presence:
the Monumental Crosses in the Italian Church interior, in Presence: The Inherence
of the Prototype within Images and other Objects, ed. Robert Maniura and Rupert
Shepherd, Aldershot and Burlington, 2006: 61 n. 42). Mikls Boskovits was unable
to see any stylistic justification for dating it to the years 1254-1263, as Giorgi
suggested, believing that the completion of the architecture implied that the
Crucifix likewise had been realized. [2] This is suggested by an inscription visible in
the churchs central chapel, behind the high altar, formerly that of the Lombardi


family and later belonging to the Malvezzi. The inscription mentions the altar
erected in the chapel in hon. SS. Crucifixi; see Luigi Garani, Il bel San Francesco
di Bologna. La sua storia, Bologna, 1948: 245-246. That the Crucifix in question is
the one now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna is suggested by the ascertained
provenance of this panel from the church of San Francesco; the other two painted
Crucifixes still present in the church and its adjoining convent were brought there
only in the early years of the twentieth century, and their provenance is uncertain
(see Silvia Giorgi in Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei, eds., Duecento: forme e
colori del Medioevo a Bologna, Venice, 2000: 189, 200). [3] See Garani 1948, 245-
246. Perhaps at the time of its arrival in Santa Maria in Borgo, the Crucifix was
subjected to interventions that integrated its already incomplete form with the
additions visible in the reproduction published by Evelyn Sandberg Vaval (La
Croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della Passione, Verona, 1929: fig. 536). Here
the lateral terminals, evidently lacking, are shown substituted by others, without
any figural representations. It is probable, however, that the lateral terminals had
been truncated earlier, as happened in the case of various other painted crucifixes,
and that the fragments with the figures of the mourning Madonna and Saint John
were used as devotional panels by the friars, who were then forced to abandon the
convent after the suppression of religious orders in 1798. [4] Sirn (Toskanische
Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1922: 221-222, 223, 224, 339, pl. 8) published
the two panels as belonging to an unspecified private collection in Stockholm, but
Mikls Boskovits had little hesitation in identifying the collector as Sirn himself.
Sirn is known to have bought paintings both for his own pleasure and for sale. He
also acted as a middleman between art dealers and collectors (see Edward
Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 130, 151, 153), even handling
the restoration of paintings that passed through his hands (see Roger Fry, Letters
of Roger Fry, edited by Denys Sutton, 2 vols., London, 1972: 2:400). [5] Robert
Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York, Paris, 1928: n.p., pls. 59, 60. The
bill of sale for the Kress Foundations purchase of fifteen paintings from the
Lehman collection, including this pair, is dated 11 June 1943; payment was made
four days later (copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943
sale all indicate that Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (18921963) was owner of
the paintings, but it is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, whether Robert made the sale for his
father or on his own behalf. See Laurence Kanters e-mail of 6 May 2011, about
ownership of the Lehman collection, in NGA curatorial files.


EXHIBITION HISTORY

1999 The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, Petit Palais, Paris; The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1998-1999, no.
3/1, repro., as The Mourning Virgin by Master of the Blue Crucifixes (shown only
in New York).
2000 Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, Museo Civico

Archeologico, Bologna, 2000, no. 50, repro.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Vollmer, Hans. "Meister des Hl. Franziskus von Assis." In Allgemeines
Leipzig, 1907-1950: 37(1950):105.
222, 223, 224, 339, pl. 82.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 1(1923):402.
Paris, 1928: no. LIX, repro.
1929 Sandberg-Vaval, Evelyn. La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della
Passione. Verona, 1929: 845, 855, 857, 884.
1:no. 6, repro.
Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence, 1943: 149, 151.



1946 Recent Additions to the Kress Collection. Exh. cat. National Gallery of
Art. Washington, DC, 1946: n.p.
Index. Florence, 1949: 14, 221 n. 605, repro.
1955 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Un crocifisso firmato di Ugolino Tedice."
Paragone 6 (1955): 9, 12 n. 40.
1971 Pittura nel Maceratese dal Duecento al tardo gotico. Exh. cat. Chiesa di
S. Paolo, Macerata, 1971: 44 n. 3.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 287, 646, 665.
1980 Scarpellini, Pietro. "Le pitture." In Il tesoro della Basilica di San
Francesco ad Assisi. Edited by Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto.
Assisi, 1980: 40-41.
1986 Lunghi, Elvio. "Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu." In La Pittura in Italia. Il
1986: 2:596.
58, 286.
1989 Todini, Filippo. La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento. 2
vols. Milan, 1989: 1:125 as by Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu.
1991 Tartuferi, Angelo. Giunta Pisano. Soncino, 1991: 82, 94.
1991 Tomei, Alessandro. "Giunto Pisano." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale.



6(1995):811.
1998 Morello, Giovanni, ed. Sauver Assise. Exh. cat. Muse du Petit Palais,
Paris. Milan, 1998: 50.
1999 Cannon, Joanna. "The Stoclet Man of Sorrows: A Thirteenth-Century
Italian Diptych Reunited." The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999): 110 n. 28.
1999 Morello, Giovanni, and Laurence B. Kanter, eds. The Treasury of Saint
Francis of Assisi. Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Milan, 1999: 64, repro.
2000 Benati, Daniele. La citt sacra: Pittura murale e su tavola nel Duecento
Bolognese. In Duecento: forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna.
Edited by Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei. Exh. cat. Museo Civico
Archeologico, Bologna. Venice, 2000: 106 n. 42.
2000 Medica, Massimo, and Stefano Tumidei, eds. Duecento: forme e colori
del Medioevo a Bologna. Exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna.
Venice, 2000: 186, 194, 197-200, 201, 203, 210, repro. 198.
2000 Medica, Massimo. La citt dei libri e dei miniatori. In Duecento: forme e
colori del Medioevo a Bologna. Edited by Massimo Medica and Stefano
Tumidei. Exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna. Venice, 2000:
125.
2002 Cannon, Joanna. "The Era of the Great Painted Crucifix: Giotto,
Cimabue, Giunta Pisano, and their Anonymous Contemporaries."
Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 576.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Maestro dei Crocifissi Francescani." In La pittura in
Europa. Il Dizionario dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan,
2002: 2:534.
2004 Pinacoteca Nazionale (Bologna). Catalog generale. Edited by Bentini,
Jadranka, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian. Vol. 1
(of 5), Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia. Venice, 2004: 43.
2006 Cooper, Donal. "Projecting Presence: The Monumental Crosses in the
Italian Church Interior." In Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype
within Images and other Objects. Edited by Robert Maniura and Rupert
Sheperd. Burlington, VT, 2006: 54-55, 61 n. 42, repro. 68.
2006 Tambini, Anna. Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza. Vol. 1 (of 4), Le
origini. Faenza, 2006: 75, repro. 79.



The Mourning Saint John

the Evangelist
c. 1270/1275
tempera on panel
original panel: 81.2 31.1 cm (31 15/16 12 1/4 in.)
overall: 82.2 33.3 cm (32 3/8 13 1/8 in.)
framed: 91.1 x 41.8 x 6 cm (35 7/8 x 16 7/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
ENTRY
Because of their relatively large size, this panel and its companion, The Mourning
Madonna, have been considered part of the apron of a painted crucifix.[1] As their
horizontal wood grain suggests, they undoubtedly formed the lateral terminals of a
painting of this type, probably that belonging to the church of Santa Maria in Borgo
in Bologna (now exhibited at the Pinacoteca Nazionale of that city), as Gertrude
Coor was the first to recognize [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction).[2] Another
fragment of the work, a tondo with the bust of the Blessing Christ [fig. 2], was in the
possession of the art dealer Bacri in Paris around 1939.[3]
The two panels represent, respectively, the mother of Jesus and his favorite
disciple in the typical pose of mourners, with the head bowed to one side and the
cheek resting on the palm of the hand.[4] As is seen frequently in Italian paintings
of the late thirteenth century, Mary is wearing a purple maphorion over a blue
robe,[5] and Saint John a steel-blue garment and purple-red mantle.[6] In
The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist 915


publishing them (1922), Osvald Sirn noted the stylistic affinity of the two panels
with the Bolognese crucifix [fig. 3]. He inserted them in the catalog of the Master of
the Franciscan Crucifixes,[7] a painter of mixed Umbrian-Pisan culture of the
second half of the thirteenth century, whose oeuvre he himself had reconstructed.
For his part, Raimond van Marle (1923) considered the fragments works of an
Umbrian artist of the school of the Master of San Francesco.[8] Robert Lehman, in
compiling the catalog of his fathers collection (1928), accepted Sirns opinion but
proposed the date of c. 1250 for the two fragments.[9] In 1929, Evelyn Sandberg-
Vaval undertook a far more thorough examination of the problem of the two
fragments and their stylistic affinities. Emphasizing the Umbrian component in the
painters figurative culture, she stated that he was active in the years close to
1272 [10] and had worked extensively in Emilia-Romagna.
While most art historians have accepted Sirns view and the conventional name
he coined for the master,[11] advocates of a contrary thesis have not been lacking.
There are those who support the thesis that the two fragments are Pisan in
derivation, or even propose Giunta Pisano as the master of the crucifix.[12] Other
art historians insist that the painter was Bolognese and exclude from his oeuvre
the paintings of Umbrian provenance.[13] Today, however, there seems no good
reason to deny the common authorship of the oeuvre mainly consisting of
crucifixes first assembled by Sirn, or to reject the name he attached to it, Master
of the Franciscan Crucifixes.[14]
The chronological sequence of the works attributable to the anonymous master is

still under discussion. Useful clues can be deduced, however, from a comparison
between some passages, such as the figure of the mourning Saint John, that
frequently recur in his paintings. In my view, the pictorial treatment of the apostle in
the crucifixes in the Treasury of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, the
Pinacoteca of Faenza, the bank in Camerino, and the Pinacoteca Nazionale in
Bologna not only confirm that these works were all painted by the same master but
also suggest that their order of execution must have been that listed above. In the
four versions of the image of Saint John, the design seems to gain in fluidity and
the contours in movement, while the forms become more segmented, or ruffled, by
the increasingly close-set alignment of the drapery folds. At the same time, the
pose of the apostle gradually assumes the hanchement so dear to Gothic taste.
These changes are present, of course, in the works of other contemporary artists
and provide points of reference for the dating of our two panels. Thus, the figure of
Saint John in the painting in Assisi seems to be close in style to that executed by


the Master of Santa Chiara between 1253 and 1260 (crucifix in the Basilica of Santa
Chiara at Assisi),[15] while the version of the same image now in the National
Gallery of Art seems more closely comparable, both in elegance of proportions and
in pose, to the mourning Saint John by the Master of San Francesco, part of the
painted crucifix in the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia, dated
1272.[16] The period of time indicated by these works ought also to circumscribe
the years of activity of the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes. On the other hand,
the more lyrical manner of this master in comparison with the Umbrian masters
cited above suggests that during the years spent in Umbria he was especially in
contact with such painters as the Master of San Felice di Giano, the master of the
crucifix (no. 17, unfortunately undated) in the Pinacoteca of Spoleto.[17] His style
clearly differs from that of the Bolognese followers of Giunta Pisano,[18] and this
circumstance in itself seems to rebut the hypothesis that he had been trained in
the Emilian city. Yet it cannot be excluded that the artistic climate of Bologna could
have stimulated successive developments in his career, especially the towns vital
and increasingly sophisticated tradition of producing miniatures for illuminated
manuscripts, along with the influence of the sculpted Arca in the church of San
Domenico, completed not long before the crucifix under discussion.[19]
That the two fragments formed part of the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale
in Bologna must remain a hypothesis that only proper scientific and technical
analysis of the panels could corroborate. Yet the dimensions and pictorial
treatment of the panels now divided among the galleries of Bologna and
Washington and a private collection provide strong arguments to support the view
that they originally belonged together. As for the measurements, the two panels in
the Gallery, slightly cropped to the sides, are very similar in size to the upper
terminal of the Bolognese crucifix [fig. 4].[20] A virtual identity can also be seen in
the pictorial treatment of these works. They all reveal the same search for a stylistic
balance between Giuntesque formulae and a tendency towards the new needs of
elegance and softness in the modeling of the figure. The similarity between the
rapid brushstrokes that create the forms in the figures of the Madonna [fig. 5] and
Saint John and in the crucifix in Bologna seems to me evident. All three panels,
moreover, reveal the same manner of producing relief effects by sudden flashes of
light, using the same technique of applying delicate touches of white to the green
underpaint preparation. The effect of this pictorial freedom and of the graceful and
humanizing rendering of the figures would not fail to stimulate the Bolognese
miniaturists active in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.[21]




COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Bust of the

Blessing Christ, c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, now lost
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a painted crucifix, formerly in San

Francesco, Bologna, by the Master of the Franciscan
Crucifixes (color images are NGA objects): a. Painted
Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels (above)
and the Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen
(added by Jacopo di Paolo) (fig. 3); b. The Mourning
Madonna; c. The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist; d.
Bust of the Blessing Christ (fig. 2)


fig. 4 Detail of upper terminal, Master of the Franciscan

Crucifixes, Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between
Two Angels, c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Bologna
fig. 3 Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Painted Crucifix

with the Madonna between Two Angels (above) and the
Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen (added by
Jacopo di Paolo), c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel,
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna


fig. 5 Detail, Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, The

Mourning Madonna, 1270/1275, tempera on panel,
Collection


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a painted crucifix, formerly in San Francesco, Bologna, by the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes:
a. Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels (above) and the Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint
Helen (added by Jacopo di Paolo) (Entry fig. 3)
b. The Mourning Madonna
c. The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist
d. Bust of the Blessing Christ (Entry fig. 2)


NOTES
[1] See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated

Index (Florence, 1949), 174176, and, on the genre of the painted crucifixes,
Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter
der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 400406.

(Florence, 1949), 221, considered the panels to belong to the apron
(tabellone) of a painted crucifix (i.e., the lateral compartments flanking the
body of Christ). Gertrude Coor was the first to recognize that the fragments
belong to the crucifix of Santa Maria in Borgo; she orally communicated this
conclusion to Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:312 n. 4. Previously, Giulia Sinibaldi, in Pittura
Firenze del 1937, ed. Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti (Florence, 1943), 151,
had proposed that the two paintings belonged to the crucifix formerly in the
choir and now in the Library of the Convent of San Francesco; but cf. in this
regard Silvia Giorgi, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna,
ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 200201.
[3] It was Edward Garrison who recognized that the fragment, which measures
40 cm in diameter, belonged to his Borgo Crucifix Master. The panel, with
a provenance from the Oertel collection in Dresden, was stolen from the
dealer Bacri in 1939 and has never been rediscovered. See Edward B.
1949), 219. Gertrude Coor proposed that it originally formed part of the
Santa Maria in Borgo crucifix in a verbal communication to Fern Rusk
1:312 n. 4.
[4] This was a gesture of sorrow already familiar in classical art and widespread
in medieval art. See Moshe Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and
Early Renaissance Art (New York, 1976), 129 n. 15; Franois Garnier, Le
langage de limage au Moyen Age, vol. 1, Signification et symbolique (Paris,
1982), 181184.
[5] The maphorion was a sort of shawl used in Byzantium both in male and
female costume; see Harry Khnel, ed., Bildwrterbuch der Kleidung und
Rstung: Vom Alten Orient bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter (Stuttgart,
1992), 168169. A common element in Byzantine and Byzantinizing
representations of the Madonna, an example of maphorion was preserved
as a much-venerated relic in the Blancherna monastery in Istanbul; see
Averil Cameron, The Early Cult of the Virgin, in The Mother of God: The
London, 2000), 1113.


[6] The distinctive colors of the saint are generally an azure (or blue) tunic and a
pink (or red) mantle; cf. Margrit Lisner, Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in
[7] Ihr Zusammenhang mit dem bolognesen Kruzifix geht berzeugend sowohl
aus der Figurenzeichnung wie aus dem Typen und der Faltenbehandlung
vor, Osvald Sirn, Toskanische Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922),
222.
vol. 1, From the 6th until the End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 402.
[9] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), nos.
59, 60.
[10] Recognizing that establishing a common authorship for the various painted
crucifixes with a provenance from Umbria and Emilia-Romagna was
problematic, Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval asserted that it was at least plausible
to assume they were works of un unico maestro. . . probabilmente
Bolognese . . .che si sarebbe recato ad Assisi...e poi tornato a Bologna
portando con s...gli insegnamenti del Maestro di San Francesco (a single
master, probably Bolognese, who would have gone to Assisi and later
returned to Bologna, bringing with him the teachings of the Master of Saint
Francis). Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia
della Passione (Verona, 1929), 857.
[11] August L. Mayer, Die Sammlung Philip Lehman, Pantheon 5 (1930): 115;
National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection
(Washington, DC, 1945), 45; Robert Langton Douglas, Recent Additions to
the Kress Collection, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 (1946):
85; Alfred M. Frankfurter, Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National
Gallery (New York, 1946), 15; Hans Vollmer, Meister des hl. Franziskus von
Assis, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols.
(Leipzig, 1950), 37:105; Fern Rusk Shapley and John Shapley, Comparisons
in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New
York, 1957), 13, pl. 3; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress
1:312313; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-
Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections
(Cambridge, MA, 1972), 287, 646, 665; Pietro Scarpellini, Le pitture, in Il
tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi
Dupr Dal Poggetto (Assisi, 1980), 4041 (though he referred to the work
under the alternative name of Maestro Crocifissi Blu); Anna Tambini, Pittura


dallAlto Medioevo al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forl (Faenza,

1982), 3435 (who adopted as the conventional name for the group
Maestro di Santa Maria in Borgo); Elvio Lunghi, Maestro dei Crocifissi
Blu, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo,
2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:596; Filippo Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al
primo Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989), 1:125; Angelo Tartuferi, Giunta
Pisano (Soncino, 1991), 82, 94; Patricia Lurati, in Sauver Assise, ed., Giovanni
Morello (Milan, 1998), 50 (all with the name Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu, to
whom Todini and Tartuferi denied the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca of
Bologna); Laurence B. Kanter and Pia Palladino, in The Treasury of Saint
Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni Morello and Laurence B. Kanter (Milan, 1999),
64; Daniele Benati et al., in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a
Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 106
n. 42, 125, 186, 194, 197200, 201, 203, 210; Silvia Giorgi, Maestro dei
Crocifissi Francescani, in La pittura in Europa: Il dizionario dei pittori, ed.
Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 2:534; Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca
Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 43; Anna Tambini, Storia delle arti figurative a
Faenza, vol. 1, Le origini (Faenza, 2006), 75, 79. The only clearly dissenting
opinion seems to be that of Berenson, who wrote the name of Coppo di
Marcovaldo as the master on the back of the photograph sent to him for his
examination (copy in NGA curatorial files), but Joanna Cannon also
considered the attribution scarcely convincing. See Joanna Cannon, The
Era of the Great Painted Crucifix: Giotto, Cimabue, Giunta Pisano, and their
Anonymous Contemporaries, Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 576.
[12] See Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 5; Lionello
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 6; Luigi Coletti, I
Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 24 (to be attributed almost
certainly to Giunta). Recently, Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca
suggested Giuntas authorship, though with a question mark and without
mentioning the Washington panels. See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino
Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a
Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 73, 7475.
[13] Giulia Sinibaldi, in Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento: Catalogo della
mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937, ed. Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti
(Florence, 1943), 149, 151 (who classified the panels as works of a Bolognese
Giuntesque painter, to be distinguished from the master of the Umbrian
paintings to whom Osvald Sirn and Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval connected
them); and Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An
Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 14, 221 n. 605 (who attributed to the
Borgo Crucifix Master only the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna,


the fragments being discussed here, and the tondo placed on top of the
cimasa formerly in the possession of the dealer Bacri in Paris). Osvald Sirn,
Toskanische Maler im xiii. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), 223, 224; Evelyn
Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della Passione
(Verona, 1929), 845, 855, 857, 884.
[14] Apart from the fragmentary fresco representing the Madonna and Child
Enthroned and Saint Peter, which I have added to the catalog of the painter,
two panels of a dismantled diptych have also been recognized as works of
the same master: the one leaf representing the Crucifixion now in the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and its companion panel, Madonna and
Child, in a private collection, identified by Filippo Todini. Cf. Mikls
Boskovits, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed.
Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 196; Ferdinando
Bologna, La pittura italiana delle origini (Rome, 1962), 79; and Filippo Todini,
(Milan, 1986), 2:376 fig. 577. The name Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes
also is now generally accepted in the catalogs of the Pinacoteca Nazionale
in Bologna, whereas the conventional name of Maestro del Crocifisso di
Borgo had been preferred in the past. See Rosa DAmico, La Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Bologna (Venice, 2001), 1214; and Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca
Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 4144.
[15] On this work, see Elvio Lunghi, La decorazione pittorica della chiesa, in La
basilica di Santa Chiara in Assisi (Ponte San Giovanni, Perugia, 1994),
151164.
[16] On the painting, see Serena Romano, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della
and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 6365.
[17] For essential information on the Master of San Felice di Giano, see Giordana
Benazzi, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale
Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 6667. The crucifix in the Museo in Spoleto is
reproduced in Filippo Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo
Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989), 2: figs. 26, 27.
[18] I refer to the painted crucifix in the Collezioni Comunali dArte in Bologna,
which Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval (1929) ascribed to the catalog of the Master
of the Franciscan Crucifixes but which is generally classified in the more
recent literature as a work of an anonymous Bolognese master, or the
crucifix in the church of Santa Croce at Villa Verucchio near Forl. See
Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della


Passione (Verona, 1929), 855; Silvia Giorgi, in Duecento: Forme e colori del
Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice,
2000), 210212; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An
Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 217.
[19] See Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Nicola Pisanos Arca di San Domenico and Its
Legacy (University Park, PA, 1994).
[20] In the absence of the original frame, it cannot be established how the
panels now in Washington were joined to the crucifix of which they formed
part. But if we consider that the width of the two lateral terminals in both the
crucifix in the Muzzarelli Chapel of San Francesco in Assisi and in that in the
Pinacoteca at Faenza is the same as the height of the upper terminal, it
seems significant that the terminal still joined to the cimasa of the crucifix in
the Pinacoteca of Bolognathe Madonna and Two Angelshas
measurements very close to those of the Gallery's panels, namely, 33 84
cm. I wish to thank Dr. Paola Checchi for kindly measuring this part of the
crucifix for me.
[21] Massimo Medica, La citt dei libri e dei miniatori, in Duecento: Forme e
colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei
(Venice, 2000), 123125, pointed out the probable influence of the Master of
the Franciscan Crucifixes on Bolognese miniatures of the time.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Both this painting and its companion, The Mourning Madonna, were executed on
wood panels formed from at least three members with horizontal grain.[1] The joins
in both paintings line up with one another. One of the joins runs through the panels
at the heights of the figures hips and another slightly below their knees. A third
join or check runs through the top of the figures head in both panels, though it is
more prevalent in Saint John the Evangelist. The panels were prepared with gesso,
and the backgrounds of both panels are gilded. Incised lines demarcate areas to
be gilded from those to be painted, and the gilded areas were prepared with red
bole. The paint was applied with bold, deliberate brushstrokes. The halos are
delineated by incised lines and decorated with punched dots and freely inscribed
curvilinear motifs. The decorative gold borders on the Virgins robe are mordant
gilded.
The panels are in fair state. During a treatment by Stephen Pichetto in 1944, they
were thinned and attached to secondary panels with auxiliary cradle supports. The
panels (together with their secondary support and cradle) are now 4.5 cm thick.


Strips of wood have been attached to the edges of the panels, probably during the
1944 treatment. The fact that the halos of both figures are slightly truncated at the
top and the Madonnas robe cut off at the bottom suggests that the painted surface
has been slightly cropped above and below in both panels. It is possible that the
panels were trimmed on the other sides, too. Several large checks can be seen in
the figure of the Virgin, at the height of her right arm, and below the lowest join line
in the lower part of her robe. The painted surface is somewhat worn in both panels,
with darkened inpainting evident along some of the joins. The gold ground is badly
abraded, especially around the edges, more so in the Madonna panel than in that
of Saint John. The Madonnas robe and much of Saint Johns clothing have been
heavily glazed or overpainted, most likely during an undocumented treatment
carried out probably when the two panels appeared on the art market sometime
before 1922.[2] The varnish applied in 1944 has discolored slightly.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Because the panel was thinned, mounted on an auxiliary wood panel, and
then cradled, it is difficult to see clearly the join lines in the original panel in
x-radiographs, but a slight horizontal disruption in the curve of the panel (on
the front) occurring through the figures heads, hips, and below their knees
suggests join lines in these areas. The joins are located at approximately 18
cm and 42 cm from the bottom edge in both panels.
[2] On Stephen Pichettos intervention, see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of

the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:313 n. 8. She reported
that the panels were cradled, cleaned, restored, and varnished on this
occasion; however, the photographs published by Sirn in 1922 show the
two fragments practically in the same state as they are at present. The 1944
restoration therefore must have been preceded by an earlier one and must
have been rather light as far as the painted surface is concerned. Saint John
the Evangelist must have been treated at least one other time prior to
Pichettos treatment. In the photograph published by Robert Lehman in
1928, the join in the center of the panel is considerably cracked and open.
However, this was repaired in the photographs taken prior to Pichettos
treatment. Interestingly, the join is not cracked in the photograph published
by Sirn in 1922. Either Lehman used an old photograph or the join opened
up between 1922 and 1928. See Osvald Sirn, Toskanische Maler im XIII.
Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), pl. 82; Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman


PROVENANCE
The two fragments (NGA 1952.5.13 and .14) were originally lateral terminals of a
painted Crucifix presumably made for the church of San Francesco, Bologna,
sometime after 1254 and before 1278;[1] the Crucifix is known to have been in the
Lombardi Malvezzi Chapel in that church in 1577,[2] and was transported to the
Bolognese church of Santa Maria in Borgo in 1801 (perhaps by which time its two
lateral terminals might have been removed);[3] purchased, probably in Italy, by
Osvald Sirn [18791966], Stockholm, by 1922.[4] Philip Lehman [18611947], New
York, by 1928; purchased June 1943 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New
York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] Writing around 1385-1390, Fra Bartolomeo da Pisa in
his treatise De conformitate describes the case of a friar who was reprimanded by
the Father General of his order and went to complain in front of the Crucifix in the
church of San Francesco in Bologna, which is said to have consoled him in reply.
Frater iste dicitur fuisse magister Joannes Peccam Anglicus, adds the author (see
Fra Bartolomeo da Pisa, De conformitate vitae Beati Francisci ad vitam Domini
Jesu, Analecta Franciscana 4 [1906]: 521-522). The friar in question was the
celebrated Franciscan theologian John Peckham, who arrived in Italy from England
in 1276 and stayed there till 1279. Lucas Wadding (Annales minorum, vol. 5 [1642],
ed. G.M. Fonseca, Quaracchi, 1931: 58) also reports the episode, inserting it in
events of the year 1278. Albeit with the necessary caution, this year, or at least the
period of time covered by Peckhams residence in Italy, can thus be considered a
terminus ante quem for the execution of the painting, which indeed seems datable
to the 1270s on stylistic grounds. Perhaps 1254, when the apse of the church
collapsed, can be considered a terminus post quem for the Crucifix, as Silvia Giorgi
suggests (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Catalogo generale-I, ed. J. Bentini,
G.P. Cammarota, and D. Scaglietti Kelescian, Venice, 2004). In 1299 it was
apparently on the choir-screen of the church (Donal Cooper, Projecting Presence:
the Monumental Crosses in the Italian Church interior, in Presence: The Inherence
of the Prototype within Images and other Objects, ed. Robert Maniura and Rupert
Shepherd, Aldershot and Burlington, 2006: 61 n. 42). Mikls Boskovits was unable
to see any stylistic justification for dating it to the years 1254-1263, as Giorgi
suggested, believing that the completion of the architecture implied that the
Crucifix likewise had been realized. [2] This is suggested by an inscription visible in
the churchs central chapel, behind the high altar, formerly that of the Lombardi


family and later belonging to the Malvezzi. The inscription mentions the altar
erected in the chapel in hon. SS. Crucifixi; see Luigi Garani, Il bel San Francesco
di Bologna. La sua storia, Bologna, 1948: 245-246. That the Crucifix in question is
the one now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna is suggested by the ascertained
provenance of this panel from the church of San Francesco; the other two painted
Crucifixes still present in the church and its adjoining convent were brought there
only in the early years of the twentieth century, and their provenance is uncertain
(see Silvia Giorgi in Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei, eds., Duecento: forme e
colori del Medioevo a Bologna, Venice, 2000: 189, 200). [3] See Garani 1948, 245-
246. Perhaps at the time of its arrival in Santa Maria in Borgo, the Crucifix was
subjected to interventions that integrated its already incomplete form with the
additions visible in the reproduction published by Evelyn Sandberg Vaval (La
Croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della Passione, Verona, 1929: fig. 536). Here
the lateral terminals, evidently lacking, are shown substituted by others, without
any figural representations. It is probable, however, that the lateral terminals had
been truncated earlier, as happened in the case of various other painted crucifixes,
and that the fragments with the figures of the mourning Madonna and Saint John
were used as devotional panels by the friars, who were then forced to abandon the
convent after the suppression of religious orders in 1798. [4] Sirn (Toskanische
Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1922: 221-222, 223, 224, 339, pl. 8) published
the two panels as belonging to an unspecified private collection in Stockholm, but
Mikls Boskovits had little hesitation in identifying the collector as Sirn himself.
Sirn is known to have bought paintings both for his own pleasure and for sale. He
also acted as a middleman between art dealers and collectors (see Edward
Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 130, 151, 153), even handling
the restoration of paintings that passed through his hands (see Roger Fry, Letters
of Roger Fry, edited by Denys Sutton, 2 vols., London, 1972: 2:400). [5] Robert
Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York, Paris, 1928: n.p., pls. 59, 60. The
bill of sale for the Kress Foundations purchase of fifteen paintings from the
Lehman collection, including this pair, is dated 11 June 1943; payment was made
four days later (copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943
sale all indicate that Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (18921963) was owner of
the paintings, but it is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, whether Robert made the sale for his
father or on his own behalf. See Laurence Kanters e-mail of 6 May 2011, about
ownership of the Lehman collection, in NGA curatorial files.


EXHIBITION HISTORY

3/2, repro., as The Mourning [same] by Master of the Blue Crucifixes (shown only
in New York).
2000 Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, Museo Civico

Archeologico, Bologna, 2000, no. 50, repro.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leipzig, 1907-1950: 37(1950):105.
222, 223, 224, 339, pl. 82.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 1(1923):402.
Paris, 1928: no. LX, repro.
1929 Sandberg-Vaval, Evelyn. La croce dipinta italiana e liconografia della
Passione. Verona, 1929: 845, 855, 857, 884.
1931 Venturi, Lionello. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931: no. 5, repro
1:no. 6, repro.
Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence, 1943: 149, 151.



1946 Recent Additions to the Kress Collection. Exh. cat. National Gallery of
Art. Washington, DC, 1946: n.p.
Index. Florence, 1949: 14, 221 n. 605, repro.
1955 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Un crocifisso firmato di Ugolino Tedice."
Paragone 6 (1955): 9, 12 n. 40.
S. Paolo, Macerata, 1971: 44 n. 3.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 287, 646, 665.
Assisi, 1980: 40-41.
1986 Lunghi, Elvio. "Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu." In La Pittura in Italia. Il
1986: 2:596.
58, 286.
vols. Milan, 1989: 1:125 as by Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu.


1991 Tartuferi, Angelo. Giunta Pisano. Soncino, 1991: 82, 94.

1991 Tomei, Alessandro. "Giunto Pisano." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale.
6(1995):811.
Milan, 1999: 64, repro. 65.
2000 Benati, Daniele. La citt sacra: Pittura murale e su tavola nel Duecento
Bolognese. In Duecento: forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna.
Edited by Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei. Exh. cat. Museo Civico
Archeologico, Bologna. Venice, 2000: 106 n. 42.
2000 Medica, Massimo, and Stefano Tumidei, eds. Duecento: forme e colori
del Medioevo a Bologna. Exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna.
Venice, 2000: 186, 194, 197-200, 201, 203, 210, repro. 198.
2000 Medica, Massimo. La citt dei libri e dei miniatori. In Duecento: forme e
colori del Medioevo a Bologna. Edited by Massimo Medica and Stefano
Tumidei. Exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna. Venice, 2000:
125.
2002 Cannon, Joanna. "The Era of the Great Painted Crucifix: Giotto,
Cimabue, Giunta Pisano, and their Anonymous Contemporaries."
Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 576.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Maestro dei Crocifissi Francescani." In La pittura in
Europa. Il Dizionario dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan,
2002: 2:534.
2004 Pinacoteca Nazionale (Bologna). Catalog generale. Edited by Bentini,
Jadranka, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian. Vol. 1
(of 5), Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia. Venice, 2004: 43.
2006 Cooper, Donal. "Projecting Presence: The Monumental Crosses in the
Italian Church Interior." In Presence: The Inherence of the Prototype
within Images and other Objects. Edited by Robert Maniura and Rupert
Sheperd. Burlington, VT, 2006: 54-55, 61 n. 42, repro. 68.
2006 Tambini, Anna. Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza. Vol. 1 (of 4), Le
origini. Faenza, 2006: 75, repro. 79.


Master of Saint Francis

Umbrian, active third quarter 13th century
BIOGRAPHY
Active, so far we know, solely for Franciscan churches and perhaps himself a
member of the order, this anonymous artist was first identified and his oeuvre
reconstructed by Henry Thode (1885).[1] The name-piece of the group of works that
Thode assembled is the panel with a full-length figure of Saint Francis in the
museum of the basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi. Also assigned to this
painter by Thode were five frescoes with stories from the legend of Saint Francis in
the lower church of the same basilica; the painted crucifix in the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Perugia, dated 1272; and other works, not all of which are now
recognized as works by this master. Subsequently this nucleus was first whittled
down by the elimination of reattributed works, and then augmented with various
other paintings, such as the fragmentary fresco (Madonna and Child with an Angel
) in the lower church of the basilica in Assisi; although the authorship of the latter is
disputed, it should probably be considered the result of the painters first stylistic
phase and as having been executed in connection with the burial of Cardinal Pietro
di Barro in 1252.[2]
The characteristic features of the style of the Master of Saint Francis, an artist
probably trained in Umbria, are rapid and energetic drawing, brilliant color, and the
effort to capture the character and state of mind of the personages represented,
who express themselves with vivid and elegant gestures. In his painting, as Luigi
Coletti (1941) observed, the bronze-like hardness and the dramatic tension [of his
predecessors of more direct Byzantine dependence] are dissolved in a
composition characterized by gentler rhythms . . . by planar masses concentrated
entirely in the foreground, and by broad stains [of color] that absorb the
chiaroscuro in delicate pearly harmonies.[3] Attempts have also been made to
consider the Master of Saint Francis a kind of humorist[4] who exaggerated the
formulae inherited from Byzantine art to give a stronger expressive charge to the
personages he created. But in fact the roots of the style of this anonymous master
are to be sought not so much in the figurative culture of Byzantium as in painting in
Spoleto in the mid-thirteenth century[5] and in French and English Gothic painting.
A clear testimony of this latter influence is given by the stained-glass windows of
Master of Saint Francis 934


the upper church of San Francesco, where the large quatrefoils of the transept
were realized by transalpine artists, probably from France, on the south side, while
the style of the Master of Saint Francis can be recognized in the forms of the
opposite side.[6] In some of the windows of the nave, for example in the one with
the stories of Saint Thomas,[7] the two workshops seem to have worked side by
side. The execution of these works is variously dated; from the stylistic point of
view, they suggest a phase less advanced than the crucifix of 1272 and the panels
being discussed here, with a provenance from Perugia. It may be assumed that the
artist began his career in Assisi, in contact both with exponents of local painting
and with the transalpine masters active in the basilica, and that he produced not
only stained glass and paintings (both murals and on panel) but also illuminated
manuscripts in the 1250s and 1260s.[8]
[1] Henry Thode, Franz von Assisi und die Anfnge der Kunst der Renaissance in
Italien (Berlin, 1885), 8687, 219221.
[2] Cf. Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.),
Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso,
1982), 181. Recently, Alessio Monciatti has placed in doubt both the authorship of
the fresco and its relation with the tomb of Pietro di Barro but has confirmed the
dating of the fragment to c. 12501260; see Alessio Monciatti, in La basilica di San
Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Giorgio Bonsanti (Modena, 2002), 341.
[3] Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 25: la bronzea durezza
e la tensions drammatica [dei suoi predecessori di pi stretta osservanza bizantina]
si sciolgono in una composizione a ritmi pi dolcemente cadenzati . . . a masse
pianeggianti affiorate tutte in primo piano, larghe macchie che assorbono il
chiaroscuro in raffinati accordi perlacei.
complete di Roberto Longhi, 14 vols. (Florence, 19611984), 7(1974):8; Ferdinando
Bologna, La pittura italiana delle origini (Rome, 1962), 78.
[5] The earlier literature (and more recently Coletti 1949; Martin and Ruf 1997)
assumed the Pisan origin of the masters art, while Jrgen Schultze (1963) and
Pietro Scarpellini (1982) considered it influenced by Serbian painting of the mid-
thirteenth century. The present writer (Boskovits 1973) has emphasized the artists
links with painting in Spoleto in the mid-thirteenth century. See Luigi Coletti, Gli
affreschi della Basilica di Assisi (Bergamo, 1949), 1923; Frank Martin and Gerhard


Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung
einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), 6572; Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst
des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 109150; Fra
Ludovico da Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.), Descrizione della
Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso, 1982), 180; Mikls
Boskovits, Pittura umbra e marchigiana fra Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi nella
Galleria Nazionale di Perugia (Florence, 1973), 4.
[6] On the stained glass attributed to the Master of Saint Francis, cf. Frank Martin
and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und
Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), 267290, who attributed
the rest of the stained glass of the nave and that of the south transept to a
gotische Werkstatt (253267).
[7] I refer in particular to a stained-glass window panel in the north wall of the third
bay of the entrance that Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf (1997) attributed to a Gothic
workshop. These authors suggested a date of c. 1275. See Frank Martin and
Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und
Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), 265, figs. 119, 125. It
seems clear to me, however, that the figure to the extreme left of the scene was
drawn not by the same artist as the rest of the scene but by the Master of Saint
Francis.
[8] The chronology of the artist is still very controversial. Most art historians have
followed Edward B. Garrison (1949) in dating his career to the period c. 12651280,
while the older literature proposed for the frescoes of the lower church of San
Francesco at Assisi dates close to or even antecedent to the midcentury; cf.
(Florence, 1949), 2728. My own suggestion, placing the execution of the frescoes
in relation to the consecration of the church in 1253, now seems to me to push the
dating too far back; cf. Mikls Boskovits, Pittura umbra e marchigiana fra
Medioevo e Rinascimento: Studi nella Galleria Nazionale di Perugia (Florence,
1973), 37. The frescoes were probably painted c. 12571261, as suggested, for
example, by Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987),
59, 114. For the activity of the Master of Saint Francis as a miniaturist, cf. Laurence
B. Kanter and Pia Palladino, in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni
Morello and Laurence B. Kanter (Milan, 1999), 140141.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
1885 Thode, Henry.

Franz von Assisi und die Anfnge der Kunst der Renaissance in Italien.
Berlin, 1885: 86-87, 219-221.
1919 Marle, Raimond van. Il Maestro di San Francesco.

Rassegna darte antica e moderna anno 6, v. 1 (1919): 9-21.

27-28.
1963 Schultze, Jrgen. Zur Kunst des Franziskusmeisters.

Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 109-150.
1982 Cannon, Joanna. Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di San Francesco
at Assisi.
The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 65-69.
1986 Lunghi, Elvio. "Maestro di San Francesco." In

1989 Toscano, Bruno. "Maestro di San Francesco." In

1991 Romano, Serena. Maestro di S. Francesco. In

1994 Romano, Serena. Maestro di San Francesco. In

Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: studi
e restauri. Edited by Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi. 1st
ed. Florence, 1994: 58-60.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Maestro di San Francesco." In

vols. Milan, 2002: 2:548-549.



Saint James Minor

c. 1272
tempera on panel
overall size: 49.8 x 24.2 cm (19 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.)
framed: 58.7 x 33 x 6 cm (23 1/8 x 13 x 2 3/8 in.)
Inscription: on the arch: SANCTVS JACOB [A]LPHEI Q[VI] COGNOMINAT[VS] E[ST]
IV[STVS] [1]
[1] James Minor, usually identified with the apostle James the son of Alphaeus
(Matthew 10:3) or with James the Lords brother (Galatians 1:19), was, according to
tradition, the first bishop of Jerusalem; he was also nicknamed the Just; cf.
Wilhelm Pratscher, Jakobus (Herrenbruder), in Reallexikon fr Antike und
Christentum, edited by Ernst Dassmann, 10 vols. Stuttgart, 1937-2003:
16(1991):1227-1243.
ENTRY
This panel and its companion, Saint John the Evangelist, originally formed part of
an altarpiece painted on both sides. The side displayed to the faithful presumably
showed four stories of Christ flanked by saints and prophets [fig. 1] (see also
Reconstruction), while the rear side showed the apostles and Saint Francis, full
length [fig. 2] (see also Reconstruction). Of the main side of the altarpiece, which
had already been dismembered by 1793,[1] only the components of the right part
have survived, namely Prophet Isaiah ([fig. 3], treasury of the basilica of San
Francesco, Assisi)[2] and Deposition [fig. 4], Lamentation [fig. 5], and Saint Anthony
of Padua [fig. 6], all three now in the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in
Perugia.[3] Nothing has survived of the left part of the dossal, which perhaps
showed Jeremiah (or another prophet), the counterpart of Isaiah on the other side,
flanked by two other scenes of the Passion and another full-length saint,
corresponding to Saint Francis on the back. The centerpiece of the dossal,
probably a Madonna and Child, has also been lost.[4] On the back of the dossal,
Saint James Minor 938


from left to right, were Saint Francis ([fig. 7], now Galleria Nazionale dell Umbria,
Perugia, no. 24); Saints Bartholomew and Simon ([fig. 8], The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York; see note 1); the two panels being discussed here from the
National Gallery of Art; Saint Andrew [fig. 9], in the past erroneously identified with
other apostles (Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria, Perugia, no. 23)[5]; and Saint Peter
([fig. 10], formerly Stoclet collection, Brussels; acquired by the Italian State in 2002
for the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia, no. 1393). As for the lost central
panel on the rear side, images of the Madonna and Child or Christ Enthroned have
been proposed.[6] To the right of the central image, the presence of six other
apostles can be assumed; two of them presumably were combined in a single
panel, as in the case of the Metropolitan Museum of Art painting. It is likely, lastly,
that the seventh figure, the one closest to the central panel, was the apostle Saint
Paul.[7]
Both the arrangement of this series of figures, standing under arcades, and their
architectural framing were inspired, as Dillian Gordon (1982) showed, by an early
Christian sarcophagus formerly kept in the church of San Francesco al Prato (and
now in the Oratory of San Bernardino in Perugia); it had been used as the tomb of
the Blessed Egidio (Egido),[8] one of the first companions of Saint Francis, who
died near Perugia in 1262 and was greatly venerated in that city.[9] Since the same
church also housed the large painted crucifix dated 1272 likewise executed by the
Master of Saint Francis and now in the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in
Perugia,[10] Gordon proposed a similar date for the altarpiece as a wholea very
plausible hypothesis, even if not everyone has accepted it.[11]
As Edward B. Garrison (1949) and other scholars recognized, the altarpiece

formerly in San Francesco al Prato should be considered one of the earliest
examples of the type of altarpiece classifiable as low dossal. Both its large size
and the fact that it was painted on both sides suggest that it was intended for the
high altar of the church.[12] Its measurements cannot have diverged very much
from Jrgen Schultzes (1961) calculations (0.58 3.5 m).[13] Its external profile was
probably distinguished by a central gable, whether arched or triangular, placed
over the lost central panel,[14] an archaic type that was replaced as early as the last
decade of the thirteenth century by the more modern form of multigabled
dossals.[15]
The question of the authorship of the work has never been seriously disputed
(even though some art historians have preferred to attribute the dispersed
Perugian dossal to the workshop of the Master of Saint Francis).[16] Greater


uncertainties surround its date. To elucidate the question, some preliminary

reflections on the main stages in the painters career are needed.
Two plausibly datable works can be of help in this regard. Some have attributed to
the Master of Saint Francis the Madonna and Child with an angel frescoed on the
north wall of the nave in the lower church of the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi
and considered it to have been executed in 1252 or just after.[17] The cycle of
narrative frescoes on both walls of the same nave, on the other hand, unanimously
has been attributed to the same artist and dated to around 1260.[18] Comparing
them with the one securely dated work of the painter, the painted crucifix of 1272
in Perugia, suggests that the elegant, lively figures in the Washington panelsSaint
John turning his head to the right, Saint James stepping forward to the leftare
closer to the figures of the cycle with stories of Christ and of Saint Francis than to
the fragmentary image of the Madonna. With its more summary design and the
static poses of its figures, the latter recalls on the one hand the figurative tradition
of artists active in the middle decades of the century, such as Simeone and
Machilone from Spoleto,[19] and on the other the manner of the German workshop
that executed the earliest stained-glass windows in the basilica of Assisi, those of
the apse of the upper church.[20]
As new artists joined the enterprise of decorating the basilica at Assisi, however,
styles rapidly changed. A transalpine artist of considerable stature must already
have been at work there around 1260, introducing stylistic models more closely
attuned to the Gothic taste in western Europe. Under the guidance of this master
the large windows of the transept of the upper church were realized, and among
the artists working at his side was the Master of Saint Francis. In the windows
assignable to him, the Umbrian artist responded with great sensitivity to the poetic
aspirations of his transalpine companion; he repeated some of his ideas and forms
both in his own stained-glass windows and in the cycle of narrative frescoes in the
lower church, combining them with the rapid gestures and the strong expressive
charge characteristic of his own native Umbrian culture. Thus, the stained-glass
quatrefoils on the north side of the upper church, characterized by the plastic relief
given to the bodies and the harsh vigor expressed in their poses, should be
considered the result of a less advanced phase in the artists career than the mural
cycle.[21] The panel paintings executed for the Franciscan church of Perugia must
belong to later years, presumably after an interval of some duration. Here the
refined elegance prescribed by the Gothic style is expressed with particular
evidence in the lean figures of the two panels with stories of Christ, and also in


those with single figures. What is striking in them is the aristocratic refinement of
their physiognomic types, their spontaneous and improvised poses, and the
capricious undulation of the borders of their mantles [fig. 11]. Unfortunately, the few
other works known to us do not offer sufficient clues to estimate how long a period
of time must have elapsed between the works of the Master of Saint Francis in
Assisi and those in Perugia.[22] On the other hand, the virtual identity of the style
observable in the crucifix dated 1272 and in the surviving fragments of the
altarpiece suggest that the two works must have been executed close to each
other in time.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San fig. 2 Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San
Francesco al Prato in Perugia, front side, right portion, by Francesco al Prato in Perugia, rear side, left portion, by the
the Master of Saint Francis: a. Prophet Isaiah (fig. 3); b. Master of Saint Francis (color images are NGA objects): a.
Deposition (fig. 4); c. Lamentation (fig. 5); d. Saint Anthony Saint Francis (fig. 7); b. Saints Bartholomew and Simon
of Padua (fig. 6) (fig. 8); c. Saint James Minor; d. Saint John the Evangelist;
e. Saint Andrew (fig. 9); f. Saint Peter (fig. 10)


fig. 4 Master of Saint Francis, Deposition, c. 1272, tempera

on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy
of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia
fig. 3 Master of Saint Francis, Prophet Isaiah, c. 1272,

tempera on panel, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San
Francesco, Assisi


fig. 5 Master of Saint Francis, Lamentation, c. 1272,

tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image
courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia
fig. 6 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of Padua, c.

1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria.
Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-
Perugia


fig. 7 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Francis, c. 1272, fig. 8 Master of Saint Francis, Saints Bartholomew and
tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image Simon, c. 1272, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan
courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection


fig. 9 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Andrew, c. 1272, fig. 10 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Peter, c. 1272,
tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image
courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia


fig. 11 Detail, Master of Saint Francis, Saint James Minor, c.

1272, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art,


RECONSTRUCTIONS
Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, rear side, left portion, by the Master of Saint
Francis:
a. Saint Francis (Entry fig. 7)
b. Saints Bartholomew and Simon (Entry fig. 8)
c. Saint James Minor
d. Saint John the Evangelist
e. Saint Andrew (Entry fig. 9)
Click on any panel in the altarpiece reconstructions below to see an enlarged version of the image. Color reproductions in the


Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, front side, right portion, by the Master of Saint
Francis:
a. Prophet Isaiah (Entry fig. 3)
b. Deposition (Entry fig. 4)
c. Lamentation (Entry fig. 5)
d. Saint Anthony of Padua (Entry fig. 6)
NOTES
[2] Pietro Scarpellini, Le pitture, in Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad

Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto (Assisi, 1980), 4344.
Raimond Van Marle was the first to publish the painting and to report its
location as being in the treasury, where it remains today. Raimond van
Marle, Il Maestro di San Francesco, Rassegna darte antica e moderna 6,
no. 1 (1919): 15, fig. 9.
[3] See Provenance note 1. Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst des

Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 144, and others
have asserted, correctly in my view, that as the principal side of the
altarpiece, the side depicting the scenes of the Passion would have faced
the nave. The fact that the architectural framing in relief would have
conferred a richer and more solemn appearance on this side also leads to


the same conclusion. Serena Romano, however, expressed doubts on the

matter, and Donal Cooper maintained that the side with the apostles would
have faced the nave and aisles of the church. Serena Romano, Maestro di
San Francesco, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale
Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 60; Donal Cooper, Franciscan Choir Enclosures
and the Function of Double-Sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine
Umbria, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 64 (2001): 912.
[4] Edward Garrison (1949), followed by Dillian Gordon (1982), maintained that
the central panel of the side with the scenes of the Passion would have
represented the Crucifixion, while Jrgen Schultze (1963) argued that an
iconographic theme more suitable for such a situation would have been a
Madonna and Child Enthroned. Gordon has since (2002) accepted his
proposal. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An
Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 171; Dillian Gordon, A Perugian
Provenance for the Franciscan Double-Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S.
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 71; Jrgen Schultze, Zur
Kunst des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963):
144145; Dillian Gordon, Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Perugian
Double-Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function in Italian Panel Painting of
the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt (Washington, DC, and
New Haven, 2002), 229234. An altarpiece of a format and date not too
dissimilar from the one being considered here, the work of the Master of
Farneto in the Galleria Nazionale dell Umbria in Perugia (no. 27), seems to
support the latter hypothesis. See Francesco Santi, ed.,Galleria Nazionale
dellUmbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e
gotica (Rome, 1969), 3435.
[5] Giovanni Cecchini (1932) identified the saint as Saint John the Evangelist,
Edward Garrison (1949) as Saint Matthew, and Francesco Santi (1969) as
Saint Matthew. But the inscription found during a recent restoration
(SANCTVS [F]VIT IN PATRAS) establishes that the apostle in question can
only be Andrew, martyred, according to tradition, in Patras; see Serena
Romano, Maestro di San Francesco, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della
and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 58. Cf. Giovanni Cecchini, La Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia (Rome, 1932), 21; Edward B.
1949), 162; Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria,
vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica (Rome,
1969), 3031.
[6] Edward Garrison (1949) proposed the Crucifixion as an alternative to the

image of the Madonna and Child, while Jrgen Schultze (1963) argued that
the lost central image could have represented Christ Enthroned. Dillian


Gordon (2002) also accepted the latter hypothesis. See Edward B.

1949), 163; Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-
Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 142143; Dillian Gordon, Thirteenth- and
Fourteenth-Century Perugian Double-Sided Altarpieces: Form and
Function, in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor
M. Schmidt (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 229230.
[7] Cf. Jrgen Schultze, Ein Duecento-Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer
Rekonstruktion, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 10
(1961): 62.
[8] The marble sarcophagus is sculpted with [the]...enthroned Christ in the

centre, with standing figures...on either side; several of these...are doubled
under one arch, several holding scrolls; all these motifs are also present in
the altarpiece of the Master of Saint Francis. What is particularly worthy of
note, however, is the curious pose of St. James with the right arm tucked
up into a sling of drapery...found in both outermost figures of the
sarcophagus. This awkward arrangement, which according to Fern Rusk
Shapley (1979) may be due to the intention of showing him holding the
fullers club, symbol of the martyrdom of James the Minor, is in fact merely
a further sign of the fidelity with which the thirteenth-century painter tried to
imitate the early Christian model. See Dillian Gordon, A Perugian
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 75; Fern Rusk
1:325 n. 2.
[9] Cf. Silvana Vecchio, Egidio dAssisi, in Dizionario biografico degli

italiani (Rome, 1993), 42:312316.
[10] Inv. n. 26; see Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria, vol. 1,
Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969),
2628. The crucifix, a panel of large dimensions (489 352 cm),
presumably had been intended to be placedlike other paintings of this
kindover the choir screen, instead of over the altar, as is sometimes
asserted. Its position can be supposed to be similar to that illustrated by the
well-known fresco depicting the Miracle of Greccio in the upper church of
San Francesco at Assisi.
[11] Dillian Gordon (1982) interpreted the report according to which the
sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio was to be seen below the Altare del
Crocifisso in 1647, in the sense that the sarcophagus formed the altar table
and that the altarpiece painted by the Master of Saint Francis was placed
above it. In Gordons view, the altarpiece and the large painted crucifix were
produced c. 1272 as elements of a single project. In their later publications,
Filippo Todini (1986) and Elvio Lunghi (1986) expressed doubts about the


destination of the altarpiece for the Franciscan church of Perugia, while Luiz
Marques (1987) revived the old thesis that the altarpiece had been executed
for the lower church of Assisi in c. 1260. On the other hand, although they
accepted a date close to 1272, both Gail Solberg (1992) and Donal Cooper
(2001) cast doubt on the common destination of the panels by the Master of
Saint Francis and the sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio. The latter, in fact,
is documented in a side chapel and not on the site of the high altar. Serena
Romano (1994), followed by Vittoria Garibaldi (2002), was convinced that the
altarpiece of the Master of Saint Francis did indeed stand over the
sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio, but in the crypt of the church, and that it
was executed at a data pi vicina al 1262 (sistemazione delle reliquie del
Beato Egidio) che al 1272. See Dillian Gordon, A Perugian Provenance for
the Franciscan Double-Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S.
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 7576; Filippo Todini,
(Milan, 1986), 2:376; Elvio Lunghi, Maestro di San Francesco, in La Pittura
in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan,
1986), 2:624; Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie
centrale (Paris, 1987), 6164; Gail E. Solberg,Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and
Work (PhD diss., New York University, 1991), 634; Donal Cooper, Qui
Perusii in archa saxea tumulatus: The Shrine of Beato Egidio in San
Francesco al Prato, Perugia, Papers of the British School at Rome 69
(2001): 226230; Serena Romano, Maestro di San Francesco, in Dipinti,
sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: Studi e restauri,
ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 60;
Vittoria Garibaldi, Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: Guida (Milan, 2002), 14.
[12] For the earliest panels painted on both front and rear sides, cf. Julian
Gardner, Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure, in La pittura nel xiv e xv
secolo, il contributo dellanalisi tecnica alla storia dellarte, ed. Hendrik W.
van Os and J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 297322; Mikls
Boskovits, Appunti per una storia della tavola daltare: Le origini, Arte
cristiana 80 (1992): 422438.
[13] Jrgen Schultze, Ein Duecento-Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer

(1961): 6364.
[14] Edward Garrison calculated the width of the original dossal by the Master of
San Francesco as c. 370 cm. Gordon proposed instead that the altarpiece
and the large crucifix by the master had the same width, i.e., c. 352 cm.
Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated
Index (Florence, 1949), 171; Dillian Gordon, A Perugian Provenance for the
Franciscan Double-Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco, The


[15] On dossals of this type, cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel
Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 168. Julian Gardner noted
that the mixture of narrative scenes and standing saints employs an
iconographical model already enunciated by Nicola Pisano in his Siena
Duomo pulpit. Julian Gardner, Some Aspects of the History of the Italian
Altar, ca. 1250ca. 1350: Placement and Decoration, in Objects, Images
and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane
(Princeton, 2003), 151.
[16] Thus Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated

Index (Florence, 1949), 170, and, at least initially, Francesco Santi, La Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia, Itinerari dei musei e monumenti dItalia 90
(Rome, 1956), 7.
[17] Jrgen Schultze (1963) published it as a work related to the narrative

frescoes by the Master of Saint Francis on the walls of the church. Basing
his view on a sixteenth-century text by Fra Ludovico, Pietro Scarpellini (Fra
Ludovico da Pietralunga 1982) asserted that it had been executed to
decorate the burial place of Cardinal Pietro di Barro, who died in 1252 and
was buried in the area of the lower church where the fresco was situated.
More recent studies cast doubt on the attribution to the Master of Saint
Francis; they preferred to see the fresco as the work of an anonymous
Umbrian master (Marques 1987), or of a painter of Tuscan culture (Cadei
1991), or of Roman masters still active in Assisi in the 1270s (Andaloro 2001).
Filippo Todini (1986), on the other hand, asserted that it was a work of the
earliest phase of the Master of Saint Francis, and it seems to me that this
thesis is fully confirmed by comparison with passages of the stained glass
attributable to the same master in the upper church (Martin and Ruf 1997).
See Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-
Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 129130; Pietro Scarpellini, in Fra Ludovico da
Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.), Descrizione della
Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso, 1982), 181; Luiz
Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 59, 60;
Antonio Cadei, Le prime immagini, in San Francesco: Basilica patriarcale
in Assisi; Testimonianza artistica, messaggio evangelico, ed. Roberto
Caravaggi (Milan, 1991), 102; Maria Andaloro, Tracce della prima
decorazione pittorica, in Il cantiere pittorico della Basilica superiore di San
Francesco in Assisi, ed. Giuseppe Basile and Pasquale Magro (Assisi, 2001),
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:375; Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die
Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung
einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), figs. 130, 142.
[18] Joanna Cannon (1982) and Beat Brenk (1983) both indicated the publication
of the Legenda maior of Saint Francis in 1263 as the probable terminus ante


quem for the frescoes, and more recent studies generally have accepted
this proposal. See Joanna Cannon, Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di
San Francesco at Assisi, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 6569; Beat
Brenk, Das Datum der Franzlegende der Unterkirche zu Assisi, in Roma
anno 1300: Atti della iv settimana di studi di storia dellarte medievale
dellUniversit di Roma La Sapienza, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome,
1983), 229234.
[19] Cf. Edward B. Garrison, Simeone and Machilone Spoletenses, Gazette des
Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 5358.
[20] See Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in
Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg,
1997), 1940.
[21] Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in
1997), 4052. The very late dating that Martin proposed (c. 1275) for the
stained-glass panels by the Master of Saint Francis seems difficult to accept,
not only because a scene like Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (right
part of the first bay upon entering) is at variance with the description
proposed by Saint Bonaventura in the Legenda maior, but also because it is
incompatible with the stylistic evidence: the style of the stained glass in
question is more archaic than the frescoes by the Master of Saint Francis in
the lower church.
[22] The works in question consist of a series of crucifixes of which the one in
the Louvre, Paris (R.F. 1981.48), seems the earliest because of the
pronouncedly linear definition of the slender body of Christ, its less arched
position, and the fact that the head rests less heavily on the shoulder than in
other similar paintings. This panel is presumably earlier than the fresco cycle
of the lower church of Assisi, while the small crucifix painted on both sides
now in the Galleria Nazionale in Perugia (no. 18), difficult to interpret
because of the pronounced abrasion of its painted surface, is likely to be
somewhat later in date, perhaps the second half of the 1260s. Even later is
the crucifix in the Acton collection in Florence; cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian
Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 212. But
the dating proposed for this painting, 12801290, is far too late: it must in
my view antedate the crucifix dated 1272. The crucifix in the National Gallery
in London (no. 6361) is probably the latest of the masters surviving works.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY


Both this painting and its companion, Saint John the Evangelist, were executed on
a single plank of horizontal-grain wood prepared with gesso. The x-radiographs
show that the distinctive wood grain pattern is continuous between the two panels,
proving that they were once part of the same plank, with Saint James Minor on the
left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right.[1] The backgrounds are gilded, and
each halo is decorated with a curvilinear incised design and two sizes of rosette
punches around its border. Areas to be gilded were prepared with red bole, and
incised lines are visible between the painted and gilded areas. Infrared
reflectography reveals a detailed brush underdrawing defining contours within the
painted portions and the fold patterns in the figures drapery.[2] The paint was
applied in the discrete brushstrokes typical of tempera technique, with green
underpaint in the flesh areas. The x-radiographs reveal small, filled holes located
approximately 0.75 cm in from the edges of each panel, which may be the means
of attachment of now-lost framing.[3] There are nine holes visible in Saint John the
Evangelist and ten holes in Saint James Minor.
Stephen Pichetto cradled, cleaned, restored, and varnished both panels in

1944.[4] The paint is generally in good condition on both panels, although it is less
well preserved on Saint James Minor than on Saint John the Evangelist. The
photographs of the paintings published by Robert Lehman (1928) show small,
localized areas of flaking along the contours, in the robe, and on the forehead of
Saint James Minor, as well as in the architectural framing above him, and in the
area close to the lower edge of that painting. Darkened inpaint is visible in small
patches in Saint James Minors halo in these photographs. The photographs show
losses along the edges of Saint John the Evangelists robes, in the arch, and along
the top and bottom edges of that panel. The two roundels in the spandrels of the
arch at the top right and left of each panel, which may have been decorated with
colored glass, have been excavated down to the wood. The varnish applied to
both paintings in 1944 is now somewhat discolored.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] See Dillian Gordon for an examination of the wood grain on the backs of
other panels on the front side of the dossal as an aid to establishing the
panels original placement in the dossal. Dillian Gordon, A Perugian
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 7172.



Vidicon camera system.
[3] These holes are visible before filling and inpainting in the before work
photos taken in 1943, prior to Pichettos treatment.
DC, 1979), 1:325. However, comparison of the photograph taken before
Pichettos treatment (dated 1943) with that published by Robert
Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), nos. 61, 62,
implies that another treatment took place between 1928 and 1943.
PROVENANCE
Executed in all probability for the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia,
where at least part of the fragments belonging to the same altarpiece were still
preserved in 1793;[1] probably privately owned in Perugia;[2] Anton de Waal
[18371917], Rome;[3] probably (Paolo Paolini, Rome), by 1921;[4] Philip Lehman
New York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] William Young Ottley (A Series of Plates
Engraved after the Paintings and Sculptures of the Most Eminent masters of the
Early Florentine School, London, 1826: pl. 1) describes having seen the Deposition
and Lamentation, from the same altarpiece and now in the Galleria Nazionale in
Perugia, in the convent of San Francesco in Perugia in 1793. Evidently, as Dillan
Gordon (A Perugian provenience for the Franciscan double - sided altar - piece by
the Maestro di S. Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 [1982]: 72 n. 41)
observes, the altarpiece had already been sawn apart at that time; see the
following note. Previously, Robert Lehman (The Philip Lehman Collection, New
York, Paris, 1928: nos. CXIICXIII), Edward B. Garrison (Italian Romanesque Panel
Painting. An Illustrated Index, Florence, 1949: 171), and others proposed a
provenance from Assisi for both NGA 1952.5.15 and .16. Jurgen Schultze (Ein
Dugento - altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion, Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Istituts Florenz 10 [1961]: 59-66; Zur Kunst des
Franziskusmeister, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 [1963]: 109-150; Die Fresken in
der Unterkirche von San Francesco zu Assisi und andere Werke des
Franziskusmeister, Raggi 7, no. 2 [1967]: 44-58) and Luiz C. Marques (La peinture
du Duecento en Italie Centrale, Paris, 1987: 61-64) maintain that the painting to
which the NGA panels originally belonged was executed for the high altar of the
lower church of San Francesco in Assisi, but most others have abandoned that


theory. [2] The two panels with Stories of Christ entered the Accademia di Belle
Arti in Perugia in 1810 (and thence into the Galleria Nazionale, as no. 22) following
the suppression of the religious orders. The panel of Saint Anthony (no. 21) that
originally flanked the scene of Lamentation was acquired some time later by the
Municipio of Perugia for the then Pinacoteca Civica (see Francesco Santi, Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria. Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica,
Rome, 1969: 28). Probably, as in various other cases (see for example Mikls
Boskovits and David Alan Brown, Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century, The
Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003: 120),
the components of the dossal remained in the convent even after its dispersal,
perhaps distributed for devotional reasons in the cells and then removed by
individual friars after its suppression. Whatever the case, the panels that did not
enter the Galleria Nazionale in Perugia apparently surfaced together on the art
market in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It was probably in the same
period that the figure of the Prophet Isaiah entered the treasury of the basilica in
Assisi. [3] Anton de Waal arrived in Rome from his native Germany in 1868 and in
1873 became rector of the Collegio Teutonico of Santa Maria in Campo Santo in
the same city, where he formed a small museum (Erwin Gatz, Anton de Waal (1837-
1917) un der Campo Santo Teutonico, Freiburg/Breisgau, 1980). According to
Schultze (1961, 64), the four panels formerly forming part of the altarpiece in San
Francesco al Prato were sold by the arch-confraternity of Santa Maria della Piet in
Campo Santo Teutonico in 1921. [4] According to John Pope-Hennessy and
Laurence B. Kanter (The Robert Lehman Collection, I, Italian Paintings, New York
and Princeton, 1987: 80), the panel with Saints Bartholomew and Simon now in The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Robert Lehman Collection, no. 1975.1.104),
was with the dealer Paolo Paolini in Rome before Philip Lehman purchased it
together with NGA 1952.5.15 and .16. [5] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
Collection, New York, Paris, 1928: nos. 61, 62. The bill of sale for the Kress
NGA 1952.5.15 and .16, is dated 11 June 1943; payment was made four days later
(copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale all indicate
that Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (18921963) was owner of the paintings,
but it is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, whether Robert made the sale for his father or on his own behalf.
See Laurence Kanters e-mail of 6 May 2011, about ownership of the Lehman
collection, in NGA curatorial files.


EXHIBITION HISTORY

6/4, repro., as The Apostle Saint James Minor (shown only in New York in 1999).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Paris, 1928: no. LXI, repro.
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316.
345.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 1(1932):406-407.
76.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 7 repro.



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30-31 (misidentified as James Major).
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 128, 405, 646, 665.
Assisi, 1980: 43-44.



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1989 Toscano, Bruno. "Maestro di San Francesco." In Dizionario della pittura
e dei pittori. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano. 6 vols.
Turin, 1989-1994: 3(1992):412.
1990 Neri Lusanna, Enrica, and Cristina De Benedictis. "Miniatura umbra del
Duecento: diffusione e Influenze a Roma e nellItalia meridionale." Studi
di storia dellarte 1 (1990): 11.
1991 Romano, Serena. "Maestro di S. Francesco." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 8(1997):119.
1991 Solberg, Gail E. "Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and Work." Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 1991. Ann Arbor, MI, 1994: 634.
1992 Boskovits, Mikls. "Appunti per una storia della tavola daltare: le origini."
Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 430, repro. 433.
1992 Krger, Klaus. Der frhe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und
Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin,


1992: 26, 165, fig. 316.

1992 Solberg, Gail E. "A Reconstruction of Taddeo di Bartolos Altarpiece for
S. Francesco a Prato, Perugia." The Burlington Magazine 134 (1992):
653.
1994 Romano, Serena. "Maestro di San Francesco." in Dipinti, sculture e
ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: studi e restauri. Edited
by Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi. 1st ed. Florence, 1994:
58, repro. 61.
1996 Gordon, Dillian. "The So-Called Paciano Master and the Franciscans in
Perugia." Apollo 143 (1996): 36.
1996 Romano, Serena. "Master of St Francis." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
Regensburg, 1997: 53-55.
1998 Krger, Klaus. "Selbstdarstellung im Konflikt: zur Reprsentation der
Bettelorden im Medium der Kunst." In Die Reprsentation der Gruppen
Texte, Bilder, Objekte. Edited by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von
Hlsen-Esch. Gttingen, 1998: 178-179, repro.
1999 Cook, William Robert. Images of Saint Francis of Assisi in Painting,
Stone and Glass from the Earliest Images to c. 1320 in Italy: A
Catalogue. Florence and Perth, 1999: 163.
Milan, 1999: 70-79, repro. 73.
2001 Andaloro, Maria. "Tracce della prima decorazione pittorica." In Il cantiere
pittorico della Basilica superiore di San Francesco in Assisi. Edited by
Giuseppe Basile and Pasquale Magro. Assisi, 2001: 84 n. 45.
2001 Cooper, Donal. "Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of
Double-Sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria." Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institute 64 (2001): 9, 10 (repro.), 12.
2001 Cooper, Donal. "Qui Perusii in archa saxea tumulatus: The Shrine of
Beato Egidio in San Francesco al Prato, Perugia." Papers of the British
School at Rome 69 (2001): 224 (repro.), 225, 227-230, 238, 242.
2001 Scalini, Mario, and Angelo Tartuferi, eds. Un tesoro rivelato: capolavori
dalla collezione Carlo De Carlo. Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia,
Florence, 2001: 40.
2002 Bonsanti, Giorgio, ed. La Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi. Modena,


2002: 476.
2002 Garibaldi, Vittoria. Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: guida. Milan, 2002:
14.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Maestro di San Francesco." In La pittura in Europa. Il
2:549.
2002 Gordon, Dillian. "Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Perugian Double-
Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function." In Italian Panel Painting of the
Duecento and Trecento. Edited by Victor M. Schmidt. Studies in the
History of Art 61 ( 2002): 229-234, fig. 2.
2002 Krger, Klaus. "Medium and Imagination: Aesthetic Aspects of Trecento
Panel Painting." In Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento.
Edited by Victor M. Schmidt. Studies in the History of Art 61 (2002): 65-
67.
2006 Bisogni, Fabio, and Enrico Menest, eds. Iacopone da Todi e larte in
Umbria nel Duecento. Exh. cat. Museo Comunale, Todi. Milan, 2006:
168, 170, 172.



Saint John the Evangelist

c. 1272
tempera on panel
overall: 49.8 x 24.2 cm (19 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.)
framed: 58.4 x 32.7 x 6 cm (23 x 12 7/8 x 2 3/8 in.)
Inscription: on the arch: SANCTVS I[O]HANES...SSUM...
ENTRY
This panel and its companion, Saint James Minor, originally formed part of an
altarpiece painted on both sides. The side displayed to the faithful presumably
showed four stories of Christ flanked by saints and prophets [fig. 1] (see also
Reconstruction), while the rear side showed the apostles and Saint Francis, full
length [fig. 2] (see also Reconstruction). Of the main side of the altarpiece, which
had already been dismembered by 1793,[1] only the components of the right part
have survived, namely Prophet Isaiah ([fig. 3], treasury of the basilica of San
Francesco, Assisi)[2] and Deposition [fig. 4], Lamentation [fig. 5], and Saint Anthony
of Padua [fig. 6], all three now in the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in
Perugia.[3] Nothing has survived of the left part of the dossal, which perhaps
showed Jeremiah (or another prophet), the counterpart of Isaiah on the other side,
flanked by two other scenes of the Passion and another full-length saint,
corresponding to Saint Francis on the back. The centerpiece of the dossal,
probably a Madonna and Child, has also been lost.[4] On the back of the dossal,
from left to right, were Saint Francis ([fig. 7], now Galleria Nazionale dell Umbria,
Perugia, no. 24); Saints Bartholomew and Simon ([fig. 8], The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York; see note 1); the two panels being discussed here from the
Saint John the Evangelist 963


National Gallery of Art; Saint Andrew [fig. 9], in the past erroneously identified with
other apostles (Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria, Perugia, no. 23);[5] and Saint Peter
([fig. 10], formerly Stoclet collection, Brussels; acquired by the Italian State in 2002
for the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia, no. 1393). As for the lost central
panel on the rear side, images of the Madonna and Child or Christ Enthroned have
been proposed.[6] To the right of the central image, the presence of six other
apostles can be assumed; two of them presumably were combined in a single
panel, as in the case of the Metropolitan Museum of Art painting. It is likely, lastly,
that the seventh figure, the one closest to the central panel, was the apostle Saint
Paul.[7]
Both the arrangement of this series of figures, standing under arcades, and their
architectural framing were inspired, as Dillian Gordon (1982) showed, by an early
Christian sarcophagus formerly kept in the church of San Francesco al Prato (and
now in the Oratory of San Bernardino in Perugia); it had been used as the tomb of
the Blessed Egidio (Egido),[8] one of the first companions of Saint Francis, who
died near Perugia in 1262 and was greatly venerated in that city.[9] Since the same
church also housed the large painted crucifix dated 1272 likewise executed by the
Master of Saint Francis and now in the Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in
Perugia,[10] Gordon proposed a similar date for the altarpiece as a wholea very
plausible hypothesis, even if not everyone has accepted it.[11]
As Edward B. Garrison (1949) and other scholars recognized, the altarpiece

formerly in San Francesco al Prato should be considered one of the earliest
examples of the type of altarpiece classifiable as low dossal. Both its large size
and the fact that it was painted on both sides suggest that it was intended for the
high altar of the church.[12] Its measurements cannot have diverged very much
from Jrgen Schultzes (1961) calculations (0.58 3.5 m).[13] Its external profile was
probably distinguished by a central gable, whether arched or triangular, placed
over the lost central panel,[14] an archaic type that was replaced as early as the last
decade of the thirteenth century by the more modern form of multigabled
dossals.[15]
The question of the authorship of the work has never been seriously disputed
(even though some art historians have preferred to attribute the dispersed
Perugian dossal to the workshop of the Master of Saint Francis).[16] Greater
uncertainties surround its date. To elucidate the question, some preliminary
reflections on the main stages in the painters career are needed.


Two plausibly datable works can be of help in this regard. Some have attributed to
the Master of Saint Francis the Madonna and Child with an angel frescoed on the
north wall of the nave in the lower church of the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi
and considered it to have been executed in 1252 or just after.[17] The cycle of
narrative frescoes on both walls of the same nave, on the other hand, unanimously
has been attributed to the same artist and dated to around 1260.[18] Comparing
them with the one securely dated work of the painter, the painted crucifix of 1272
in Perugia, suggests that the elegant, lively figures in the Washington panelsSaint
John turning his head to the right, Saint James stepping forward to the leftare
closer to the figures of the cycle with stories of Christ and of Saint Francis than to
the fragmentary image of the Madonna. With its more summary design and the
static poses of its figures, the latter recalls on the one hand the figurative tradition
of artists active in the middle decades of the century, such as Simeone and
Machilone from Spoleto,[19] and on the other the manner of the German workshop
that executed the earliest stained-glass windows in the basilica of Assisi, those of
the apse of the upper church.[20]
As new artists joined the enterprise of decorating the basilica at Assisi, however,
styles rapidly changed. A transalpine artist of considerable stature must already
have been at work there around 1260, introducing stylistic models more closely
attuned to the Gothic taste in western Europe. Under the guidance of this master
the large windows of the transept of the upper church were realized, and among
the artists working at his side was the Master of Saint Francis. In the windows
assignable to him, the Umbrian artist responded with great sensitivity to the poetic
aspirations of his transalpine companion; he repeated some of his ideas and forms
both in his own stained-glass windows and in the cycle of narrative frescoes in the
lower church, combining them with the rapid gestures and the strong expressive
charge characteristic of his own native Umbrian culture. Thus, the stained-glass
quatrefoils on the north side of the upper church, characterized by the plastic relief
given to the bodies and the harsh vigor expressed in their poses, should be
considered the result of a less advanced phase in the artists career than the mural
cycle.[21] The panel paintings executed for the Franciscan church of Perugia must
belong to later years, presumably after an interval of some duration. Here the
refined elegance prescribed by the Gothic style is expressed with particular
evidence in the lean figures of the two panels with stories of Christ, and also in
those with single figures. What is striking in them is the aristocratic refinement of
their physiognomic types, their spontaneous and improvised poses, and the
capricious undulation of the borders of their mantles [fig. 11]. Unfortunately, the few


other works known to us do not offer sufficient clues to estimate how long a period
of time must have elapsed between the works of the Master of Saint Francis in
Assisi and those in Perugia.[22] On the other hand, the virtual identity of the style
observable in the crucifix dated 1272 and in the surviving fragments of the
altarpiece suggest that the two works must have been executed close to each
other in time.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San fig. 2 Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San
Francesco al Prato in Perugia, front side, right portion, by Francesco al Prato in Perugia, rear side, left portion, by the
the Master of Saint Francis: a. Prophet Isaiah (fig. 3); b. Master of Saint Francis (color images are NGA objects): a.
Deposition (fig. 4); c. Lamentation (fig. 5); d. Saint Anthony Saint Francis (fig. 7); b. Saints Bartholomew and Simon
of Padua (fig. 6) (fig. 8); c. Saint James Minor; d. Saint John the Evangelist;
e. Saint Andrew (fig. 9); f. Saint Peter (fig. 10)


fig. 4 Master of Saint Francis, Deposition, c. 1272, tempera

on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy
of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia
fig. 3 Master of Saint Francis, Prophet Isaiah, c. 1272,

tempera on panel, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San
Francesco, Assisi


fig. 5 Master of Saint Francis, Lamentation, c. 1272,

tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image
courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia
fig. 6 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of Padua, c.

1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria.
Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-
Perugia


fig. 7 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Francis, c. 1272, fig. 8 Master of Saint Francis, Saints Bartholomew and
tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image Simon, c. 1272, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan
courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection


fig. 9 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Andrew, c. 1272, fig. 10 Master of Saint Francis, Saint Peter, c. 1272,
tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image
courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia


fig. 11 Detail, Master of Saint Francis, Saint James Minor, c.

1272, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art,


RECONSTRUCTIONS
Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, rear side, left portion, by the Master of Saint
Francis:
a. Saint Francis (Entry fig. 7)
b. Saints Bartholomew and Simon (Entry fig. 8)
c. Saint James Minor
d. Saint John the Evangelist
e. Saint Andrew (Entry fig. 9)
Click on any panel in the altarpiece reconstructions below to see an enlarged version of the image. Color reproductions in the


Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, front side, right portion, by the Master of Saint
Francis:
a. Prophet Isaiah (Entry fig. 3)
b. Deposition (Entry fig. 4)
c. Lamentation (Entry fig. 5)
d. Saint Anthony of Padua (Entry fig. 6)
NOTES
[2] Pietro Scarpellini, Le pitture, in Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad

Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal Poggetto (Assisi, 1980), 4344.
Raimond Van Marle was the first to publish the painting and to report its
location as being in the treasury, where it remains today. Raimond van
Marle, Il Maestro di San Francesco, Rassegna darte antica e moderna 6,
no. 1 (1919): 15, fig. 9.
[3] See Provenance note 1. Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst des

Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 144, and others
have asserted, correctly in my view, that as the principal side of the
altarpiece, the side depicting the scenes of the Passion would have faced
the nave. The fact that the architectural framing in relief would have
conferred a richer and more solemn appearance on this side also leads to


the same conclusion. Serena Romano, however, expressed doubts on the

matter, and Donal Cooper maintained that the side with the apostles would
have faced the nave and aisles of the church. Serena Romano, Maestro di
San Francesco, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale
Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 60; Donal Cooper, Franciscan Choir Enclosures
and the Function of Double-Sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 64 (2001): 912.
[4] Edward Garrison (1949), followed by Dillian Gordon (1982), maintained that
the central panel of the side with the scenes of the Passion would have
represented the Crucifixion, while Jrgen Schultze (1963) argued that an
iconographic theme more suitable for such a situation would have been a
Madonna and Child Enthroned. Gordon has since (2002) accepted his
proposal. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An
Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 171; Dillian Gordon, A Perugian
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 71; Jrgen Schultze, Zur
Kunst des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963):
144145; Dillian Gordon, Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Perugian
Double-Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function in Italian Panel Painting of
the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt (Washington, DC, and
New Haven, 2002), 229234. An altarpiece of a format and date not too
dissimilar from the one being considered here, the work of the Master of
Farneto in the Galleria Nazionale dell Umbria in Perugia (no. 27), seems to
support the latter hypothesis. See Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale
dellUmbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica
(Rome, 1969), 3435.
[5] Giovanni Cecchini (1932) identified the saint as Saint John the Evangelist,
Edward Garrison (1949) as Saint Matthew, and Francesco Santi (1969) as
Saint Matthew. But the inscription found during a recent restoration
(SANCTVS [F]VIT IN PATRAS) establishes that the apostle in question can
only be Andrew, martyred, according to tradition, in Patras; see Serena
Romano, Maestro di San Francesco, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della
and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 58. Cf. Giovanni Cecchini, La Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia (Rome, 1932), 21; Edward B. Garrison,
Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949),
162; Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria, vol. 1, Dipinti,
sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969), 3031.
[6] Edward Garrison (1949) proposed the Crucifixion as an alternative to the

image of the Madonna and Child, while Jrgen Schultze (1963) argued that
the lost central image could have represented Christ Enthroned. Dillian
Gordon (2002) also accepted the latter hypothesis. See Edward B. Garrison,



163; Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-
Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 142143; Dillian Gordon, Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-
Century Perugian Double-Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function, in Italian
Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt
(Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 229230.
[7] Cf. Jrgen Schultze, Ein Duecento-Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer
(1961): 62.
[8] The marble sarcophagus is sculpted with [the]...enthroned Christ in the

centre, with standing figures...on either side; several of these...are doubled
under one arch, several holding scrolls; all these motifs are also present in
the altarpiece of the Master of Saint Francis. What is particularly worthy of
note, however, is the curious pose of St. James with the right arm tucked
up into a sling of drapery...found in both outermost figures of the
sarcophagus. This awkward arrangement, which according to Fern Rusk
Shapley (1979) may be due to the intention of showing him holding the
fullers club, symbol of the martyrdom of James the Minor, is in fact merely
a further sign of the fidelity with which the thirteenth-century painter tried to
imitate the early Christian model. See Dillian Gordon, A Perugian
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 75; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:325 n. 2.
[9] Cf. Silvana Vecchio, Egidio dAssisi, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani
(Rome, 1993), 42:312316.
[10] Inv. n. 26; see Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria, vol. 1,
Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969),
2628. The crucifix, a panel of large dimensions (489 352 cm),
presumably had been intended to be placedlike other paintings of this
kindover the choir screen, instead of over the altar, as is sometimes
asserted. Its position can be supposed to be similar to that illustrated by the
well-known fresco depicting the Miracle of Greccio in the upper church of
San Francesco at Assisi.
[11] Dillian Gordon (1982) interpreted the report according to which the
sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio was to be seen below the Altare del
Crocifisso in 1647, in the sense that the sarcophagus formed the altar table
and that the altarpiece painted by the Master of Saint Francis was placed
above it. In Gordons view, the altarpiece and the large painted crucifix were
produced c. 1272 as elements of a single project. In their later publications,
Filippo Todini (1986) and Elvio Lunghi (1986) expressed doubts about the
destination of the altarpiece for the Franciscan church of Perugia, while Luiz
Marques (1987) revived the old thesis that the altarpiece had been executed


for the lower church of Assisi in c. 1260. On the other hand, although they
accepted a date close to 1272, both Gail Solberg (1992) and Donal Cooper
(2001) cast doubt on the common destination of the panels by the Master of
Saint Francis and the sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio. The latter, in fact,
is documented in a side chapel and not on the site of the high altar. Serena
Romano (1994), followed by Vittoria Garibaldi (2002), was convinced that the
altarpiece of the Master of Saint Francis did indeed stand over the
sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio, but in the crypt of the church, and that it
was executed at a data pi vicina al 1262 (sistemazione delle reliquie del
Beato Egidio) che al 1272. See Dillian Gordon, A Perugian Provenance for
the Franciscan Double-Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco,
The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 7576; Filippo Todini, Pittura del
Duecento e del Trecento in Umbria e il cantiere di Assisi, in La Pittura in
Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986),
2:376; Elvio Lunghi, Maestro di San Francesco, in La Pittura in Italia: Il
Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987),
6164; Gail E. Solberg, Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and Work (PhD diss., New
York University, 1991), 634; Donal Cooper, Qui Perusii in archa saxea
tumulatus: The Shrine of Beato Egidio in San Francesco al Prato, Perugia,
Papers of the British School at Rome 69 (2001): 226230; Serena Romano,
Maestro di San Francesco, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and
Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 60; Vittoria Garibaldi, Galleria Nazionale
dellUmbria: Guida (Milan, 2002), 14.
[12] For the earliest panels painted on both front and rear sides, cf. Julian
Gardner, Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure, in La pittura nel xiv e xv
secolo, il contributo dellanalisi tecnica alla storia dellarte, ed. Hendrik W.
van Os and J.R.J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 297322; Mikls
Boskovits, Appunti per una storia della tavola daltare: Le origini, Arte
cristiana 80 (1992): 422438.
[13] Jrgen Schultze, Ein Duecento-Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer

(1961): 6364.
[14] Edward Garrison calculated the width of the original dossal by the Master of
San Francesco as c. 370 cm. Gordon proposed instead that the altarpiece
and the large crucifix by the master had the same width, i.e., c. 352 cm.
(Florence, 1949), 171; Dillian Gordon, A Perugian Provenance for the
Franciscan Double-Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco, The
[15] On dossals of this type, cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel
Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 168. Julian Gardner noted


that the mixture of narrative scenes and standing saints employs an

iconographical model already enunciated by Nicola Pisano in his Siena
Duomo pulpit. Julian Gardner, Some Aspects of the History of the Italian
Altar, ca. 1250ca. 1350: Placement and Decoration, in Objects, Images
and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane
(Princeton, 2003), 151.
[16] Thus Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated

Index (Florence, 1949), 170, and, at least initially, Francesco Santi, La Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia, Itinerari dei musei e monumenti dItalia 90
(Rome, 1956), 7.
[17] Jrgen Schultze (1963) published it as a work related to the narrative

frescoes by the Master of Saint Francis on the walls of the church. Basing
his view on a sixteenth-century text by Fra Ludovico, Pietro Scarpellini (Fra
Ludovico da Pietralunga 1982) asserted that it had been executed to
decorate the burial place of Cardinal Pietro di Barro, who died in 1252 and
was buried in the area of the lower church where the fresco was situated.
More recent studies cast doubt on the attribution to the Master of Saint
Francis; they preferred to see the fresco as the work of an anonymous
Umbrian master (Marques 1987), or of a painter of Tuscan culture (Cadei
1991), or of Roman masters still active in Assisi in the 1270s (Andaloro 2001).
Filippo Todini (1986), on the other hand, asserted that it was a work of the
earliest phase of the Master of Saint Francis, and it seems to me that this
thesis is fully confirmed by comparison with passages of the stained glass
attributable to the same master in the upper church (Martin and Ruf 1997).
See Jrgen Schultze, Zur Kunst des Franziskusmeisters, Wallraf-Richartz-
Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 129130; Pietro Scarpellini, in Fra Ludovico da
Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.), Descrizione della
Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso, 1982), 181; Luiz
Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 59, 60;
Antonio Cadei, Le prime immagini, in San Francesco: Basilica patriarcale
in Assisi; Testimonianza artistica, messaggio evangelico, ed. Roberto
Caravaggi (Milan, 1991), 102; Maria Andaloro, Tracce della prima
decorazione pittorica, in Il cantiere pittorico della Basilica superiore di San
Francesco in Assisi, ed. Giuseppe Basile and Pasquale Magro (Assisi, 2001),
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:375; Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die
Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung
einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), figs. 130, 142.
[18] Joanna Cannon (1982) and Beat Brenk (1983) both indicated the publication
of the Legenda maior of Saint Francis in 1263 as the probable terminus ante
quem for the frescoes, and more recent studies generally have accepted
this proposal. See Joanna Cannon, Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di


San Francesco at Assisi, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 6569; Beat
Brenk, Das Datum der Franzlegende der Unterkirche zu Assisi, in Roma
anno 1300: Atti della iv settimana di studi di storia dellarte medievale
dellUniversit di Roma La Sapienza, ed. Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome,
1983), 229234.
[19] Cf. Edward B. Garrison, Simeone and Machilone Spoletenses, Gazette des
Beaux-Arts 35 (1949): 5358.
[20] See Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in
1997), 1940.
[21] Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in
1997), 4052. The very late dating that Martin proposed (c. 1275) for the
stained-glass panels by the Master of Saint Francis seems difficult to accept,
not only because a scene like Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (right
part of the first bay upon entering) is at variance with the description
proposed by Saint Bonaventura in the Legenda maior, but also because it is
incompatible with the stylistic evidence: the style of the stained glass in
question is more archaic than the frescoes by the Master of Saint Francis in
the lower church.
[22] The works in question consist of a series of crucifixes of which the one in
the Louvre, Paris (R.F. 1981.48), seems the earliest because of the
pronouncedly linear definition of the slender body of Christ, its less arched
position, and the fact that the head rests less heavily on the shoulder than in
other similar paintings. This panel is presumably earlier than the fresco cycle
of the lower church of Assisi, while the small crucifix painted on both sides
now in the Galleria Nazionale in Perugia (no. 18), difficult to interpret
because of the pronounced abrasion of its painted surface, is likely to be
somewhat later in date, perhaps the second half of the 1260s. Even later is
the crucifix in the Acton collection in Florence; cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian
Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 212. But
the dating proposed for this painting, 12801290, is far too late: it must in
my view antedate the crucifix dated 1272. The crucifix in the National Gallery
in London (no. 6361) is probably the latest of the masters surviving works.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Both this painting and its companion, Saint James Minor, were executed on a
single plank of horizontal-grain wood prepared with gesso. The x-radiographs
show that the distinctive wood grain pattern is continuous between the two panels,


proving that they were once part of the same plank, with Saint James Minor on the
left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right.[1] The backgrounds are gilded, and
each halo is decorated with a curvilinear incised design and two sizes of rosette
punches around its border. Areas to be gilded were prepared with red bole, and
incised lines are visible between the painted and gilded areas. Infrared
reflectography reveals a detailed brush underdrawing defining contours within the
painted portions and the fold patterns in the figures drapery.[2] The paint was
applied in the discrete brushstrokes typical of tempera technique, with green
underpaint in the flesh areas. The x-radiographs reveal small, filled holes located
approximately 0.75 cm in from the edges of each panel, which may be the means
of attachment of now-lost framing.[3] There are nine holes visible in Saint John the
Evangelist and ten holes in Saint James Minor.
Stephen Pichetto cradled, cleaned, restored, and varnished both panels in

1944.[4] The paint is generally in good condition on both panels, although it is less
well preserved on Saint James Minor than on Saint John the Evangelist. The
photographs of the paintings published by Robert Lehman (1928) show small,
localized areas of flaking along the contours, in the robe, and on the forehead of
Saint James Minor, as well as in the architectural framing above him, and in the
area close to the lower edge of that painting. Darkened inpaint is visible in small
patches in Saint James Minors halo in these photographs. The photographs show
losses along the edges of Saint John the Evangelists robes, in the arch, and along
the top and bottom edges of that panel. The two roundels in the spandrels of the
arch at the top right and left of each panel, which may have been decorated with
colored glass, have been excavated down to the wood. The varnish applied to
both paintings in 1944 is now somewhat discolored.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] See Dillian Gordon for an examination of the wood grain on the backs of
other panels on the front side of the dossal as an aid to establishing the
panels original placement in the dossal. Dillian Gordon, A Perugian
Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 7172.

Vidicon camera system.
[3] These holes are visible before filling and inpainting in the before work


photos taken in 1943, prior to Pichettos treatment.
DC, 1979), 1:325. However, comparison of the photograph taken before
Pichettos treatment (dated 1943) with that published by Robert Lehman,
The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), nos. 61, 62, implies
that another treatment took place between 1928 and 1943.
PROVENANCE
Executed in all probability for the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia,
where at least part of the fragments belonging to the same altarpiece were still
preserved in 1793;[1] probably privately owned in Perugia;[2] Anton de Waal
[18371917], Rome;[3] probably (Paolo Paolini, Rome), by 1921;[4] Philip Lehman
New York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] William Young Ottley (A Series of Plates
Engraved after the Paintings and Sculptures of the Most Eminent masters of the
Early Florentine School, London, 1826: pl. 1) describes having seen the Deposition
and Lamentation, from the same altarpiece and now in the Galleria Nazionale in
Perugia, in the convent of San Francesco in Perugia in 1793. Evidently, as Dillan
Gordon (A Perugian provenience for the Franciscan double - sided altar - piece by
the Maestro di S. Francesco, The Burlington Magazine 124 [1982]: 72 n. 41)
observes, the altarpiece had already been sawn apart at that time; see the
following note. Previously, Robert Lehman (The Philip Lehman Collection, New
York, Paris, 1928: nos. CXIICXIII), Edward B. Garrison (Italian Romanesque Panel
Painting. An Illustrated Index, Florence, 1949: 171), and others proposed a
provenance from Assisi for both NGA 1952.5.15 and .16. Jurgen Schultze (Ein
Dugento - altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion, Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Istituts Florenz 10 [1961]: 59-66; Zur Kunst des
Franziskusmeister, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 [1963]: 109-150; Die Fresken in
der Unterkirche von San Francesco zu Assisi und andere Werke des
Franziskusmeister, Raggi 7, no. 2 [1967]: 44-58) and Luiz C. Marques (La peinture
du Duecento en Italie Centrale, Paris, 1987: 61-64) maintain that the painting to
which the NGA panels originally belonged was executed for the high altar of the
lower church of San Francesco in Assisi, but most others have abandoned that
theory. [2] The two panels with Stories of Christ entered the Accademia di Belle
Arti in Perugia in 1810 (and thence into the Galleria Nazionale, as no. 22) following
the suppression of the religious orders. The panel of Saint Anthony (no. 21) that


originally flanked the scene of Lamentation was acquired some time later by the
Municipio of Perugia for the then Pinacoteca Civica (see Francesco Santi, Galleria
Nazionale dellUmbria. Dipinti, sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica,
Rome, 1969: 28). Probably, as in various other cases (see for example Mikls
Boskovits and David Alan Brown, Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century, The
Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003: 120),
the components of the dossal remained in the convent even after its dispersal,
perhaps distributed for devotional reasons in the cells and then removed by
individual friars after its suppression. Whatever the case, the panels that did not
enter the Galleria Nazionale in Perugia apparently surfaced together on the art
market in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It was probably in the same
period that the figure of the Prophet Isaiah entered the treasury of the basilica in
Assisi. [3] Anton de Waal arrived in Rome from his native Germany in 1868 and in
1873 became rector of the Collegio Teutonico of Santa Maria in Campo Santo in
the same city, where he formed a small museum (Erwin Gatz, Anton de Waal (1837-
1917) un der Campo Santo Teutonico, Freiburg/Breisgau, 1980). According to
Schultze (1961, 64), the four panels formerly forming part of the altarpiece in San
Francesco al Prato were sold by the arch-confraternity of Santa Maria della Piet in
Campo Santo Teutonico in 1921. [4] According to John Pope-Hennessy and
Laurence B. Kanter (The Robert Lehman Collection, I, Italian Paintings, New York
and Princeton, 1987: 80), the panel with Saints Bartholomew and Simon now in The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Robert Lehman Collection, no. 1975.1.104),
was with the dealer Paolo Paolini in Rome before Philip Lehman purchased it
together with NGA 1952.5.15 and .16. [5] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
Collection, New York, Paris, 1928: nos. 61, 62. The bill of sale for the Kress
NGA 1952.5.15 and .16, is dated 11 June 1943; payment was made four days later
(copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale all indicate
that Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (18921963) was owner of the paintings,
but it is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, whether Robert made the sale for his father or on his own behalf.
See Laurence Kanters e-mail of 6 May 2011, about ownership of the Lehman
collection, in NGA curatorial files.
EXHIBITION HISTORY



6/3, repro., as The Apostle Saint John the Evangelist (shown only in New York in
1999).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leipzig, 1907-1950: 37(1950):105.
Paris, 1928: no. LXII, repro.
1929 Marle, Raimond van. "Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth Century in the
Collection of Monsieur Adolph Stoclet in Brussels." Pantheon 4 (1929):
316.
345.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 1(1932):406-407.
76.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 6 repro.
Index. Florence, 1949: 27, 162-163, repro.


3 vols. Milan, 1951: 2:1486.

1956 Santi, Francesco. La Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria in Perugia. Itinerari
dei musei e monumenti dItalia 90. Rome, 1956: 7.
1961 Schultze, Jrgen. "Ein Duecento-Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer
Rekonstruktion." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
10 (1961): 59 (repro.), 60, 61, 63, 64.
1963 Schultze, Jrgen. "Zur Kunst des Franziskusmeisters." Wallraf-Richartz-
Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 141, repro.
1966 Campini, Dino. Giunta Pisano Capitini e le croci dipinte romaniche.
Milan, 1966: 151.
1967 Schultze, Jrgen. "Die Fresken in der Unterkirche von San Francesco zu
Assisi und andere Werke des Franziskusmeisters." Raggi 7, no. 2
(1967): 51-52, repro. 53.
and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:255, 256.
1969 Santi, Francesco, ed. Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria, vol. 1, Dipinti,
sculture e oggetti darte di et romanica e gotica. Rome, 1969: 27, 29,
31.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 128, 418, 646, 665.
Assisi, 1980: 43-44.
1982 Gordon, Dillian. "A Perugian Provenance for the Franciscan Double-
Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco." The Burlington
Magazine 124 (1982): 71, 72, 74 (repro.), 75.



Treviso, 1982: 175.
1983 Esser, Saskia. "Die Ausmalung der Unterkirche von San Francesco in
Assisi durch den Franziskusmeister." Diss. phil. Rheinische Friedrich-
Wilhelms-Universitt, Bonn, 1983: 136 n. 4.
1983 Poeschke, Joachim. "Der Franziskusmeister und die Anfnge der
Ausmalung von S. Francesco in Assisi." Mitteilungen des
Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 27 (1983): 157 (repro.), 162, 163.
Function. 2 vols. Groningen, 1984-1990: 1(1984):19, repro.
1985 Poeschke, Joachim. Die Kirche San Francesco in Assisi und ihre
Wandmalereien. Munich, 1985: 67.
Essays by Filippo Todini and Elvio Lunghi. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:376,
624.
61, 285.
Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987: 78, 80, repro. 287.
vols. Milan, 1989: 1:185, 2:repro. 29.
1989 Toscano, Bruno. "Maestro di San Francesco." In Dizionario della pittura
Turin, 1989-1994: 3(1992):412.
1990 Neri Lusanna, Enrica, and Cristina De Benedictis. "Miniatura umbra del
Duecento: diffusione e Influenze a Roma e nellItalia meridionale." Studi
di storia dellarte 1 (1990): 11.
1991 Romano, Serena. "Maestro di S. Francesco." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 8(1997):119.
1991 Solberg, Gail E. Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and Work. PhD diss. New
York University, 1991. Ann Arbor, MI, 1994: 634.
1992 Boskovits, Mikls. "Appunti per una storia della tavola daltare: le origini."
Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 430, repro. 433.
1992 Krger, Klaus. Der frhe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und
Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin,
1992: 26, 165, fig. 316.
1992 Solberg, Gail E. "A Reconstruction of Taddeo di Bartolos Altarpiece for
S. Francesco a Prato, Perugia." The Burlington Magazine 134 (1992):
653.


1994 Romano, Serena. "Maestro di San Francesco." in Dipinti, sculture e

ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: studi e restauri. Edited
by Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi. 1st ed. Florence, 1994:
58, repro. 61.
1996 Gordon, Dillian. "The So-Called Paciano Master and the Franciscans in
Perugia." Apollo 143 (1996): 36.
1996 Romano, Serena. "Master of St Francis." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited
Regensburg, 1997: 53-55.
1998 Krger, Klaus. "Selbstdarstellung im Konflikt: zur Reprsentation der
Bettelorden im Medium der Kunst." In Die Reprsentation der Gruppen
Texte, Bilder, Objekte. Edited by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Andrea von
Hlsen-Esch. Gttingen, 1998: 178-179, repro.
1999 Cook, William Robert. Images of Saint Francis of Assisi in Painting,
Stone and Glass from the Earliest Images to c. 1320 in Italy: A
Catalogue. Florence and Perth, 1999: 163.
Milan, 1999: 70-79, repro. 72.
2001 Andaloro, Maria. "Tracce della prima decorazione pittorica." In Il cantiere
pittorico della Basilica superiore di San Francesco in Assisi. Edited by
Giuseppe Basile and Pasquale Magro. Assisi, 2001: 84 n. 45.
2001 Cooper, Donal. "Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of
Double-Sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria." Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institute 64 (2001): 9, 10 (repro.), 12.
2001 Cooper, Donal. "Qui Perusii in archa saxea tumulatus: The Shrine of
Beato Egidio in San Francesco al Prato, Perugia." Papers of the British
School at Rome 69 (2001): 224 (repro.), 225, 227-230, 238, 242.
2001 Scalini, Mario, and Angelo Tartuferi, eds. Un tesoro rivelato: capolavori
dalla collezione Carlo De Carlo. Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia,
Florence, 2001: 40.
2002 Garibaldi, Vittoria. Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria: guida. Milan, 2002:
14.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Maestro di San Francesco." In La pittura in Europa. Il
2:549.


2002 Gordon, Dillian. "Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Perugian Double-

Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function." In Italian Panel Painting of the
Duecento and Trecento. Edited by Victor M. Schmidt. Studies in the
History of Art 61 (2002): 229-234, fig. 2.
2002 Krger, Klaus. "Medium and Imagination: Aesthetic Aspects of Trecento
Panel Painting." In Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento.
Edited by Victor M. Schmidt. Studies in the History of Art 61 (2002): 65-
67.
2006 Bisogni, Fabio, and Enrico Menest, eds. Iacopone da Todi e larte in
Umbria nel Duecento. Exh. cat. Museo Comunale, Todi. Milan, 2006:
168, 170, 172.


Master of the Washington Coronation

Italian, active first third 14th century
BIOGRAPHY
Michelangelo Muraro first coined the conventional name for this artist in 1969 and
gathered under it a group of paintings previously attributed in the main to Paolo
Veneziano (Venetian, active 1333 - 1358).[1] Muraro also conjectured that the
anonymous master might be identifiable with Marco, brother of Paolo, who,
according to a document of 1335, must have been a highly esteemed painter at
this time, though none of his works have come down to us under his name.
However, judging from his stylistic characteristics, the anonymous Master of the
Washington Coronation must have belonged to a generation preceding that of
Paolo and his brother. Fulvio Zulianis (1979) proposal, identifying the anonymous
master instead with Martino, father of the two brothers and also a painter, cannot
be excluded.[2] Unfortunately, none of the works of Martino da Venezia have come
down to us, and his identification with the Master of the Washington Coronation
therefore remains pure conjecture. Yet the existence of some link between the
artistic formation of Paolo Veneziano and the Master of the Washington Coronation
seems probable, even if it remains uncertain whether the link in question were one
of kinship or apprenticeship, or mere influence.
What can be maintained with some certainty is that the name-piece of the group
the panel discussed here, with a date of 1324indicates the phase of the painters
full maturity, although his career must have begun well beforehand, probably even
going back to the final years of the thirteenth century. Works such as the Madonna
no. 7212 in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow or the cycle of frescoes in the church
of San Zan Degol in Venice (although the latter attribution is still disputed) must
date to the years around 1300 and testify to the fact that the artist had already
established a reputation by the turn of the century. We can conclude, therefore,
that the Master of the Washington Coronation was an exponent of the generation
whose greatest representatives were Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) and Pietro
Cavallini in central Italy.
Though probably trained in his hometown in contact with artists such as the Master
of the Cappella Dotto, or the anonymous master of the altar-frontal in the basilica
Master of the Washington Coronation 988


of San Giusto in Trieste,[3] he shows particular susceptibility to the classicizing

tendencies of the so-called Palaeologan Renaissance. The period of his activity,
during which he accepted in an ever more pronounced manner the ideals of
courtly elegance and rhythmic complexity of the Western Gothic, extended to the
third decade of the fourteenth century or shortly after. Apart from satisfying the
artistic needs of his own city, the Master of the Washington Coronation produced
works for various other cities in the Veneto (such as Caorle, where he painted an
iconostasis),[4] or those of northern Emilia or the Dalmatian coast culturally linked
to Venice, such as Forl or Split (Spalato).[5]
[1] Cf. Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 2932. Viktor Nikiti
Lazarev, Review of La pittura veneziana del Trecento by R. Pallucchini, The Art
Bulletin 48 (1966): 120121, linked the Washington Coronation with a group of other
paintings and attributed them to an anonymous artist more archaic in style than
Paolo and conjectured that he might have been Paolos master.
[2] Fulvio Zuliani, Tommaso da Modena, in Tomaso da Modena: Catalogo, ed.

Luigi Menegazzi (Treviso, 1979), 7779.
[3] Commenting on the panel in Trieste, Rodolfo Pallucchini (1964) spoke of an

anonymous work of fundamental byzantinism influenced by Paolo Veneziano.
The dating to the second quarter of the fourteenth century that Pallucchini
suggested (and that Michelango Muraro [1965] accepted) seems to me too late: the
painting might, I believe, still fall into the latter years of the thirteenth century and
reveals the influence not of Paolo but of Palaeologan art. See Rodolfo Pallucchini,
ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 67 and figs. 225226;
Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 141. For the Master of the
Cappella Dotto, see Giovanni Valagussa, Il Maestro della Cappella Dotto, in
Pittura a Milano dallAlto Medioevo al Tardogotico, ed. Mina Gregori (Milan, 1997),
199200.
[4] On the panels that originally formed part of the iconostasis in the cathedral of
Caorle and sometimes are cited under the name of the Master of Caorle, see
Mauro Lucco, Maestro di Caorle, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro
Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:537; Carla Travi, Il Maestro del trittico di Santa
Chiara: Appunti per la pittura veneta di primo Trecento, Arte cristiana 80 (1992):
96 n. 57; Carla Travi, Su una recente storia della pittura del Veneto nel Trecento,
Arte cristiana 82 (1994): 7072.


[5] Examples are the Crucifixion in the Serbian Orthodox church at Split and the
fragments with figures of saints in the Pinacoteca of Forl. See, respectively, Kruno
Prijatelk, Nota su una Crocifissione vicina a Paolo Veneziano a Split (Spalato),
Arte veneta 40 (1986): 148150; and Giovanni Valagussa, Prima di Giotto, in Il
Trecento riminese: Maestri e botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed. Daniele Benati
(Milan, 1995), 7778.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1969 Muraro, Michelangelo.

Paolo da Venezia. Milan, 1969: 29-32.
1992 Lucco, Mauro. Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington

and Marco di Martino da Venezia (Marco Veneziano).
1992: 2:534-535, 541-542.
1996 Gibbs, Robert. Master of the Washington Coronation. In

London, 1996: 20:784-785.


Master of the Washington Coronation

Italian, active first third 14th century
The Coronation of the

Virgin
1324
painted surface (score lines to score lines): 99.3 77.4 cm (39 1/8 30 1/2 in.)
overall: 108.3 79 1.5 cm (42 5/8 31 1/8 9/16 in.)
framed: 115.3 x 86 x 8.9 cm (45 3/8 x 33 7/8 x 3 1/2 in.)
Inscription: on the base of the throne: MCCCXXIIII [1]
[1] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the gilding of the inscription,
that of the background, and that of an area of restoration using x-ray fluorescence
spectroscopy (see report dated February 9, 1999, in NGA conservation files). All
three areas showed the same elements; therefore, this type of analysis could not
be used to determine if the inscription is original.
ENTRY
The Coronation of the Virgin marks the final episode of the legend of the mother of
Jesus, that of her ultimate glorification after her bodily assumption into heaven.
The episode first appears in medieval sources, but it was not until the thirteenth
century that the scene in which Christ places the crown on his mothers head is
explicitly illustrated in monumental painting and sculpture. Mary usually is
represented seated on the same throne as her son and to his right as he crowns
her with his right hand.[1] This scheme, which subsequently underwent some
changes, especially in Tuscany,[2] was faithfully followed by Venetian painters
throughout the fourteenth century and beyond. The panel in the National Gallery of
Art is one of the earliest representations of the subject that has come down to us
from the Veneto region.[3] An iconographic innovation introduced here, one that
Paolo Veneziano (Venetian, active 1333 - 1358) subsequently revived, is the
representation of the celestial spheres that can be seen behind the cloth of honor
in the background.[4]
The Coronation of the Virgin 991


The Coronation of the Virgin in Washington originally must have formed part of a
larger complex. No evidence has yet been found of other panels with which it
might have belonged. But there are good grounds for assuming that it would have
been flanked by a series of stories of Christ or stories of the Virgin, arranged in two
superimposed tiers, rather than by standing figures of saints, as found, for instance,
in polyptychs of the full maturity of Paolo Veneziano.[5] It may also be assumed
that the Coronation would have been surmounted by a gable panel representing
the Crucifixion [6] and that standing figures of saints or prophets would have been
placed at the two sides of the upper register [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction). I think
it probable, on grounds of style and measurements, that the panel of the prophets
Jeremiah and Daniel and the busts of two Evangelists [fig. 2], formerly in the Cini
collection in Venice and now in another private collection, belonged to this latter
zone of the polyptych;[7] the panel seems well suited to integrate the upper right-
hand part of the polyptych, now lost, of which the Washington Coronation formed
the center.
Who was the Master of the Washington Coronation? As regards his possible
identification with Martino da Venezia, we can only speak of a working hypothesis
suggested by the stylistic affinities between the painting here discussed and those
of Paolo, son of Martino, and also bearing in mind the undisputed ascendancy that
Paolos bottega rapidly succeeded in winning in early fourteenth-century Venetian
painting. The fact remains that the artistic profile of the Master of the Washington
Coronation remains very uncertain. Art historians now generally agree on the need
to exclude his works from the catalog of Paolo Veneziano, to whom they were
almost unanimously attributed for some thirty years, beginning with Giuseppe
Fiocco (19301931), and to whom the Gallery (1985), Francesca Zava Boccazzi
(1993), and John Oliver Hand (2004) continued to attribute the Coronation in
Washington.[8] But the alternative proposal by Michelangelo Muraro (1965, 1969),
who placed the Washington panel at the center of his reconstruction of the oeuvre
of an artist he considered the stylistic precursor and perhaps even the elder
brother of Paolo, has met with increasing consent since the latter decades of the
twentieth century.[9] Opinions differ, however, on the extent of the catalog of the
Master of the Washington Coronation. Only three paintings, all chronologically
close to the panel dated 1324, are unanimously, or almost unanimously, recognized
as his work. They are the Madonna and Child no. 1604 in the Musei Civici in
Padua;[10] the painted crucifix in the Istituto Ellenico in San Giorgio dei Greci in
Venice;[11] and the fragment of a Crucifixion that surfaced at an auction sale in


Rome in 1974, but which has since gone untraced.[12] To this small group a number
of other works can, in my view, be added. These include one other dated painting:
namely, the altar frontal of the Blessed Leone Bembo now at the treasury of the
Church of Saint Blase in Vodnjan (Dignano dIstria) in Croatia, painted for the
Venetian church of San Sebastiano in 1321. Usually ascribed to Paolo
Veneziano,[13] the panel provides further evidence of the essential stylistic
continuity between the manner of Paolo and that of the older master.
The two painters, however, should not be confused. From his earliest works (those
datable between the second and early third decade of the century, such as the
scenes from the life of the Virgin in the Musei Civici at Pesaro [14] and the frescoes
on the triumphal arch and nave of the church of San Fermo at Verona),[15] Paolo
Veneziano displays a more spontaneous elegance in the movement of his figures,
more fluent linear rhythms in his design, and more delicate passages of
chiaroscuro in his modeling. In other words, he reveals a style akin to but more
modernmore attuned to the Gothic mannerthan that of the Master of the
Washington Coronation. In the years in which Paolo made his appearance on the
scene, the activity of our anonymous master is attested to by works in which the
forms tend to be more incisive and in which any cultivation of elegance in gesture,
or gothicizing animation in calligraphic rhythm, is muted. Instead, the author of the
Washington Coronation dedicates particular attention to the corporeal substance
of his figures, which in general seem more restricted in movement and more
reserved in comportment than those that populate the paintings of Paolo
Veneziano.
The results of the masters activity in the 1310s, or slightly before, are probably the
Crucifixion in the Serbian Orthodox church of Split (Spalato);[16] the two fragments
of an altarpieceone with three, the other with four figures of saintsnow in the
Pinacoteca Civica in Forl;[17] and the so-called Madonna delle stelle in the church
of Santi Maria e Donato in Murano.[18] These paintings are still strongly indebted to
the classicizing aspirations of the Palaeologan Renaissance. But instead of
cultivating the formal complexities and agitated rhythms of Byzantine painting of
his day, the artist seems to draw inspiration from the powerful firmness of the
bodies and the incisive figurative style of the painted images of previous decades.
What remains of the important cycle of frescoes in the church of San Zan Degol in
Venice probably belongs to a slightly earlier phase in the masters career, to the
years around the turn of the century. These frescoes are variously attributed and
dated,[19] but it seems to me difficult to doubt their very close stylistic affinity with


the group of paintings just cited. They are truly superb examples of the painters
sophisticated figurative culture, influenced not by Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337)
(as has sometimes been suggested) but by the neo-Hellenistic figurative art
developed in Constantinople and also in other centers of the Byzantine
Commonwealth since the 1260s.[20] These works are preceded in date by the
vigorous language of some other paintings in which the artist strives to create
strong effects of plastic relief and to present his figures in illusionistically
convincing architectural settings. I refer to such works as the Madonna and Child
with Donors [fig. 3] in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow [21] and the busts of
apostles from the iconostasis of Caorle Cathedral.[22] In particular, the articulation
of forms in the latter, with zones of color almost geometrical in regularity, and their
modeling with energetic brushstrokes and sudden flashes of white highlights
suggest that they were executed within the last decade of the thirteenth century.
The fact that works of such importance had been commissioned from the artist
some two to three decades before he executed the painting now in Washington
shows that the Master of the Washington Coronation must have become a well-
established painter by the time of its creation, even if he still proposed very
different figurative ideas than those of his full maturity. If the artist followed a
decidedly philo-Byzantine orientation in his initial phase, in his paintings of the
1320s he draws closer to the classicism pursued by Giotto and other artists of
central Italy. In works such as the panel now in Washington (dated 1324) he aspires
to a figural style characterized by gothicizing elegance of movement and fluency in
linear rhythms [fig. 4]. These paintings reveal an undeniable kinship with the first
works attributed to Paolo Veneziano. It is therefore probable that the elderly
master shared a workshop around this time with the rising star of fourteenth-
century Venetian painting.[23]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 2 Master of the Washington Coronation, Two Apostles

and the Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel (?), 1324, tempera
on panel, formerly Vittorio Cini collection, Venice
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by the

Master of the Washington Coronation: a. The Coronation
of the Virgin; b. Two Apostles and the Prophets Jeremiah
and Ezekiel (?) (fig. 2)


fig. 3 Master of the Washington Coronation, Madonna and fig. 4 Detail, Master of the Washington Coronation, The
Child with Angels and Donors, early fourteenth century, Coronation of the Virgin, 1324, tempera on poplar,
tempera on panel, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress
Image: bpk, Berlin/Pushkin Museum, Moscow/Roman Collection
Beniaminson/Art Resource, NY


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by the Master of the Washington Coronation:

a. The Coronation of the Virgin
b. Two Apostles and the Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel (?) (Entry fig. 2)
NOTES
[1] See Philippe Verdier, Le couronnement de la Vierge: Les origines et les

premiers dveloppements dun thme iconographique (Montral and Paris,
1980); Marie-Louise Threl, Le triomphe de la vierge-glise: A lorigine du
dcor du portail occidental de Notre-Dame de Senlis (Paris, 1984).
[2] On paintings by Tuscan artists in which Christ crowns Mary generally with
both hands, cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine


new ed. (Florence, 2001), 531539. In the earliest version of this

iconography in Tuscan painting, the panel by Guido da Siena (c. 12701275)
now in the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London, Jesus places the
crown on his mothers head with his right hand only. See Gertrude Coor,
The Earliest Italian Representation of the Coronation of the Virgin, The
[3] A fresco in the church of Santi Fermo e Rustico in Verona representing the
Coronation of the Virgin must date several years before 1324. Now much
damaged, it was rightly restored to the young Paolo Veneziano (Venetian,
active 1333 - 1358) by Andrea De Marchi (2004) with a dating to the early
third decade. The painting, executed c. 1320 according to the present writer
(see Boskovits 2009), is similar in iconography to the Coronation in
Washington, but the composition, adjusted to the oblong shape of the
frescoed space, is densely thronged with angels to the sides of the throne.
Very similar to the composition of the present panel is the embroidered
antependium from the cathedral of Krk (Veglia) in Croatia, now in the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London (cf. Gamulin 1964). The work is
difficult to date but presumably originated in years not far removed from the
execution of the painting discussed here. Andrea De Marchi (2004) kindly
brought to my attention another early representation of the subject, a now
fragmentary fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin in Gemona Cathedral in
Friuli, datable to the 1320s. See Andrea De Marchi, La prima decorazione
della chiesa francescana, in I santi Fermo e Rustico: Un culto e una chiesa,
per il XVII centenario del loro martirio (3042004), ed. Paolo Golinelli and
Caterina Gemma Brenzoni (Verona, 2004), 205206; Mikls Boskovits,
Paolo Veneziano: Riflessioni sul percorso, 1, Arte cristiana 97 (2009): 83;
Grgo Gamulin, Alcune proposte per Maestro Paolo, Emporium 139 (1964):
151153.
[4] As found in polyptych no. 21 of the Gallerie dellAccademia in Venice and in

the fragmentary panel of the Museo di Palazzo Venezia in Rome. The motif
of the star-studded celestial sphere is also present in the antependium of
Krk and the fresco of Gemona cited in the previous note. Cf. Rodolfo
Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), figs. 144
and 183.
[5] Cf. the altarpieces of San Pantalon at Venice, that of the stories of Saint
Lucy at Krk (Croatia), and polyptych no. 21 of the Accademia in Venice. The
five small panels with stories of the Virgin in the Museo Civico in Pesaro
probably come from a similar polyptych. Cf. Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La
pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), figs. 1923.
[6] Although most Venetian polyptychs of the fourteenth century have come
down to us either disassembled or incomplete, two altarpieces painted by
Paolo Venezianoin the Bishops Palace of Krk and the (now dismembered)
polyptych from the Collegiata of Pirano (on loan to the Museo di Palazzo


Venezia in Rome)still retain a gable panel with the Crucifixion. Another

panel that retains its upper Crucifixion is the small altarpiece in the Galleria
Nazionale in Parma, on which see Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura
veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), figs. 48, 162, 74.
[7] Rodolfo Pallucchini (1964) published the panel, citing its provenance as the
collection of the art historian Detlev von Hadeln (18781935) in Florence and
its size as 26 90 cm. According to Pallucchini, the panel in question is a
work by Paolo Veneziano dating to c. 1330 and must have originally formed
part of the predella of a now disassembled polyptych. Michelangelo Muraro
(1969) accepted that proposal, although he did not exclude the alternative
suggestion that the four figures originally belonged to una piccola
iconostasi (a small iconostasis). More recently, Mauro Lucco (1992) included
the painting in the catalog of the Master of Caorle, the conventional name
for an artist whose outlines perfectly coincide, in my view, with those of the
Master of the Washington Coronation. See Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La
pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 29, 250, fig. 65;
Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 151152; Mauro
Lucco, Maestro di Caorle, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro
Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:537. The alternation of full-length prophets
and half-figure apostles would seem to exclude the alleged provenance of
the former Cini collection panel either from a predella or from an
iconostasis. Yet just such an alternation of painted figures of different scale
is found in the upper register of various polyptychs from Venice or from the
Veneto, e.g., that of Santa Chiara, a work by Paolo Veneziano now in the
Accademia in Venice; that of Guariento now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles; or that of Giusto de Menabuoi in the baptistery of Padua; see
Pallucchini (1964), figs. 137, 315, 399. The proportions of the individual
panels of the former Cini painting, less squat than those of the predellas of
Venetian altarpieces of the period, also suggest that they are more likely to
belong to the upper register of an altarpiece. As regards it possibly
belonging to the Washington Coronation, I can only make a tentative
hypothesis, given that I am only familiar with the work from photographs;
however, the stylistic features of the two paintings show that they belong to
the same chronological phase of the painter, and even their proportional
relations make their common origin plausible. In fact the lost laterals of the
Coronation, to judge from the still intact polyptychs of Paolo Venezianos
earliest phase (such as the altarpiece in Krk and the polyptych of Santa
Chiara now in the Accademia in Venice), must have been only slightly
broader than the centerpiece.
[8] Following its late nineteenth-century attributionby whom remains

unclearto Caterino Veneziano (in the caption of the nineteenth-century
photograph cited in Technical Summary note 3), Raimond van Marle (1924)
cited the Coronation as an anonymous work of gothico-byzantine style.


Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval in 1930 expressed the view that it is highly

feasible to attribute it to Maestro Paolo himself, and in the following year
Giuseppe Fiocco (19301931) unhesitatingly confirmed this attribution.
Subsequently, only Viktor Lazarev, at least in a first publication dating to
1931, preferred to leave the painting in anonymity, while other art historians,
until 1965, remained convinced of Paolos authorship. See Raimond van
Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 4, The Local
Schools of North Italy of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 56; Evelyn
Sandberg-Vaval, Maestro Paolo Veneziano, The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 57 (1930): 165 n. 5; Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, ber eine neue
Gruppe byzantinisch-venezianischer Trecento-Bilder, Art Studies 8 (1931):
13 n. 3. Giuseppe Fiocco, Le primizie di maestro Paolo Veneziano, Dedalo
11 (19301931): 887888; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An
Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 300; Francesca Zava
Boccazzi, Paolo Veneziano, in Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori, ed.
Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano, 6 vols. (Turin, 1993), 4:139; John
Hand, National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection (New
York, 2004), 10.
[9] Michelangelo Muraro, Maestro Paolo da Venezia: Fortuna critica, Ateneo

veneto 3 (1965): 92, 96; Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan,
1969), 21, 26, 2830, 157159 et passim, pls. 12. Lazarev (1965) was the
first to reunite the Washington Coronation with the Madonna no. 1604 in the
Musei Civici in Padua and with the Madonna (no. I. str. 141) in the National
Museum in Belgrade, classifying them as works of a predecessor, perhaps
even the master, of Paolo Veneziano. The same scholar (1966) further
explained that it was Muraro who had convinced him in the course of a
conversation that the painting in the National Gallery of Art should be
excluded from Paolos catalog. See Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Saggi sulla pittura
veneziana dei secoli XIIIXIV: La maniera greca e il problema della scuola
cretese, Arte veneta 19 (1965): 2426, 31 n. 62; Viktor Nikiti Lazarev,
Review of La pittura veneziana del Trecento by R. Pallucchini, The Art
Bulletin 48 (1966): 120121. Muraro himself then tried to reconstruct the
production of the Master of the Washington Coronation, assigning him not
only the panels in Padua and Belgrade but also the Madonna no. 7212 in the
Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the above-mentioned fragment with figures of
saints and prophets formerly in the Cini collection in Venice, and the painted
crucifix now in the church of San Giorgio dei Greci in Venice. Some other
works that Muraro ascribed to the anonymous master, whom he
hypothetically identified with Marco, brother of Paolo, should rather be
ascribed to other hands, according to the present writer: the Madonna in
Belgrade; the painted crucifix in the monastery of the Benedictine nuns at
Trogir (Tra); and that in the Borla collection at Trino Vercellese all probably
should be considered youthful works by Paolo himself. For these works, see
Rosa DAmico and Tatjana Bonjak, in Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo


Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente, ed. Francesca Flores

dArcais and Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2002), 144; Grgo
Gamulin, The Painted Crucifixes in Croatia (Zagreb, 1983), 120 and pl. IV;
Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964),
48 and fig 156. The antependium in the monastery of the Benedictine sisters
at Zadar (Zara) and the mosaics of the baptistery of San Marco in Venice are
presumably the work of other, as yet unidentified Venetian artists of the
period. As for the cartoon for the stained-glass window with the figure of the
Baptist in the lower church of San Francesco at Assisi, I think it is
attributable to Jacopo Torriti. Cf. Alessandro Tomei, Iacobus Torriti pictor:
Una vicenda figurativa del tardo Duecento romano (Rome, 1990), 68.
Following Muraros intervention, many art historians continued to maintain
with varying degrees of conviction the attribution of the Washington
Coronation to Paolo Veneziano, while others preferred to leave it in
anonymity. Cf. Giuseppe Marchini, Corpus vitrearum Medii Aevi, vol. 1, Le
vetrate dellUmbria (Rome, 1973), 136; Luciano Gargan, Cultura e arte nel
Veneto al tempo del Petrarca (Padua, 1978), 58; Hans Belting,
Introduzione, in Il medio oriente e loccidente nellarte del XIII secolo, Atti
del XXIV congresso internazionale di storia dellarte, September 1018,
1979, ed. Hans Belting (Bologna, 1982), 10 n. 20; Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo
Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 61 n. 83; Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano
(Milan and Venice, 2003), 213. Since the 1970s, an ever growing number of
scholars have accepted Muraros proposal, and even in some cases his
conjectural attribution to Marco Veneziano: Michelangelo Muraro, Maestro
Marco e Maestro Paolo da Venezia, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di
Antonio Morassi (Venice, 1971), 23, 3031; Giuseppe Marchini, Corpus
vitrearum Medii Aevi, vol. 1, Le vetrate dellUmbria (Rome, 1973), 136; Lucio
Grossato, ed., Da Giotto al Mantegna (Milan, 1974), no. 9; Paolo
Veneziano, in Dizionario enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli incisori
italiani: Dall XI al XX secolo, ed. Alberto Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi, 11
vols. (Turin, 1975), 8:323; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:326328; Pietro Scarpellini
(intro. and comm.), in Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini,
Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi
(Treviso, 1982), 344; Robert Gibbs, Locchio di Tomaso: Sulla formazione di
Tomaso da Modena (Treviso, 1981), 37; Robert Gibbs, A Fresco by Marco or
Paolo Veneziano in Treviso, Studi trevisani 1 (1984): 2729, 30 n. 7; Robert
Gibbs, Tomaso da Modena: Painting in Emilia and the March of Treviso,
13401380 (Cambridge, 1989), 29; Robert Gibbs, Master of the Washington
Coronation, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York,
1996), 20:784; Robert Gibbs, Paolo Veneziano, in The Dictionary of Art, ed.
Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 24:30; Mauro Lucco, Pittura del
Trecento a Venezia, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed.
Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:181; Mauro Lucco, Marco di


Martino da Venezia, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed.

Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:634; Mauro Lucco, Paolo
Veneziano, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:648; Mauro Lucco, Maestro
dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il
Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:534; Mauro Lucco,
Marco di Martino da Venezia (Marco Veneziano), in La Pittura nel Veneto:
Il Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:541542; Mauro Lucco,
Paolo Veneziano, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2
vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:544; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on
Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 127, 128; Fulvio
Zuliani, in Da Giotto al tardogotico: Dipinti dei Musei Civici di Padova del
Trecento e della prima met del Quattrocento, ed. Davide Banzato and
Franca Pellegrini (Rome, 1989), 7779; Francesca Flores dArcais, Venezia,
in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992),
1:22; Francesca Flores dArcais, Paolo Veneziano, in Enciclopedia dellarte
medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1998), 9:157; Francesca Flores dArcais, in Il
Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente,
eds. Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo,
Milan, 2002), 142; Carla Travi, Il Maestro del trittico di Santa Chiara: Appunti
per la pittura veneta di primo Trecento, Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 96 n. 57;
Carla Travi, Su una recente storia della pittura del Veneto nel Trecento,
Arte cristiana 82 (1994): 71; Clara Santini, Unantologia pittorica del primo
Trecento nella chiesa di San Francesco a Udine, Arte cristiana 82 (1994):
188; Clara Santini, Un episodio della pittura veneziana di primo Trecento: Il
Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington, Il Santo 37
(1997): 123145; Italo Furlan, in Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la
pittura tra Oriente e Occidente, ed. Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni
Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2002), 118; Viktorija Markova, Italija:
Sobranie ivopisi, vol. 1, VIIIXVI vekov (Moscow, 2002), 43; Andrea De
Marchi, Peintre vnitien vers 1320, in Splendeurs de la peinture italienne,
12501510 (Paris, 2005), 2628; Andrea De Marchi, Polyptyques vnitiens:
Anamnse dune identit mconnue, in Autour de Lorenzo Veneziano:
Fragments de polyptyques vnitiens du XIVe sicle, ed. Andrea De Marchi
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2005), 1415; Andrea De Marchi, La postrit du
devant dautel Venise: Retables orfvrs et retables peints, in The Altar
and its Environment, 11501400, ed. J.E.A. Kroesen and Victor Michael
Schmidt (Turnhout, 2009), 63.
[10] Cf. Lucio Grossato, ed., Da Giotto al Mantegna (Milan, 1974), no. 9; Fulvio
Zuliani, in Da Giotto al tardogotico: Dipinti dei Musei Civici di Padova del
Trecento e della prima met del Quattrocento, ed. Davide Banzato and
Franca Pellegrini (Rome, 1989), 7779. Francesca Flores dArcais claimed to
detecterroneously, in my viewdifferences between this panel and the
Coronation in Washington, soprattutto nella maggiore corposit della


Madonna padovana...a differenza della morbidissima ed elegante struttura

delle figure Kress [i.e., the figures of the Washington panel] avvolte in vesti
che molto pi si legano alla tradizione bizantina... (above all in the greater
solidity of the Paduan Madonna...as distinguished from the soft and elegant
structure of the Kress figures, wrapped in draperies much more closely tied
to the Byzantine tradition). Francesca Flores dArcais, in Il Trecento
adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente, ed.
Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan,
2002), 142.
[11] Cf. Maria Cristina Bandera Viani, Museo delle icone bizantine e post
bizantine e Chiesa di San Giorgio dei Greci (Bologna, 1988), 12; Clara
Santini, Un episodio della pittura veneziana di primo Trecento: Il Maestro
dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington, Il Santo 37 (1997): 125 and
pl. 5.
[12] Cf. Christies, Rome, May 20, 1974, lot. 73. Measuring 53 73 cm, it is a
fragment of the lower part of a panel depicting the Crucifixion. The sale
catalog linked this work with the circle of the painter of the Washington
Coronation, and Carla Travi later inserted it in the catalog of the Master of
Caorle (alternative name of the Master of the Washington Coronation). Carla
Travi, Il Maestro del trittico di Santa Chiara: Appunti per la pittura veneta di
primo Trecento, Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 96 n. 57.
[13] On the panel now at Vodnjan, Blessed Leone Bembo with a Donor, Angels,
and Four Stories of His Life, cf. Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana
del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 2224, figs. 2734. Various scholars (including
Flores dArcais 1992) have attributed it to Paolo Veneziano, but Filippo
Pedrocco (2003) cited it as the work of a maestro precedente (i.e., a
master earlier than Paolo). In my view, the Vodnjan panel belongs to the
catalog of the Master of the Washington Coronation. See Francesca Flores
dArcais, Venezia, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2
vols. (Milan, 1992), 1:29, 32, 34; Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan
and Venice, 2003), 213; Mikls Boskovits, Paolo Veneziano: Riflessioni sul
percorso, 1, Arte cristiana 97 (2009): 88 n. 21.
[14] Cf. Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice,
1964), 2021, and figs. 1923, and in more recent years Alessandro Marchi,
in Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e
Occidente, ed. Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan, 2002), 146. In my view, Marchis dating to the third decade
of the fourteenth century should be pushed back to the second decade.
[15] See Andrea De Marchi, La prima decorazione della chiesa francescana, in

I santi Fermo e Rustico: Un culto e una chiesa, per il XVII centenario del loro
martirio (3042004), ed. Paolo Golinelli and Caterina Gemma Brenzoni
(Verona, 2004), 199219. De Marchi (206) dated the frescoed decoration of


the church in Verona to the early 1320s, in a period in cui il giovanissimo

Paolo sembra muoversi ancora sotto tutela del Maestro dellIncoronazione
del 1324, forse suo padre Martino (in which the very young Paolo seems
still to be moving under the tutelage of the Master of the 1324 Coronation,
perhaps his father Martino). But a slightly earlier dating, to the end of the
second decade, should not be excluded. Paolo died between 1358 and
1362, so he probably would not have been all that young around 1315.
[16] Published by Kruno Prijatelk, Nota su una Crocifissione vicina a Paolo

Veneziano a Split (Spalato), Arte veneta 40 (1986): 148150, the painting
was restored to the Master of Caorle by Mauro Lucco, Maestro di Caorle,
in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992),
2:537; and by Carla Travi, Il Maestro del trittico di Santa Chiara: Appunti per
la pittura veneta di primo Trecento, Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 96 n. 57.
[17] The two fragments in Forl, left in anonymity by earlier art historians such as
Edward B. Garrison (1949) and Giordano Viroli (1980), were attributed to the
Master of Caorle by Giovanni Valagussa (1995). Cf. Edward B. Garrison,
237; Giordano Viroli, ed., La Pinacoteca Civica di Forl (Forl, 1980), 67;
Giovanni Valagussa, Prima di Giotto, in Il Trecento riminese: Maestri e
botteghe tra Romagna e Marche, ed. Daniele Benati (Milan, 1995), 7778.
[18] Published as a work of the Veneto-Byzantine school of the 14th century by

Ettore Merkel, Isole del nord della Laguna, Quaderni della Soprintendenza
ai beni artistici e storici di Venezia 14 (1986): 159160, the panel was
reassigned to the Master of Caorle by the present writer. Cf. Carla Travi, Su
una recente storia della pittura del Veneto nel Trecento, Arte cristiana 82
(1994): 71.
[19] Discussed by Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento

(Venice, 1964), 10, figs. 24, as examples of a bizantinismo...[che] sembra
decantarsi in un classicismo ellenistico, mediante una costruzione
intensamente plastica della forma...alla fine del Duecento (Byzantinism
which seems to decant itself into a Hellenistic classicism by means of an
intensely plastic construction of forms...at the end of the thirteenth century),
the San Zan Degol frescoes were interpreted as an announcement of the
art of Paolo Veneziano by Michelangelo Muraro, Antichi affreschi
veneziani, in Le meraviglie del passato (Verona, 1954), 688. Sergio Bettini
(1954) noted their kinship with the mosaic dated 1277 on the ciborium of the
Basilica Eufrasiana in Parenzo (Istria), and Italo Furlan (2002) dated them
even earlier, to c. 1260. According to Luciano Bellosi, on the other hand
(1985), the architectural settings of these frescoes were troppo solide e
concrete per non postulare un precedente assisiate (too concrete and solid
not to postulate a precedent [for them] in Assisi), and this implied a dating to
the early years of the fourteenth century. A late thirteenth-century date had
already been postulated by Lazarev (1965), the first to compare the San Zan


Degol cycle with the Madonna in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the
Washington Coronation, followed by Boskovits (1989), who included in the
masters oeuvre, in addition to the aforesaid works, the panels in Caorle (for
which see also note 22 below). Travi (1994) then categorically affirmed the
common authorship of the frescoes and the group of paintings formerly
combined with the Washington Coronation under the conventional name of
the Master of Caorle. See Sergio Bettini, I mosaici dellatrio di San Marco e
il loro seguito, Arte veneta 8 (1954): 724; Italo Furlan, in Il Trecento
2002), 118; Luciano Bellosi, La pecora di Giotto (Turin, 1985), 147 n. 93, 214;
Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Saggi sulla pittura veneziana dei secoli XIIIXIV: La
maniera greca e il problema della scuola cretese, Arte veneta 19 (1965):
2426, 31 n. 62; Mikls Boskovits, Pittura e miniatura a Milano: Duecento a
primo Trecento in La nuova citt dal Comune alla Signoria, ed. Carlo
Bertelli, Il millennio ambrosiano (Milan, 1989), 67 n. 68; Carla Travi, Su una
recente storia della pittura del Veneto nel Trecento, Arte cristiana 82
(1994): 71.
[20] The neo-Hellenistic tendency, attested in the field of monumental painting

by the frescoes of Sopoani, is also exemplified by various icons in the
collection of the monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, or by the
miniatures in the Prophet Book of the Biblioteca Vaticana (Vat. Gr. 1153), or
those of the Gospels (ms. 5) of the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos and
of ms. grec. 54 in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Cf. Vojislav J. uri,
Byzantinische Fresken in Jugoslawien (Munich, 1976) 5457; Helen C.
Evans, ed., Byzantium: Faith and Power (12611557) (New Haven, 2004),
356365.
[21] Published by Viktor Nikiti Lazarev, Saggi sulla pittura veneziana dei secoli
XIIIXIV: La maniera greca e il problema della scuola cretese, Arte veneta
19 (1965): 2325, as the work of an anonymous Venetian master dating to
c. 13101315, it was restored to the Master of the Washington Coronation by
Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 125. For a review of
the fortuna critica, cf. Viktorija Markova, Italija: Sobranie ivopisi, vol. 1,
VIIIXVI vekov (Moscow, 2002), 4143. Cf. also notes 9 and 19 above.
[22] Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964),
5960 and figs. 203204, published the six panels in question, with busts
of apostles; he attributed them to a Master of Caorle. In his view, this master
was a follower of Paolo during the phase of his full maturity. Michelangelo
Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 109110, in contrast, thought that
these penetrating images of apostles are even later in date, ascribing them
to a pittore veneto-bizantino del tardo Trecento (Venetian-Byzantine
painter of the late fourteenth century). More correctly, Mauro Lucco (1992)
connected the panels in Caorle with some works in the catalog of the


Master of the Washington Coronation, while Travi (1994) combined under

the conventional name of the Master of Caorle the majority of the works
attributable to the master of the panel in Washington. Cf. Mauro Lucco,
Maestro di Caorle, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco,
2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 2:537; Carla Travi, Su una recente storia della pittura
del Veneto nel Trecento, Arte cristiana 82 (1994): 7172.
[23] Although various scholars have expressed doubt, I think Rodolfo Pallucchini
(1964) was right to see the hand of the young Paolo in the figures of the two
tiny donors painted kneeling at the feet of the wooden relief of San Donato
in the altarpiece at Murano, a work dated 1310 and hence the earliest
testimony of the artists activity. See Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura
veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 19 and figs. 1618. Apart from the
paintings cited in notes 35 above, I think that Paolos initial phase also
should include some paintings significantly attributed in the past to the
Master of the National Museum in Belgrade (inv. I str. 141). Cf. Rosa DAmico
and Tatjana Bonjak, in Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura
tra Oriente e Occidente, ed. Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni Gentili
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2002), 144145. These include two painted
crucifixes, one in the monastery of the Benedictine nuns at Trogir and the
other in the Borla collection at Trino Vercellese (see above note 9).
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The painting was executed on a two-member, vertically grained poplar

panel.[1] Mario Modestini thinned and cradled the panel during a restoration
treatment in 1953.[2] The x-radiographs reveal that four knots were cut out of the
panel and replaced with insets, and the areas were covered with pieces of fabric.
The artist applied the paint on a moderately thick gesso ground, apparently without
the help of a preparatory underdrawing. The main lines of the draperies were
incised into the gesso, but they do not correspond to the gilded highlights of the
mantles of Christ and of the Virgin in the painting. The artist used green underpaint
in the flesh tones and mordant gilding on top of the paint to decorate the
draperies. The upper part of the painted area terminates in a mixtilinear arch
placed within an ogival arch with crocketed ornament. The spandrels to its side,
forming the upper angles of the wooden support, were originally covered by the
frame and therefore were not gilded or painted but only gessoed. In these areas
the artist sometimes wiped his brushes and, on the left side, sketched a pinnacle-
shaped form (perhaps a detail of the original frame), discovered after the removal
of the surviving remainder of the frame. The painted surface is generally in fair


condition. A considerable number of small scattered losses appear in the central

part of the gold ground as well as in the draperies (especially in the Virgins
mantle), whereas along the bottom edge of the panel the paint is irregularly
fractured, obliterating the riser of the dais. An old photograph, taken in the late
nineteenth century [fig. 1],[3] shows the picture covered with dirt and darkened
varnish. Another photo [fig. 2], made before the 1953 treatment, proves that in the
meantime the painting was probably treated.[4] During the last recorded treatment,
another discolored varnish was removed and the losses were inpainted.


fig. 2 Archival photograph, pre-1953, Master of the

Washington Coronation, The Coronation of the Virgin,
fig. 1 Archival photograph, late nineteenth century, Master
1324, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art,
of the Washington Coronation, The Coronation of the
Virgin, 1324, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art,
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department identified the wood (see report
dated May 30, 1989, in NGA conservation files).
DC, 1979), 1:328, mentioned that Mario Modestini cradled, cleaned and
restored the painting in 1953.
[3] This photo (Naya, no. 880; negative now with Osvaldo Bhm in Venice) is
not listed in the catalogs of the photographer Carlo Naya (18161882) that I


have been able to consult. However, the Catalogo generale dei quadri e
affreschi esistenti nelle chiese di Venezia published by his firm in 1900
listed negatives numbered above 2000, so the one cited here presumably
had been executed some years earlier. See also Provenance note 1.
[4] Photograph in the NGA conservation files.
PROVENANCE
Antonio Dal Zotto [18411918], Venice.[1] Dr. J. Carl [or Carlo?] Broglio, Paris;[2]
purchased jointly 27 July 1950 by (Thos. Agnew and Sons, Ltd., London) and
(Rudolf Heinemann, New York); Agnew share sold to (Rudolf Heinemann, New
York); (M. Knoedler and Co., New York);[3] purchased February 1952 as by Paolo
Veneziano by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1952 to NGA. [1]
On the life and career of the sculptor Dal Zotto see Livia Alberton Vinco da Sesso,
"Antonio dal Zotto," in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 77 vols., Rome, 1960-:
32(1986): 285287. In 1889 Dal Zotto married Ida Lessjak, widow of the
photographer Carlo Naya, and after her death in 1893 Dal Zotto became owner of
Nayas successful firm specializing in views of Venice and reproductions of works
of art. According to Alberton Vinco da Sesso, Naya had also amassed a collection
of ancient statuary, and it cannot be excluded that the Gallerys painting actually
came from the photographers collection. Nonetheless, the catalogue of the
sculptors estate sale, Collezione del fu Comm. Antonio del Zotto e gi Giuseppe
Piccoli (Geri-Salvadori, Venice, 1-16 September 1919), does not cite the painting,
which perhaps had already been sold. [2] Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia,
Milano, 1969: 157, transmits the reported provenance of the painting from the
Broglio collection, annotated on a photograph in the photographic archive of the
Biblioteca Berenson at the Villa I Tatti, Florence. The Agnew stockbooks record the
painting as no. J0332 and identify the Broglio family member from whom it was
purchased. [3] The Agnew records (kindly confirmed by Venetia Constantine of
Agnews, e-mail, 28 June 2010, in NGA curatorial files) give details about the joint
purchase and indicate that Agnews share in the painting was sold to Heinemann
on 16 June 1952, several months after the February date of the Knoedler bill of sale
to the Kress Foundation (see note 4). Constantine speculates that Agnew might
have recorded the date when payment for their share was actually received from
Heinemann, rather than the date when they made the decision to sell their share.
Heinemann often worked in tandem with Knoedlers, for whom he was at one time


managing partner, and may have done so in this instance. [4] The bill of sale from
Knoedlers to the Kress Foundation for twelve paintings, including this one, is
dated 6 February 1952; payment was made in three installments, the final one on 5
September 1952. See also M. Knoedler and Co. Records, accession number
2012.M.54, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Series II, Box 76 (Sales Book No.
16, Paintings, 1945-1953). Copies of the Knoedler bill and sale record are in NGA
curatorial files.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. "Paolo Veneziano." In Allgemeines Lexikon der

1930 Fiocco, Giuseppe. "Le primizie di maestro Paolo Veneziano." Dedalo 11
(1930-1931): 887 (repro.), 888.
1930 Sandberg-Vaval, Evelyn. "Maestro Paolo Veneziano." The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 57, no. 331 (October 1930): 165, 177.
1931 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "ber eine neue Gruppe byzantinisch-
venezianischer Trecento-Bilder." Art Studies 8 (1931): 13 n. 3.
1935 Bettini, Sergio. "Aggiunte a Paolo Veneziano." Bollettino d'Arte X (April
1935): 476, repro. 477.
1950 Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Commento alla Mostra di Ancona." Arte veneta 4
(1950): 8, 9, fig. 1.
1951 Di Carpegna, Nolfo. "La coperta della pala doro di Paolo Veneziano."
Bollettino darte 36 (1951): 56.
234.
1954 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Maestro Paolo e la pittura veneziana del suo
tempo." Arte veneta 8 (1954): 86, 88.
Washington, 1956: 138, no. 53, repro.
1957 Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian
School. 2 vols. London, 1957: 1:129, pls. 1, 2.
1957 Grossato, Lucio, ed. Il Museo Civico di Padova: dipinti e sculture dal XIV
al XIX secolo. Venice, 1957: 118.


1961 Pignatti, Terisio. Origini della pittura veneziana. Bergamo, 1961: 47.
Kress Collection. London, 1961: 6, repro. 7.
1963 Bonicatti, Maurizio. Trecentisti riminesi: sulla formazione della pittura
riminese del 300. Rome, 1963: 8 n., 53-54, fig. 5.
1963 Francastel, Galienne. Histoire de la peinture italienne, vol. 3, lart de
Venise. Paris, 1963: 24, repro. 27.
1964 Gamulin, Grgo. "Alcune proposte per Maestro Paolo." Emporium 139
(1964): 147, 150, 152, 153.
1964: 21, 24-35, 141, 198, pl. I.
1965 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Saggi sulla pittura veneziana dei secoli XIII-XIV: la
maniera greca e il problema della scuola cretese." Arte veneta 19 (1965):
24-26, 29 (repro.), 31 n. 62.
1965 Levi DAncona, Mirella. "La Mariegola della Scuola Grande di S. Marco al
Museo Correr." Bollettino dei musei civici veneziani 10 (1965): 13.
1965 Muraro, Michelangelo. "Maestro Paolo da Venezia: fortuna critica."
Ateneo veneto 3 (1965): 92, 96.
1966 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. "Review of La pittura veneziana del Trecento by R.
Pallucchini." The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 120-121.
1966 Pallucchini, Rodolfo. Paolo Veneziano e il suo tempo. Milan, 1966: n.p.
[3].
1969 Gamulin, Grgo. "Recenzija za Paola." Peritil 12-13 (1969-1970): 24
(repro.), 31 n. 11, 32-33.
1969 Muraro, Michelangelo. Paolo da Venezia. Milan, 1969: 21, 26, 28-30, 157-
159 et passim, pls. 1-2.
1970 Borla, Silvio. "Paolo Veneziano e il fratello Marco." Arte veneta 24 (1970):
199, 202-204, figs. 282, 289.
1970 Gamulin, Grgo. "Di un libro su Paolo da Venezia." Arte veneta 24 (1970):
256 (repro.), 258, 261-263, 267 n. 2.
1971 Buchthal, Hugo. "Review of Paolo da Venezia by Michelangelo Muraro."
The Art Bulletin 53 (1971): 400.
1971 Muraro, Michelangelo. "Maestro Marco e Maestro Paolo da Venezia." In
Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Antonio Morassi. Venice, 1971: 23, 24
(repro.), 30-31.



Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 158, 309, 647, 667.
1972 "Paolo Veneziano." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli
Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto Bolaffi and
1973 Marchini, Giuseppe. Corpus vitrearum Medii Aevi, vol. 1, le vetrate
dellUmbria. Rome, 1973: 136.
1973 Muraro, Michelangelo. "Paolo Veneziano in Jugoslavia." Zbornik za
likovne umetnosti 9 (1973): 48.
1974 Christie, Manson, & Woods. Catalogo di pitture e sculture dal XIV al XIX
secolo e arte contemporanea provenienti da raccolte private. Rome, 21
May 1974: 37.
1974 Davies, Martin. "Italian School." In European Paintings in the Collection
of the Worcester Art Museum. Vol. 1, Text. Edited by Worcester Art
Museum. Worcester, MA, 1974: 412.
1974 Furlan, Italo, and Giovanni Mariacher, eds. Venezia e Bisanzio. Exh. cat.
Palazzo Ducale, Venice. Milan, 1974: n.p., nos. 87, 88.
1974 Grossato, Lucio, ed. Da Giotto al Mantegna. Exh. cat. Palazzo della
Ragione, Padua. Milan, 1974: n.p., no. 9.
1976 Echols, Mary Tuck. "The Coronation of the Virgin in Fifteenth Century
Italian Art." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1976.
Ann Arbor, MI, 1981: 281.
1977 Kiel, Hanna. "Das Polyptychon von Paolo und Giovanni Veneziano in
Sanseverino Marche." Pantheon 35 (1977): 107, 108 n. 10.
1978 Gargan, Luciano. Cultura e arte nel Veneto al tempo del Petrarca. Studi
sul Petrarca 5. Padua, 1978: 58.
237.
1981 Gibbs, Robert. Locchio di Tomaso: sulla formazione di Tomaso da
Modena. Treviso, 1981: 37.
September 10-18, 1979. Edited by Hans Belting. Bologna, 1982: 10 n. 20
Treviso, 1982: 344.
1983 Gamulin, Grgo. The Painted Crucifixes in Croatia. Zagreb, 1983: 52 n.
46, 53, nos. 49 and 51.


1984 Gibbs, Robert. "A Fresco by Marco or Paolo Veneziano in Treviso." Studi
trevisani 1 (1984): 27-29, 30 n. 7.
1986 Lucco, Mauro. "Pittura del Trecento a Venezia," "Marco di Martino da
Venezia," and "Paolo Veneziano." In La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il
Trecento. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 1:181; 2:634,
648.
1988 Bandera Viani, Maria Cristina. Museo delle icone bizantine e post
bizantine e Chiesa di San Giorgio dei Greci. Bologna, 1988: 2.
1989 Banzato, Davide, and Franca Pellegrini, eds. Da Giotto al tardogotico:
dipinti dei Musei Civici di Padova del Trecento e della prima met del
Quattrocento. Exh. cat. Musei Civici, Padua. Rome, 1989: 77-79.
1989 Eisenberg, Marvin. Lorenzo Monaco. Princeton, 1989: 61 n. 83.
1989 Gibbs, Robert. Tomaso da Modena: Painting in Emilia and the March of
Treviso, 1340-1380. Cambridge, 1989: 29.
1989 Zava Boccazzi, Francesca. "Paolo Veneziano." In Dizionario della pittura
Turin, 1989-1994: 4(1993):139.
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1991-2002: 9(1998):157.
1992 Flores dArcais, Francesca. "Venezia." In La Pittura nel Veneto. Il
Trecento. Edited by Mauro Lucco. 2 vols. Milan, 1992: 1:22, fig. 7, pls. 23
and 29.
1992 Lucco, Mauro. "Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di
Washington." In La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Trecento. Edited by Mauro
Lucco. 2 vols. Milan, 1992: 2:534.
1992 Lucco, Mauro. "Marco di Martino da Venezia (Marco Veneziano)." In La
Pittura nel Veneto. Il Trecento. Edited by Mauro Lucco. 2 vols. Milan,
1992: 2:541-542.
1992 Lucco, Mauro. "Paolo Veneziano." In La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Trecento.
Edited by Mauro Lucco. 2 vols. Milan, 1992: 2:544.
1992 Travi, Carla. "Il Maestro del trittico di Santa Chiara: appunti per la pittura
veneta di primo Trecento." Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 96 n. 57.
1993 Humfrey, Peter. "The Prehistory of Titian's Assunta." Studies in the
History of Art 45 (1993): 230-231.
1994 Santini, Clara. "Unantologia pittorica del primo Trecento nella chiesa di
San Francesco a Udine." Arte cristiana 82 (1994): 188.
1994 Travi, Carla. "Su una recente storia della pittura del Veneto nel
Trecento." Arte cristiana 82 (1994): 71.
1996 Gibbs, Robert. "Master of the Washington Coronation." In The Dictionary


of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York, 1996: 20:784.

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Regensburg, 1997: 315.
1997 Santini, Clara. "Un episodio della pittura veneziana di primo Trecento: il
Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington." Il Santo 37
(1997): 123-145, pls. 1, 18.
2002 Flores dArcais, Francesca, and Giovanni Gentili, eds. Il Trecento
Adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente. Exh.
cat. Castel Sismondo, Rimini. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2002: 18 (repro.),
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2002 Markova, Viktorija. Italija: sobranie ivopisi. Vol. 1, VIII-XVI vekov.
Moscow, 2002: 43.
2003 Pedrocco, Filippo. Paolo Veneziano. Milan and Venice, 2003: 213.
2004 DAmico, Rosa, Tatjana Bonjak, and Dubravka Preradovi. Pittura
italiana dal XIV al XVIII secolo dal Museo Nazionale di Belgrado: Tesori
darte italiana dal Museo Nazionale di Belgrado. Belgrade, 2004: 129.
2004: 454-455.
2005 De Marchi, Andrea, ed. Autour de Lorenzo Veneziano: fragments de
polyptyques vnitiens du XIVe sicle. Exh. cat. Muse des Beaux-Arts,
Tours. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2005: 14-15, repro.
2005 De Marchi, Andrea. "Peintre vnitien vers 1320." In Splendeurs de la
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al Settecento. Edited by Maria Walcher. Trieste, 2005: 130 n. 84, fig. 40.
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73, 75, 92 n. 2, fig. 5.
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Rayonnement de licone du Vie au XIXe sicle. Paris, 2006: 46, fig. 4.
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orfvrs et retables peints." In The Altar and its Environment, 1150-1400.
Edited by J. E. A. Kroesen and Victor Michael Schmidt. Turnhout, 2009:
63.


Nardo di Cione
Florentine, active from c. 1340; died 1365/1366
BIOGRAPHY
Although his name occurs in documents for the first time in the years between
1346 and 1348, when he enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali (the Florentine
guild to which painters also belonged),[1] Nardo, brother of the painters Andrea and
Jacopo, was already considered one of the leading painters of his city by
midcentury.[2] An artist whose paintings have been described as fragile, delicate,
dreamy, or remote, characterized by a peculiar, lyrical mood,[3] Nardo must have
been trained under the influence of such painters as Maso and Stefano. Of the few
works by his hand cited in the documents, only the fragments of a cycle of frescoes
in the Oratorio del Bigallo in Florence, commissioned in 1363, have survived, but it
has been argued, probably correctly, that an image of the Madonna formerly in the
Ufficio della Gabella dei Contratti, once signed and dated 1356, can be identified
with the panel of the Madonna and Child with four saints now in the Brooklyn
Museum in New York.[4] It is also certain that the painter made his will in May 1365
and that by the following year he was already reported dead.
Nardos catalog has been reconstructed, especially thanks to Osvald Sirn (1908)
and Richard Offner (1924, 1960), largely on the basis of stylistic comparisons with
the frescoes (Last Judgment, Paradise, and Inferno) in the Strozzi Chapel in Santa
Maria Novella, given to him by a trustworthy fifteenth-century source, Lorenzo
Ghiberti.[5] The murals, especially the best-preserved scene in the cycle, that of
Paradise, described by Offner as one of the most ambitious and grandiose
achievements in a single fresco in Florentine history,[6] are undoubtedly to be
considered Nardos masterpiece. They must have been painted immediately prior
to 1357,[7] when the altarpiece painted by his brother Andrea was installed in the
chapel. The close-packed throng of figures in this cycle, men and women of proud
mien but also capable of expressing deep emotions, is modeled with extreme care,
with delicate passages of chiaroscuro. A series of other paintings with similar
characteristics presumably dates to the same period; they include such works as
the polyptych formerly in the National Gallery in Prague (now in the Castle of
Bojnice in Slovakia), The Coronation of the Virgin in the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London, and the two panels with saints in the Alte Pinakothek in
Nardo di Cione 1016


Munich. The final phase of the painters presumably brief career is exemplified in
turn by two polyptychs, both dated 1365, respectively in the Galleria
dellAccademia and in the Museo dellOpera at Santa Croce in Florence. In both
altarpieces the marked effects of plasticity and the rigor of the compositional
structure reveal Nardos gradual assimilation of the more essential and severe
manner of his brother, Andrea di Cione. Still under discussion are the works
produced during the artists first phase, in the 1340s. We can probably place in it
such works as the Madonna and Child in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts or
another version of the same subject in the Yale University Art Gallery at New
Haven,[8] and the detached mural paintings from the Cappella Giochi e Bastari in
the church of the Badia in Florence, presumably completed in part before
midcentury.
[1] According to Irene Hueck, Le matricole dei pittori fiorentini prima e dopo il
1320, Bollettino darte 57 (1972): 121, contrary to what previous studies have
maintained, Nardo could not have enrolled in the guild earlier than 1346.
[2] According to an undated document probably written shortly after the Black
Death, which struck Italy in 1348 (Archivio di Stato, Pistoia, Patrimonio Ecclesiastico
C 450), Nardo, together with his brother Andrea, was ranked among the best
Florentine painters of the time. Cf. Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical
Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonn (Columbia, Mo, 1982), 257.
[3] Cf. Richard Offner, Nardo di Cione and His Triptych in the Goldman Collection,
Art in America 12 (1924): 99112.
[4] Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton,
1951), 15.
[5] Nardo, ne frati predicatori fece la capella dello nferno: Julius von Schlosser,
ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwrdigkeiten, vol. 1, Commentarii (Berlin, 1912), 40. Cf.
Osvald Sirn, Giottino und seine Stellung in der gleichzeitigen florentinischen
Malerei, Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien (Leipzig, 1908), 7176; Richard Offner,
Nardo di Cione and His Triptych in the Goldman Collection, Art in America 12
(1924): 99112; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960).
Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), v.
Nardo di Cione 1017


Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), v, 4751.
[8] No. 1943.208; see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New
York, 1958), 115117 (as Follower of Daddi); for the attribution to Nardo di Cione,
cf. Richard Offner, Mikls Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. "Nardo di Cione." In

1907-1950: 26(1932):39-40.
1937 Gronau, Hans Dietrich.

Andrea Orcagna und Nardo di Cione: eine stilgeschichtliche
Untersuchung. Berlin, 1937.

Century. Sec. IV, Vol. II: Nardo di Cione. New York, 1960.
1972 "Nardo di Cione." In

Turin, 1972-1976: 8(1975):84-87.

Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,1370-1400. Florence, 1975:
25-27, 197 nn. 59-62.
1991 Petrocchi, Stefano. Nardo di Cione. In

Nardo di Cione 1018


1992 Kreytenberg, Gert. Cione, Nardo di. In

19(1998):261-262.
2001 Tartuferi, Angelo.

Dal Duecento agli Orcagna: il restauro della Madonna col Bambino di
ignoto fiorentino del Duecento e del trittico di Santa Maria degli Angeli
di Nardo di Cione. Livorno, 2001: 27-73.
Nardo di Cione 1019


Nardo di Cione

Saints Peter and John the
Evangelist, and Man of
Sorrows [entire triptych]
c. 1360
tempera on panel
overall: 76 66.4 cm (29 15/16 26 1/8 in.)
Inscription: middle panel, on base of the frame: AVE.GRATIA.PLENA.DO[MINUS
TECUM] (Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; from Luke 1:28)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.261.a-c
ENTRY
This portable triptych, in the form of a tabernacle with gabled central panel and
closing shutters, was clearly intended for private devotion. The external decoration
of the lateral panels is purely ornamental, conforming to Tuscan tradition [fig.
1].[1] When the shutters are opened, the composition is more unusual, since the
central image of the Madonna bearing the child in her arms[2] is presented as a
three-quarter-length standing figure, whereas the two saints by whom she is
flanked are full length. This combination, found in some cases in Sienese Trecento
art,[3] is rare in Florentine painting. It is seen in some works of Bernardo Daddi
(active by 1320, died probably 1348) dating to the years 13351340.[4] The
presence of the Man of Sorrows in the trefoil at the top of the tabernacle is also
very uncommon.[5]
On publishing the painting with an attribution to Nardo di Cione (which is

unanimously accepted),[6] Richard Offner (1924) noted its affinities with the
frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. He considered it
to have been executed by the mid-1350s, among other reasons because he
detected in it vivid reminiscences of Bernardo Daddi, an artist who had died in
1348.[7] Later, in the volume of the Corpus of Florentine Painting dedicated to
Madonna and Child, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man of 1020

Nardo, Offner seems to have preferred an earlier dating, c. 13451350.[8] In the

National Gallery of Art catalogs, without any convincing motivation, the tabernacle
was invariably dated to c. 1360, a view accepted by Fern Rusk Shapley (1966),
Andrew Ladis (1982), Serena Skerl Del Conte (1995), John O. Hand (2004), and
Federica Baldini (2008).[9] A dating to the 1350s was proposed, in turn, by Gyorgy
Gommosi (19271928), Hans Dietrich Gronau (1937), Barbara Klesse (1967), Olga
Pujmanova (1984), and Stefano Petrocchi (1997).[10] Erling S. Skaug (1994), Gert
Kreytenberg (1996, 2000), and Angelo Tartuferi (2001) have preferred a relatively
late dating, placing the small triptych after 1360, in the last years of the artists
life.[11]
In his remarkable analysis of the triptych, then in the Goldman collection, Offner did
not disguise his great admiration for this painting: he praised it for the gemlike
solidity of its colors, the introspection, greater warmth and simpler humanity of
its protagonists, and in particular the passionate tenderness of Marys face [fig.
2].[12] Offner saw in this triptych an expression of the lyrical rumination that
distinguished Nardos work as a whole.[13] He also praised the finished
workmanship of its technique, in which sharpness and honesty of execution
become a kind of preciosity.[14] Indeed, the present-day observer cannot but be
enchanted by the extreme accomplishment of its execution, which its exceptionally
fine state allows us to appreciate fully. We may observe, for example, such details
as the exquisite painting of the childs transparent, almost invisible, close-fitting
shirt, revealing the delicacy of the small body below it; or that of the silky beard of
Saint John [fig. 3] that overlaps the dense folds of his mantle; or the naturalness
with which Marys hands support the child, their tapering fingers penetrating the
folds of the gold-embroidered brocade that envelops the lower limbs of the infant
Jesus.
Yet, in spite of its excellent condition and extremely high level of quality, the former
Goldman triptych now in the National Gallery of Art does not seem to have
particularly drawn the attention of scholars in the half century since Offner wrote
his appreciative essay. The reason for this can perhaps be found in its extremely
simple and clear composition and its stylistic character so manifestly Nardesque
that it cannot leave any doubts about its authorship. If any doubts persist, they
concern not the triptychs attribution but its date. Yet the chronology of the
apparently rather brief artistic trajectory of Nardo di Cione is a very intricate
question and, after Offner, few other scholars have attempted to tackle it. Our only
secure points of reference for ordering Nardos works are the triptychs dated 1365

and the probable date of 13561357 for the frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel. On this
basis it can be maintained with some confidence that, as Offner astutely observed,
the execution of the Gallery painting must be situated closer to the Strozzi
frescoes, even though it is difficult to establish whether it should precede or
postdate them. In the chronological reconstruction of Nardos career proposed in
Offners monograph dedicated to the artist (1960), the triptych was placed in a
group of paintings that also included the triptych formed by The Coronation of the
Virgin in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the laterals in the Alte Pinakothek in
Munich,[15] another triptych now in the National Gallery in London,[16] and the
polyptych in Bojnice Castle (Slovakia).[17] Though none of these paintings are
dated, they do seem to anticipate problems that the artist would successfully
resolve in the mural cycle in the Strozzi Chapel.[18] Yet some clues perhaps
suggest a slightly later date for the painting discussed here.
In the London Coronation, the artist does not appear to be interested in placing his
figures in a three-dimensional space: Jesus and his mother sit on a virtually
invisible throne, and, both by their position in profile and by the preference shown
for wide expanses of color, testify to the artists wish to reduce the plasticity of
forms to the surface plane. In the two groups of five saints of the laterals now in
Munich, the regilding of parts of the ground and the retouching of the draperies
have altered the paintings original appearance, but the soft modeling of the faces,
the delicate tonal passages that define the strongly simplified forms, and the
decoration of the halos[19] seem to confirm the common origin of the three panels
and their relatively precocious date.
An aura of grandeur is conferred on the polyptych now in Bojnice by its relatively

squat and ponderously solemn figures who yet seem more free in their
movements, and who wear mantles constructed of deep and broad folds [fig. 4].
Here, too, the artist dispenses with an architectural throne (Marys seat is created
by a sumptuously embroidered gold cloth, on which the various planes are
suggested by nothing more than the shifting intensity of light), butin contrast to
the panels in Munichhe accentuates the plasticity of the bodies in various ways.
The saints are mainly presented frontally, but the chiaroscuro is denser and the
expressive power of their gestures is heightened by their foreshortened arms,
which seem to project outward from the surface plane of the painting towards the
spectator. The precious brocaded stuffs of some of the female saints garments
here are no longer surface planes, as in the Saint Julian in the Alte Pinakothek, but
instead follow the volumetric substance of the forms: they not only envelop but

also model the bodies. In the halos of this polyptych, the incised foliated motifs are
largely replaced by punch marks, although these are made to stand out against the
granulated ground, as in the halos in the triptych now divided between London and
Munich.[20] The same kind of gold tooling recurs in the triptych discussed here,
although here the decoration impressed in the gold ground consists exclusively of
punched motifs, in part reworked.[21]
Aspects of the gold tooling and of the ornamental motifs of the gilded stuff that
envelops the child underline the Washington triptychs affinity with the Bojnice
polyptych and the Madonna and Child in the Brooklyn Museum in New
York.[22] Yet several features of our painting reveal a change of direction in
Nardos style. We may note, for instance, the more slender proportions of the
figures and the tendency to give an almost geometrical regularity to the drapery
folds, which here assume angular forms and at times brusquely interrupt with
sudden projections the placid fluidity of the contours. Moreover, the rather
frowning seriousness of the faces of the two saints, modeled with more marked
chiaroscuro and few but deep wrinkles, or their thick hair and wiry-looking beards
[fig. 5],[23] seem more in keeping with the paintings of Nardos full maturity than
with those hitherto cited or with the murals in the Strozzi Chapel. In the Goldman
Madonna, in short, Nardo, without abandoning the grace and delicacy of his
previous works, begins to draw close to the severe essentiality of form pursued by
his brother Andrea until the mid-1350s. Similar developments can be observed in
his triptych now in the National Gallery in London, or the frescoes in the Cappella
di SantAnna in the cloister (Chiostro dei Morti) at Santa Maria Novella [24]that is,
in works probably dating to the early 1360s, but at any rate earlier than the two
altarpieces dated 1365.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Exterior view of portable triptych with wings closed, fig. 2 Detail of Mary, Nardo di Cione, Madonna and Child,
tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man of
Samuel H. Kress Collection Sorrows, c. 1360, tempera on panel, National Gallery of

fig. 3 Detail of Saint John, Nardo di Cione, Madonna and fig. 4 Nardo di Cione, Madonna and Child, tempera on
Child, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man panel, Bojnice Castle, Slovakia
of Sorrows, c. 1360, tempera on panel, National Gallery of

fig. 5 Detail of Saint Peter, Nardo di Cione, Madonna and

Child, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man
NOTES
[1] Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in
Tuscany, 12501400 (Florence, 2005), figs. 4041, 68 n. 76, cited several
other triptychs similarly decorated.
[2] The iconographic type of the standing Madonna and Child can be traced
back to the Byzantine Hodegetria. It began to spread in central Italy only in
the late thirteenth century, probably through the influence of French Gothic
sculpture, first in the sculpture of Giovanni Pisano and other Sienese and
Pisan masters and then in painting. Cf. Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence
and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 42; Dorothy C. Shorr, The
Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York,

1954), 119, 147.
[3] The best known example of the combination of the three-quarter Madonna
with full-length saints in the laterals is Duccios triptych in the National
Gallery in London (no. 566), but it is also found in a polyptych by Luca di
Tomm in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (no. 586), in which the two
saints that flank the Virgin are three-quarter length, whereas the other saints
on the outer sides of the polyptych are full length.
[4] The paintings by Bernardo Daddi in question are the triptych in the Museo
dellOpera del Duomo in Florence; the other dismantled triptych of identical
composition now divided between the Pinacoteca Vaticana (no. 174) and the
Kunstmuseum in Bern (no. 880); and a third similar triptych, which entered
the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in recent years (no. 93.PB.16). Cf.
His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 191200; Richard
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 574578.
[5] As Richard Offner noted, this iconographic motif normally appears in the
central zone of the predella and not in the gable of altarpieces. Richard
Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), 24.
[6] The panel, it seems, had entered the Goldman collection as a work of
Orcagna; see Richard Offner, Nardo di Cione and His Triptych in the
Goldman Collection, Art in America 12 (1924): 99. Subsequently, the
attribution to Orcagna was reaffirmed in a number of manuscript expertises
by leading art historians of the period, of which one was dated 1938 and
signed by Adolfo Venturi, while Giuseppe Fiocco proposed an improbable
attribution to Jacopo di Cione (Florentine, c. 1340 - c. 1400?) in another of
these testimonials; see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:342. Copies of the expertises are
[7] The Goldman Virgin, Richard Offner wrote, stands even closer [than
the Madonna with Child and Saints now in the Brooklyn Museum] to the
female figures in the Strozzi Chapel Paradise. The lurking movement in her
easy posture, the slight yielding tilt of her head, its mould, the hair, the flat
nose, the dainty budded lips and above them a sharp caret joined by two
parallels to the nostrils, will be found again and again there. Richard Offner,
Nardo di Cione and His Triptych in the Goldman Collection, Art in

America 12 (1924): 111. In another passage, the same scholar (on page 106)
observed that, in spite of their affinities, even Daddis Madonnas, of all
Florentine Madonnas most closely related to those of Nardo, seem to live in
a far different world.
[8] Richard Offner proposed this time frame for such works as Coronation of
the Virgin in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the polyptych in
Bojnice, and the triptych in the National Gallery in London. Richard Offner, A
Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), ixx n. 6. See
below notes 911.
[9] National Gallery of Art, Book of Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1941), 154, 241;
National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and
Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 138; National Gallery of Art, Book of
Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress
Collection (Washington, DC, 1959), 21; National Gallery of Art, Summary
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 34, fig. 75; Andrew Ladis, Taddeo
75; Serena Skerl Del Conte, Antonio Veneziano e Taddeo Gaddi nella
Toscana della seconda met del Trecento (Pasian di Prato, Udine, 1995),
108; John Hand, National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the
Collection (New York, 2004), 13; Federica Baldini, in Leredit di Giotto: Arte
a Firenze 13401375, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2008), 16, 168, 169.
[10] Gyorgy Gommosi, Nardo di Cione s a Szpmvszeti Mzeum somze-fle

Madaonnaja, Az Orszgos Magyar Szpmvszeti Mzeum: vknyvei 5
(19271928): 16; Hans Dietrich Gronau, Andrea Orcagna und Nardo di
Cione: Eine stilgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Berlin, 1937), 86 n. 152, 89;
Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 294, 371; Olga Pujmanov, in Nrodn galerie v
Praze, ed. Jiho Kotalka (Prague, 1984), 52; Stefano Petrocchi, Nardo di
Cione, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:650.
1:176178; Gert Kreytenberg, Cione, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane
Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 7:336; Angelo Tartuferi, Dal Duecento agli
Orcagna: Il restauro della Madonna col Bambino di ignoto fiorentino del
Duecento e del trittico di Santa Maria degli Angeli di Nardo di
Cione (Livorno, 2001), 68, 75 n. 32.
[12] Richard Offner, Nardo di Cione and His Triptych in the Goldman

Collection, Art in America 12 (1924): 105; Richard Offner, Studies in

Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century (New York, 1927), 103, 104.
Collection, Art in America 12 (1924): 106.
[15] Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Ionides Collection, no. C.A.I. 104; Alte
Pinakothek, Munich, nos. W.A.F. 1027, 1028. See Richard Offner, A Critical
sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), 1322.
[16] London, National Gallery, no. 581. Richard Offner considered this panel as
representative of an era...of progressive preparation for the Strozzi cycle,
with a dating c. 13451350. See Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo
di Cione (New York, 1960), v (for quote), x, 3740. More recently, Dillian
Gordon (1985), developing Offners hypothesis that Bartolomeo di Lapo
Benini was the donor of the altarpiece (which is known to have come from
the Florentine church of San Giovanni Battista della Calza), suggested a very
late date of execution, c. 1365. She based her proposal also on Erling S.
Skaugs (1983) observations on the punch marks used to decorate the halos
in the panel. On the basis of its stylistic characteristics, however, the
painting would better fit into Nardos chronology around 1360, in my
opinion. Cf. Dillian Gordon, Nardo di Ciones Altarpiece: Three
Saints, National Gallery Technical Bulletin 9 (1985): 2123; Erling S.
Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology,
Consideration to Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:176179.
[17] The polyptych, acquired in the late nineteenth century for the Plffy Castle
in Bojnice (now Slovakia), was transferred to the Prague National Gallery
(nos. O 23762385) after the Second World War; Richard Offner, A Critical
sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), 3335. Subsequently, it
passed to the National Gallery in Bratislava and from there was restored to
its original seat at Bojnice.
[18] Nardos frescoes, Richard Offner concluded, were started soon after the
tabernacle [Orcagnas monumental work executed for the church of
Orsanmichele starting in 1352] was begun, and were very probably brought
to an end before Orcagnas polyptych was set upon the altar of the [Strozzi]
chapel in 1357; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di
Cione (New York, 1960), 47.
[19] In all three panels, the floriated motifs incised in the halos stand out against

the granulated ground. Analyzing this decoration, Erling S. Skaug observed

that in the LondonMunich panel the small four-point punch rosetta has
been used not for granulation but as an independent motif. The same effect
is to be found in the Washington tabernacle. It remains to be proved, he
added cautiously, that this rare feature in Nardos tooling habits actually
connects these works in time, but the possibility deserves attention. Erling
[20] On the various techniques of gold tooling, see Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks
from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop
Florence, c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:6266.
[21] Re-worked tooling, explained Erling S. Skaug, is...in the Stockholm

[Nationalmuseum, no. 2259], Prague and New Haven [Yale University Art
Gallery, nos. 1971.1314] panels mainly confined to the addition of a blunt
point in the centers of medium-size six-petalled motifs. In halo and frame
borders of the Washington and LondonMunich panels, however, re-
working even of medium-size circle motifs by blunt point inside frequently
occurs. Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico:
(Oslo, 1994), 1:178 n. 18.
[22] Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14.

Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 294295, registered the presence of fabrics
decorated with motifs very similar to those of the gold-embroidered
brocade of the child in the Washington triptych, in the polyptych now at
Bojnice, and in the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Brooklyn Museum.
For this latter panelidentifiable, according to Millard Meisss plausible
proposal, with the altarpiece formerly in the office of the Gabella de
Contratti in Florence and according to a seventeenth-century source signed
and dated 1356see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Cione (New York, 1960), 6769; and Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and
Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 15 n. 15. See also Hans
Dietrich Gronau, Nardo di Cione, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden
Knstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker,
and Hans Vollmer 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1932), 26:39; and Hans Dietrich
Gronau, Andrea Orcagna und Nardo di Cione: Eine stilgeschichtliche
Untersuchung (Berlin, 1937), 58.
[23] These characteristics are fully manifest in the two triptychs dated 1365 in the
Galleria dellAccademia and Museo di Santa Croce. See Richard Offner, A

Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960), 8596 (as
Following of Nardo di Cione); Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal
Firenze, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003),
182191; and Angelo Tartuferi, in Angeli, santi e demoni: Otto capolavori
restaurati; Santa Croce quaranta anni dopo (19662006), Problemi di
conservazione e restauro, ed. Marco Ciatti, Cecilia Frosinini, and Chiara
Rossi Scarzanella (Florence, 2006), 111112.
The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione (New York, 1960),
7578. Giovanni di Bartolo Steccuti, who had patronage of the chapel, is
known to have died in 1360 and was buried there. Among the frescoes in
question, the figure of Saint John the Evangelist (see Offner 1960, pl. XXIX)
offers interesting affinities with the same saint in the Washington triptych.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This triptych is one of the few early Italian panels in the collection that has not been
cradled. The wooden support of the central panel is vertically grained. A knotty
section of the left side of the panel was replaced by the insertion from the front
side of eleven rectangular blocks of wood, before the application of the cloth
interleaf and the gesso layer. The frame and base of the triptych are original. The
inscription is on a horizontally grained piece of wood that was set into the base.
The wings are formed of single boards with vertical grain; it is unclear whether the
spiral colonnettes by which they are joined to the main panel are originalrepaired
and regildedor modern. The back of the wings are covered by paint imitating
porphyry, with an ornamental decoration at the center that feigns the effect of
inlaid work [fig. 1].
The figures and some of the drapery folds were delineated with incised lines.
Infrared reflectography at 1.1 to 2.5 microns reveals underdrawing and
hatchmarking, which is more prevalent in the Madonna and Child than in Saint
John and Saint Peter.[1] The areas of flesh were prepared with a green underpaint,
which was not modeled. Discrete paint strokes are visible in the clothing, but the
paint is well blended in the flesh tones. Mordant gilding was used to form the gold
decorative borders of the Virgins and saints robes. The lining of the Madonnas
robe was originally brocade, probably with silver gilding and green paint.[2]
Punched designs decorate the figures halos, the border of each panel, the

brocade swaddling cloth, the carpet, and the gable.
The central panel has a slight convex warp. Probably in an effort to flatten the
wood, the back of the panel was scored from the top right corner approximately to
the center, at an angle that follows the wood grain. The back of the panel is
covered by a layer of modern reddish brown pigment. The base, including the area
around the blue paint of the inscription, has been regilded; the upper frame
members retain their original gilding, which has been locally repaired. The painted
surface is generally very well preserved. There is inpainting in the bust of the Man
of Sorrows, in the gable trefoil, and in Christs swaddling cloth. The brocade lining
of the Madonnas robe has been overpainted. The painting was treated by Stephen
Pichetto in 1937 and again by Mario Modestini in 1955.

fig. 1 Exterior view of portable triptych with wings closed,

TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Infrared reflectography was performed with a Santa Barbara Focalplane

InSb camera fitted with J and K astronomy filters.
[2] The NGA scientific research department performed x-ray fluorescence

spectrometry (XRF). Silver and elements associated with green and blue
pigments were found (see report dated December 22, 2010, in NGA

PROVENANCE
Gustav Adolf Wilhelm von Ingenheim [1789-1855], who acquired it in the first half of
the nineteenth century, probably in Italy;[1] Ingenheim family, Schloss Reisewitz,
Silesia; sold 1922 to (A.S. Drey, Munich); sold 1923 to Henry Goldman [1856-1937],
New York;[2] sold January 1937 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and
Paris);[3] sold 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to
NGA. [1] According to Richard Offner (A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting. The Fourteenth Century, Section IV, Vol. II, Nardo di Cione, New York,
1960: 24), who obtained the information from Dr. Manfred Graf von Ingenheim, a
descendant of the collector, Count von Ingenheim had acquired some of his
paintings during his stay in Italy (18201840), and had received others as gifts from
the king of Prussia. Indeed, the center panel of the National Gallerys triptych has
a label on the reverse that reads, Kaiser Friedrich Palais / Zimmer No. 251 / Lfde
No. 39, but the painting has not yet been located in an early catalogue of the
Prussian royal collections. According to a contemporary report (Carl August
Bttiger, Gemldesammlung des Grafen von Ingenheim. Artistisches Notizenblatt
[appendix to Abend Zeitung] 7 [1927]: 26-28), by 1827 the count had no fewer than
seventy-eight select Italian Old Masters (auserwhlte Stcke italienischer Meister)
in his collection, which at that time was housed in Munich but was about to be
transferred to Paris. Bttiger, who quotes the collectors words, claims these
paintings were purchased in Italy in the years 1816-1817 and 1822-1824. [2] Offner
1960, 24. [3] Letter, Henry Goldman to Duveen Brothers, 5 January 1937; copy in
NGA curatorial files. Goldman confirms the sale to the company of nine paintings
and one sculpture; Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research
Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 312, box 457, folder 4. [4] Fern
Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, National Gallery of Art, 2 vols.,
Washington, D.C., 1979, 1:342.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2008 L'eredit di Giotto. Arte a Firenze 1340-1375, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence,
2008, no. 36, repro.

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Italian Painting. Edited by Andrew Ladis. University Park, PA, 1998: 189-
208.
der Gotik in Florenz. Mainz, 2000: 173.
2001 Tartuferi, Angelo. Dal Duecento agli Orcagna: il restauro della Madonna
col Bambino di ignoto fiorentino del Duecento e del trittico di Santa
Maria degli Angeli di Nardo di Cione. Livorno, 2001: 68, 75 n. 32.
in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 68 n. 76.
2008 Tartuferi, Angelo, ed. Leredit di Giotto: arte a Firenze 1340-1375. Exh.
cat. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 2008: 16 (repro.), 168, repro. 169.
2009 Kanter, Laurence B. "Riconsiderazioni orcagnesche: due pannelli della
collezione Crespi attribuiti al Maestro della Predella dellAshmolean
Museum." In I fondi oro della collezione Alberto Crespi al Museo
Diocesano: Questioni iconografiche e attributive. Edited by Museo
Diocesano di Milano. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2009: 55.

Nardo di Cione

the Man of Sorrows
[middle panel]
c. 1360
tempera on panel
overall: 75.6 30.2 cm (29 3/4 11 7/8 in.)
Inscription: on base of the frame: AVE.GRATIA.PLENA.DO[MINUS TECUM] (Hail,
full of grace, the Lord is with thee; from Luke 1:28)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.261.b
ENTRY
This panel is part of a portable triptych in the form of a tabernacle with gabled
central panel and closing shutters that was clearly intended for private
devotion. The external decoration of the lateral panels is purely ornamental,
conforming to Tuscan tradition [fig. 1].[1] When the shutters are opened, the
composition is more unusual, since the central image of the Madonna bearing the
child in her arms [2] is presented as a three-quarter-length standing figure,
whereas the two saints by whom she is flanked (Saint Peter [left panel] and Saint
John the Evangelist [right panel]) are full length. This combination, found in some
cases in Sienese Trecento art,[3] is rare in Florentine painting. It is seen in some
works of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348) dating to the years
13351340.[4] The presence of the Man of Sorrows in the trefoil at the top of the
tabernacle is also very uncommon.[5]

Madonna and Child, with the Man of Sorrows [middle panel] 1038


life.[11]
Jesus.

decoration of the halos [19] seem to confirm the common origin of the three panels
and their relatively precocious date.[20]


punched motifs, in part reworked.
polyptych and the Madonna and Child in the Brooklyn Museum in New York.[22]
Yet several features of our painting reveal a change of direction in Nardos style.
We may note, for instance, the more slender proportions of the figures and the
tendency to give an almost geometrical regularity to the drapery folds, which here
assume angular forms and at times brusquely interrupt with sudden projections the
placid fluidity of the contours. Moreover, the rather frowning seriousness of the
faces of the two saints, modeled with more marked chiaroscuro and few but deep
wrinkles, or their thick hair and wiry-looking beards [fig. 5],[23] seem more in
keeping with the paintings of Nardos full maturity than with those hitherto cited or
with the murals in the Strozzi Chapel. In the Goldman Madonna, in short, Nardo,
without abandoning the grace and delicacy of his previous works, begins to draw
close to the severe essentiality of form pursued by his brother Andrea until the
mid-1350s. Similar developments can be observed in his triptych now in the
National Gallery in London, or the frescoes in the Cappella di SantAnna in the
cloister (Chiostro dei Morti) at Santa Maria Novella [24]that is, in works probably
dating to the early 1360s, but at any rate earlier than the two altarpieces dated
1365.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES



NOTES

1954), 119, 147.
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5,Bernardo Daddi and His
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 574578.

below notes 911.

Cione (Livorno, 2001), 68, 75 n. 32.

Collection,Art in America 12 (1924): 105; Richard Offner, Studies in




(Oslo, 1994), 1:178 n. 18.


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The triptych including this work, Saint Peter [left panel], and Saint John the
Evangelist [right panel] is one of the few early Italian panels in the collection that
has not been cradled. The wooden support of the central panel is vertically
grained. A knotty section of the left side of the panel was replaced by the insertion
from the front side of eleven rectangular blocks of wood, before the application of
the cloth interleaf and the gesso layer. The frame and base of the triptych are
original. The inscription is on a horizontally grained piece of wood that was set into
the base. The wings are formed of single boards with vertical grain; it is unclear
whether the spiral colonnettes by which they are joined to the main panel are
originalrepaired and regildedor modern. The back of the wings are covered by
paint imitating porphyry, with an ornamental decoration at the center that feigns
the effect of inlaid work [fig. 1].
robe was originally brocade, probably with silver gilding and green

paint.[2] Punched designs decorate the figures halos, the border of each panel,
the brocade swaddling cloth, the carpet, and the gable.


TECHNICAL NOTES



PROVENANCE
transferred to Paris. Carl August Bttiger, who quotes the collectors words, claims
these paintings were purchased in Italy in the years 1816-1817 and 1822-1824. [2]
Offner 1960, 24. [3] Letter, Henry Goldman to Duveen Brothers, 5 January 1937;
copy in NGA curatorial files. Goldman confirms the sale to the company of nine
paintings and one sculpture; Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015,
Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 312, box 457, folder 4.
[4] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, National Gallery of Art, 2
vols., Washington, D.C., 1979, 1:342.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2008, no. 36, repro.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):655.
vknyvei 5 (1927-1928): 16.
New York, 1927: 97, 100, 101, 103-105, fig. 1.
384.
1:no. 54, repro.
274.
(repro.), 241.
repro. 157.
York, 1944: 52, repro. no. 83
Child with Saints.
1947: 150, 296.

1950): 447.
159.
New York, 1958: 99, 115.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 146, 312, 418, 440, 645, 661.
(1980): 29 n. 5.


1991-2002: 8(1997):650.
1:176-178; 2:punch chart 6.10.
1995: 108, fig. 63.

Nardo di Cione

[right panel]
c. 1360
tempera on panel
overall: 49 17 1.8 cm (19 5/16 6 11/16 11/16 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.261.c
ENTRY
central panel and closing shutters that was clearly intended for private
devotion. The external decoration of the lateral panels is purely ornamental,
conforming to Tuscan tradition [fig. 1].[1] When the shutters are opened, the
composition is more unusual, since the central image of the Madonna bearing the
child in her arms (Madonna and Child, with the Man of Sorrows [middle panel]
)[2] is presented as a three-quarter-length standing figure, whereas the two saints
by whom she is flanked (this panel and Saint Peter [left panel]) are full length. This
combination, found in some cases in Sienese Trecento art,[3] is rare in Florentine
painting. It is seen in some works of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably
1348) dating to the years 13351340.[4] The presence of the Man of Sorrows in the
trefoil at the top of the tabernacle is also very uncommon.[5]

Saint John the Evangelist [right panel] 1056


life.[11]
Jesus.






polyptych and the Madonna and Child in the Brooklyn Museum in New
York.[22] Yet several features of our painting reveal a change of direction in
Nardos style. We may note, for instance, the more slender proportions of the
figures and the tendency to give an almost geometrical regularity to the drapery
folds, which here assume angular forms and at times brusquely interrupt with
sudden projections the placid fluidity of the contours. Moreover, the rather
frowning seriousness of the faces of the two saints, modeled with more marked
chiaroscuro and few but deep wrinkles, or their thick hair and wiry-looking beards
[fig. 5],[23] seem more in keeping with the paintings of Nardos full maturity than
with those hitherto cited or with the murals in the Strozzi Chapel. In the Goldman
Madonna, in short, Nardo, without abandoning the grace and delicacy of his
previous works, begins to draw close to the severe essentiality of form pursued by
his brother Andrea until the mid-1350s. Similar developments can be observed in
his triptych now in the National Gallery in London, or the frescoes in the Cappella
di SantAnna in the cloister (Chiostro dei Morti) at Santa Maria Novella [24]that is,
in works probably dating to the early 1360s, but at any rate earlier than the two
altarpieces dated 1365.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES





NOTES


1954), 119, 147.
[4] The paintings by Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348) in
question are the triptych in the Museo dellOpera del Duomo in Florence;
the other dismantled triptych of identical composition now divided between
the Pinacoteca Vaticana (no. 174) and the Kunstmuseum in Bern (no. 880);
and a third similar triptych, which entered the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los
Angeles in recent years (no. 93.PB.16). Cf. Richard Offner and Mikls
new ed. (Florence, 1991), 191200; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 99103; Richard Offner, A
Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits,
Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001),
574578.
[7] The Goldman Virgin, Richard Offner wrote, stands even closer [than the
Madonna with Child and Saints now in the Brooklyn Museum] to the female
figures in the Strozzi Chapel Paradise. The lurking movement in her easy
posture, the slight yielding tilt of her head, its mould, the hair, the flat nose,
the dainty budded lips and above them a sharp caret joined by two parallels
to the nostrils, will be found again and again there. Richard Offner, Nardo


di Cione and His Triptych in the Goldman Collection, Art in America 12

(1924): 111. In another passage, the same scholar (on page 106) observed
that, in spite of their affinities, even Daddis Madonnas, of all Florentine
Madonnas most closely related to those of Nardo, seem to live in a far
different world.
below notes 911.
National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture
(Washington, DC, 1941), 138; National Gallery of Art, Book of Illustrations
(Washington, DC, 1942), 157, 247; National Gallery of Art, Paintings and
Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection (Washington, DC, 1959), 21;
Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 95; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from
1966), 34, fig. 75; Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and
Catalogue Raisonn (Columbia, MO, 1982), 75; Serena Skerl Del Conte,
Antonio Veneziano e Taddeo Gaddi nella Toscana della seconda met del
Trecento (Pasian di Prato, Udine, 1995), 108; John Hand, National Gallery of
Art: Master Paintings from the Collection (New York, 2004), 13; Federica
Baldini, in Leredit di Giotto: Arte a Firenze 13401375, ed. Angelo Tartuferi
(Florence, 2008), 16, 168, 169.

Duecento e del trittico di Santa Maria degli Angeli di Nardo di Cione
(Livorno, 2001), 68, 75 n. 32.


Collection, Art in America 12 (1924): 105; Richard Offner, Studies in
opinion. Cf. Dillian Gordon, Nardo di Ciones Altarpiece: Three Saints,
National Gallery Technical Bulletin 9 (1985): 2123; Erling S. Skaug, Punch
Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione
(New York, 1960), 47.



(Oslo, 1994), 1:178 n. 18.

Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 2, Nardo di Cione
(New York, 1960), 6769; and Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena
after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 15 n. 15. See also Hans Dietrich
Gronau, Nardo di Cione, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler
von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and
Hans Vollmer 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1932), 26:39; and Hans Dietrich Gronau,
Andrea Orcagna und Nardo di Cione: Eine stilgeschichtliche Untersuchung
(Berlin, 1937), 58.



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The triptych including this work, Madonna and Child, with the Man of Sorrows
[middle panel], and Saint Peter [left panel] is one of the few early Italian works in
the collection that has not been cradled. The wooden support of the central
panel is vertically grained. A knotty section of the left side of the panel was
replaced by the insertion from the front side of eleven rectangular blocks of wood,
before the application of the cloth interleaf and the gesso layer. The frame and
base of the triptych are original. The inscription is on a horizontally grained piece of
wood that was set into the base. The wings are formed of single boards with
vertical grain; it is unclear whether the spiral colonnettes by which they are joined
to the main panel are originalrepaired and regildedor modern. The back of the
wings are covered by paint imitating porphyry, with an ornamental decoration at
the center that feigns the effect of inlaid work [fig. 1].





TECHNICAL NOTES




PROVENANCE
transferred to Paris. Carl August Bttiger, who quotes the collectors words, claims
these paintings were purchased in Italy in the years 1816-1817 and 1822-1824. [2]
Offner 1960, 24. [3] Letter, Henry Goldman to Duveen Brothers, 5 January 1937;
copy in NGA curatorial files. Goldman confirms the sale to the company of nine
paintings and one sculpture; Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015,
Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 312, box 457, folder 4.
[4] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, National Gallery of Art, 2
vols., Washington, D.C., 1979, 1:342.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2008, no. 36, repro.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):655.
vknyvei 5 (1927-1928): 16.
New York, 1927: 97, 100, 101, 103-105, fig. 1.
384.
1:no. 54, repro.
274.
(repro.), 241.
repro. 157.
York, 1944: 52, repro. no. 83
Child with Saints.
1947: 150, 296.


1950): 447.
159.
New York, 1958: 99, 115.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 146, 312, 418, 440, 645, 661.
(1980): 29 n. 5.



1991-2002: 8(1997):650.
1:176-178; 2:punch chart 6.10.
1995: 108, fig. 63.


Nardo di Cione
Saint Peter [left panel]

c. 1360
tempera on panel
overall: 49 16.9 1.8 cm (19 5/16 6 5/8 11/16 in.)
Samuel H. Kress Collection 1939.1.261.a
ENTRY
central panel and closing shutters that was clearly intended for private devotion.
The external decoration of the lateral panels is purely ornamental, conforming to
Tuscan tradition [fig. 1].[1] When the shutters are opened, the composition is more
unusual, since the central image of the Madonna bearing the child in her arms (
Madonna and Child, with the Man of Sorrows [middle panel])[2] is presented as a
three-quarter-length standing figure, whereas the two saints by whom she is
flanked (this panel and Saint John the Evangelist [right panel]) are full length. This
combination, found in some cases in Sienese Trecento art,[3] is rare in Florentine
painting. It is seen in some works of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably
1348) dating to the years 13351340.[4] The presence of the Man of Sorrows in the
trefoil at the top of the tabernacle is also very uncommon.[5]

Saint Peter [left panel] 1074


life.[11]
Jesus.





polyptych and the Madonna and Child in the Brooklyn Museum in New York.[22]
Yet several features of our painting reveal a change of direction in Nardos style.
We may note, for instance, the more slender proportions of the figures and the
tendency to give an almost geometrical regularity to the drapery folds, which here
assume angular forms and at times brusquely interrupt with sudden projections the
placid fluidity of the contours. Moreover, the rather frowning seriousness of the
faces of the two saints, modeled with more marked chiaroscuro and few but deep
wrinkles, or their thick hair and wiry-looking beards [fig. 5],[23] seem more in
keeping with the paintings of Nardos full maturity than with those hitherto cited or
with the murals in the Strozzi Chapel. In the Goldman Madonna, in short, Nardo,
without abandoning the grace and delicacy of his previous works, begins to draw
close to the severe essentiality of form pursued by his brother Andrea until the
mid-1350s. Similar developments can be observed in his triptych now in the
National Gallery in London, or the frescoes in the Cappella di SantAnna in the
cloister (Chiostro dei Morti) at Santa Maria Novella [24]that is, in works probably
dating to the early 1360s, but at any rate earlier than the two altarpieces dated
1365.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES





NOTES


1954), 119, 147.
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 574578.


below notes 911.

Cione (Livorno, 2001), 68, 75 n. 32.


Collection,Art in America 12 (1924): 105; Richard Offner, Studies in





(Oslo, 1994), 1:178 n. 18.



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The triptych including this work, Madonna and Child, with the Man of Sorrows
[middle panel], and Saint John the Evangelist [right panel] is one of the few early
Italian panels in the collection that has not been cradled. The wooden support of
the central panel is vertically grained. A knotty section of the left side of the panel
was replaced by the insertion from the front side of eleven rectangular blocks of
wood, before the application of the cloth interleaf and the gesso layer. The frame
and base of the triptych are original. The inscription is on a horizontally grained
piece of wood that was set into the base. The wings are formed of single boards
with vertical grain; it is unclear whether the spiral colonnettes by which they are
joined to the main panel are originalrepaired and regildedor modern. The back
of the wings are covered by paint imitating porphyry, with an ornamental
decoration at the center that feigns the effect of inlaid work [fig. 1].





TECHNICAL NOTES




PROVENANCE
transferred to Paris. Bttiger, who quotes the collectors words, claims these
paintings were purchased in Italy in the years 1816-1817 and 1822-1824. [2] Offner
1960, 24. [3] Letter, Henry Goldman to Duveen Brothers, 5 January 1937; copy in
NGA curatorial files. Goldman confirms the sale to the company of nine paintings
and one sculpture; Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research
Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 312, box 457, folder 4. [4] Fern
Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, National Gallery of Art, 2 vols.,
Washington, D.C., 1979, 1:342.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2008, no. 36, repro.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):655.
vknyvei 5 (1927-1928): 16.
New York, 1927: 97, 100, 101, 103-105, fig. 1.
384.
1:no. 54, repro.
274.
(repro.), 241.
repro. 157.
York, 1944: 52, repro. no. 83
Child with Saints.
1947: 150, 296.


1950): 447.
159.
New York, 1958: 99, 115.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 146, 312, 418, 440, 645, 661.
(1980): 29 n. 5.



1991-2002: 8(1997):650.
1:176-178; 2:punch chart 6.10.
1995: 108, fig. 63.
1998 Offner, Richard. Nardo di Cione. In A Discerning Eye: Essays on Early
Italian Painting. Edited by Andrew Ladis. University Park, PA, 1998: 189-
208.


Paolo Veneziano
Also known as
Martino da Venezia, Paolo di
Venetian, active 1333 - 1358
BIOGRAPHY
Son of Martino and brother of Marco, both painters but whose works are unknown
to us, Paolo was the most prominent painter of his native city between the second
and third quarter of the fourteenth century. The fame of his workshop is
documented by prestigious commissions not only for the most important churches
of Venice and of the Venetian mainland territories but also for churches in Bologna
and for towns on the Adriatic coast (both Italian and Dalmatian). His style left a
lasting influence on painting in these areas, thanks also to the activity of his three
sons, Giovanni, Luca, and Marco, who continued to disseminate his style after the
masters death. Paolos date of birth is unknown, but since his sons Giovanni and
Luca signed, together with their father, the Pala feriale (the painted wooden cover
of the Pala doro) of the high altar of San Marco in Venice in 1345 and must have
been adults by then, it may be assumed he was born in the last years of the
thirteenth century and that his career as a painter began at least in the second
decade of the fourteenth century. However, not all art historians agree with this
conclusion, not least because Paolos earliest securely dated work, the altarpiece
with the Dormitio Virginis now in the Museo Civici in Vicenza, dates as late as 1333.
The problem of the painters initial phase has thus been the subject of conflicting
hypotheses. Nonetheless, it seems plausible to ascribe to his hand the figures of
donors painted at the foot of the polychrome wooden altarpiece-relief of Saint
Donatus in the church dedicated to him in Murano (Santi Maria e Donato),
accompanied by the date 1310. The five stories of the Virgin in the Musei Civici in
Pesaro must have been executed a few years later; here the artist faithfully
followed the corresponding compositions of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) in
the Arena Chapel in Padua, although adjusting his style to local artistic idioms. In
particular he follows in the footsteps of the anonymous Master of the Washington
Coronation (Italian, active first third 14th century), an artist who some authorities
suggest could have been his father.
Paolo Veneziano 1092


The frescoes recently attributed to Paolo in the church of San Fermo in Verona[1]
probably date to the final years of the second decade of the fourteenth century.
The Vicenza triptych of 1333 reveals a considerable advance over these frescoes
in the refinement of its expressive means. This circumstance has suggested to
some the possibility that the artist had journeyed in the intervening years to
Byzantium, but the innovative features of the work reflect not so much the
influence of the Palaeologan Renaissance as Paolos efforts to enrich the
traditional figurative formulae of the city of the lagoon with elements derived from
the transalpine Gothic.
The following stages of his career are punctuated with only a few securely dated
works. They includeapart from the Pala ferialethe Madonna and Child dated
1340 in the Crespi Collection in Milan; that of 1347, now in the Museo Diocesano at
Cesena but with a provenance from Carpineta; the polyptych in the church of San
Martino at Chioggia, of 1349; the polyptych in the Louvre, Paris, of 1354; and that of
the church of San Giorgio at Pirano dIstria of the following year, a panel now on
deposit at the Museo di Palazzo Venezia in Rome. The Coronation of the Virgin in
the Frick Collection in New York, signed by Paolo together with his son Giovanni
and dated 1358, originally must have formed the centerpiece of a polyptych whose
laterals are now in the Museo Civico at San Severino Marche. This imposing
multipart altarpiece was probably one of the last works of the master, who was
already reported dead in 1362.
[1] See Andrea De Marchi, La prima decorazione della chiesa francescana, in I

santi Fermo e Rustico: Un culto e una chiesa, per il xvii centenario del loro martirio
(3042004), ed. Paolo Golinelli and Caterina Gemma Brenzoni (Verona, 2004),
205211. De Marchi dated Paolos intervention in the church to the start of the third
decade, but it is possible to push this date back to 13191320, i.e., to the years in
which his local associate in the Veronese enterprise, the Master of the Redeemer,
was at work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY


1907 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. Paolo Veneziano. In

1907-1950: 26(1932):214-215.
1930 Vaval, Evelyn Sandberg. Maestro Paolo Veneziano.

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 57, no. 331 (October 1930):
160-182.
1954 Lazarev, Viktor Nikiti. Maestro Paolo e la pittura veneziana del suo
tempo.
Arte veneta 8 (1954): 77-89.
1964 Pallucchini, Rodolfo, ed.

La pittura veneziana del Trecento. Venice, 1964: 17-60.
1965 Muraro, Michelangelo. Maestro Paolo da Venezia: fortuna critica.

Ateneo veneto 3 (1965): 91-97.
1966 Pallucchini, Rodolfo.

Paolo Veneziano e il suo tempo. I maestri del colore 241. Milan, 1966.
1969 Muraro, Michelangelo.

Paolo da Venezia. Milan, 1969.
1972 "Paolo Veneziano." In

Turin, 1972-1976: 8(1975):323-325.
1986 Lucco, Mauro. "Paolo Veneziano." In

1989 Zava Boccazzi, Francesca. Paolo Veneziano. In

1991 Flores dArcais, Francesca. Paolo Veneziano. In



1992 Lucco, Mauro. "Paolo Veneziano."

1992: 543-544.
1996 Gibbs, Robert. Paolo Veneziano. In

London, 1996: 24:29-34.
1997 Santini, Clara. Un episodio della pittura veneziana di primo Trecento: il

Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington.
Il Santo 37 (1997): 123-145.
2002 Flores d'Arcais, Francesca. Paolo Veneziano e la pittura del Trecento in

Adriatico. In
Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e
Occidente. Edited by Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni Gentili.
Exh. cat. Castel Sismondo, Rimini. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2002: 19-31.
2002 Mori, Francesco. Paolo Veneziano. In

vols. Milan, 2002: 3:676-677.
2003 Pedrocco, Filippo.

Paolo Veneziano. Milan and Venice, 2003.
2009 Boskovits, Mikls. Paolo Veneziano: riflessioni sul percorso, 1 and 2.

Arte cristiana 97 (2009): 81-90, 161-170.


Paolo Veneziano
Venetian, active 1333 - 1358
The Crucifixion
c. 1340/1345
tempera on panel
painted surface: 31 x 38 cm (12 3/16 x 14 15/16 in.)
overall: 33.85 x 41.1 cm (13 5/16 x 16 3/16 in.)
framed: 37.2 x 45.4 x 5.7 cm (14 5/8 x 17 7/8 x 2 1/4 in.)
Inscription: upper center: I.N.R.I. (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews)
ENTRY
The Crucifixion is enacted in front of the crenellated wall of the city of Jerusalem.
The cross is flanked above by four fluttering angels, three of whom collect the
blood that flows from the wounds in Christs hands and side. To the left of the
Cross, the Holy Women, a compact group, support the swooning Mary, mother of
Jesus. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the Cross, caressing Christs feet with
her hands. To the right of the Cross stand Saint John the Evangelist, in profile, and
a group of soldiers with the centurion in the middle, distinguished by a halo, who
recognizes the Son of God in Jesus.[1] The paintings small size, arched shape, and
composition suggest that it originally belonged to a portable altarpiece, of which it
formed the central panels upper tier [fig. 1].[2] The hypothesis was first advanced
by Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval (originally drafted 1939, published 1969), who based it
on stylistic, compositional, and iconographic affinities between a small triptych now
in the Galleria Nazionale of Parma [fig. 2] and a series of small panels now in the
Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts [fig. 3]. Sandberg-Vaval recognized the
latter as fragments of the shutters of a triptych [fig. 4] very similar to the one now in
The Crucifixion 1096


Parma.[3] Thus, as in the example at Parma, the dismantled triptych would have
represented on the exterior Saints Christopher and Blaise ([fig. 1], panels a and e).
When opened, the left shutter would have shown Saints Michael Archangel and
John the Baptist at the top, and in the lower register Saints George and Francis;
the Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene would have appeared at the top of the right
shutter, and below it Saints Barbara and Anthony Abbot (in the Parma triptych, the
place of Saint Barbara is taken by Saint Ursula). The Washington Crucifixion
therefore may be assumed to have formed part of the centerpiece of a triptych,
probably placed, as at Parma, above an image of the Madonna and Child. The
measurements of the fragments[4] would seem to confirm that the painting in the
National Gallery of Art and the fragments in Worcester belonged to the same
altarpiece. Other scholars later independently proposed the same conjectural
reconstruction of the complex.[5] It was further developed by the suggestion that it
could be completed with the triangular gable panels depicting the Angel of the
Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate now in the J. Paul Getty Museum at Los
Angeles [fig. 5],[6] and with the Madonna and Child now in the Muse du Petit
Palais at Avignon [fig. 6],[7] proposed as the lower register of the central panel of
which our Crucifixion formed the upper part. Not all authorities have found these
proposals convincing, and some have rejected them,[8] but at least the common
origin of the panels now in Avignon, Washington, and Worcester seems quite
plausible.[9]
As for the hand that painted the panel in Washington, apart from the first tentative
attributions to Nicoletto Semitecolo [10] and to Lorenzo Veneziano (an artist who
belonged to a younger generation and was probably a disciple of Paolo
Veneziano, but someone to whom early twentieth-century art historians frequently
attributed Paolos paintings) [11] made during the time when it was still on the art
market, Paolos authorship is now almost universally recognized.[12] Uncertainties
concern not so much the paintings attribution as its chronological position in
Paolos oeuvre. This is variously assessed depending on the chronological
sequence of the masters paintings proposed in the literature. Roberto Longhi,
followed by many, argued for an execution toward the middle of the fourteenth
century,[13] but other art historians have preferred an earlier dating, proposing the
1340s,[14] the years around 1340,[15] the fourth,[16] or even the third decade.[17] In
the absence of secure points of reference, it may be assumed that the panel in the
National Gallery of Art should precede the polyptych with the Crucifixion and saints
now in the Museum of the Cathedral of Rab, or the painted cross in the church of
Saint Dominic at Dubrovnik (both in Croatia), works generally and convincingly


dated after the mid-fourteenth century.[18] In their conspicuous elongation of the

figures proportions, their more realistic treatment of the anatomy of the body of
Christ, their measured language of gesture and less dynamic linear rhythms, these
works have undeniable affinities with paintings securely dated to the artists last
creative phase. On the other hand, a terminus post quem for our painting can be
deduced from the Crucifixion in one of the panels of polyptych no. 21 in the
Gallerie dellAccademia in Venice, a work that the more recent literature tends to
place within or not long after the fourth decade of the fourteenth century. With its
more animated and crowded composition and its more schematic description of
the slender body of Christ, it can undoubtedly be assumed to belong to a phase
preceding the Washington version of the subject.[19]
If, as seems to me plausible, we accept that the painting discussed here belongs to
the same complex of which the fragments in the Worcester Museum and the
Madonna in Avignon formed part, the scope for comparisons and for formulating
more precise chronological parameters is widened. The Saint Francis of the
Worcester Museum seems more slender than the corresponding image of the saint
in the Museo Civico in Vicenza, dated 1333,[20] and should be later in date.
Conversely, a period of some length must have elapsed between the figure of the
Baptist in the Worcester Museum and that in the polyptych in the church of San
Martino at Chioggia in 1349: there, the Baptist, a very tall, aristocratic personage
who turns with timorous discretion to the Christ child on his mothers knee in the
central panel, reveals characteristics rather different from those of the Worcester
Baptist.[21] The slight hanchement of the Worcester Saint George, holding his lance
between his fingers with inimitable nonchalance, seems to repeat in a very similar
way, though perhaps with an even more studied quest for elegance, the pose of
another warrior saint, the Saint Theodore in the Pala feriale of 13431345.[22] As
for the Madonna in Avignon, the liveliness of the Christ childs gesture, his arms
outspread, and the slender figure of Mary, with her wan face and melancholic gaze,
invite comparison with the panel dated 1340 in the Crespi collection in Milan and,
even more persuasively, with the Madonna now in the Museo Diocesano in
Cesena with a provenance from Carpineta, dated 1347.[23]
To these stylistic observations we may add some comments on the iconography

and costumes worn by the figures in the panels. Bearing in mind that iconographic
changes may depend on the requirements of particular patrons and that their use
as criteria for dating a work of art should be evaluated with a great deal of caution,
I do not think it accidental that in the Madonna of Carpineta and in Paolos later


representations of the same subject Mary is always shown with a dress

sumptuously decorated with floriated motifs in gold and that the child, instead of
wearing the traditional long tunic, is represented nude (even if draped in a mantle)
or is shown wearing a transparent chemise that leaves his legs exposed. This
motif, of Byzantine origin, soon spread in Tuscan painting,[24] but it apparently
enjoyed less success, or made less rapid headway, in northern Italy. Rare in
Venetian paintings of the early fourteenth century, it is still not present in Paolos
Crespi Madonna (1340), though it appears in his later works and also in the panel of
the Madonna in Avignon. The conclusion that the triptych in question might have
been executed within the 1340s seems further corroborated by the costume of
Saint Barbara in Worcester. Her dress is characterized by a conspicuous
manicottolo (a long sleeve whose upper fitted part reaches down to the elbow,
where it sharply widens and then hangs down in a loose flap to the mid-
thigh).[25] This dernier cri of fourteenth-century court dress, a fashion by no means
confined to ladies, appears here in a less evolved form than in the dresses that
adorn the Saint Ursula of the polyptych of San Severino Marche (1358) [26] or the
Dancing Salome in the mosaic of the baptistery of San Marco (c. 1350),[27] but in a
far wider (and presumably later) variant than in the elegant dresses of the female
saints depicted in the laterals of the triptych of Saint Clare in the Museo Civico of
Trieste, executed by Paolo within the third decade.[28] From the sum of these
observations, it seems possible to deduce that the triptych of which the
Washington Crucifixion formed part should date to the early 1340s, soon after the
triptych in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma, which it follows in composition and, in
large part, iconography.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Reconstruction of a portable triptych by Paolo

Veneziano. Panel A: Saint Christopher (reverse of panel
B). Panel B: a. Angel of the Annunciation (fig. 5); b. Saint
Michael Archangel (fig. 3); c. Saint John the Baptist (fig. 3);
d. Saint George (fig. 3); e. Saint Francis (fig. 3). Panel C: a.
fig. 2 Paolo Veneziano, Portable Triptych, c. 1335,
The Crucifixion; b. Madonna and Child (fig. 6). Panel D: a.
tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale, Parma
Virgin Annunciate (fig. 5); b. The Ecstasy of Saint Mary
Magdalene (fig. 3); c. Saint Barbara (fig. 3); d. Saint
Anthony Abbot (fig. 3). Panel E: Saint Blaise (reverse of
panel D)


fig. 3 Paolo Veneziano, Panels from the Wings of a

Triptych, c. 1340/1345, tempera on panel, Worcester Art
Museum (MA), Museum Purchase, 1927.19. Image
Worcester Art Museum
fig. 4 Saints Christopher and Blaise on the reverse of the

lateral panels of Paolo Veneziano, Portable Triptych, c.
1335, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale, Parma


fig. 5 Paolo Veneziano, The Annunciation, c. 1340/1345,

tempera on panel, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los
Angeles. Image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content
Program
fig. 6 Paolo Veneziano, Madonna and Child, c. 1340/1345,

tempera on panel, Muse du Petit Palais, Avignon. Image
RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. Photographer:
Rene-Gabrile Ojeda


RECONSTRUCTION
Reconstruction of a portable triptych by Paolo Veneziano

Panel A
Saint Christopher (reverse of panel B)
Panel B
a. Angel of the Annunciation (Entry fig. 5)
b. Saint Michael Archangel (Entry fig. 3)
c. Saint John the Baptist (Entry fig. 3)
d. Saint George (Entry fig. 3)
e. Saint Francis (Entry fig. 3)
Panel C
a. The Crucifixion
b. Madonna and Child (Entry fig. 6)
Panel D
a. Virgin Annunciate (Entry fig. 5)
b. The Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene (Entry fig. 3)
c. Saint Barbara (Entry fig. 3)
d. Saint Anthony Abbot (Entry fig. 3)


Panel E
Saint Blaise (reverse of panel D)
NOTES
[1] The artist follows the iconography developed after the iconoclastic period in
Middle Byzantine art; it is here that such motifs as the mourning angels, the
centurion (cf. Matthew 27:54), the walls of Jerusalem in the background, and
the skull of Adam hidden in a fissure of the rock of Golgotha below the
Cross appear for the first time; cf. Marcus Mrass, Kreuzigung Christi, in
Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel, 7 vols. (Stuttgart,
1995), 5:312350. Motifs of Western origin, on the other hand, also are
present in the painting: Mary Magdalene embracing the Cross, or the
swooning Madonna; cf. Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, La croce dipinta italiana e
liconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 123124, 148151. On the haloed
centurion, a widespread motif in Italian fourteenth-century painting, cf.
19661990), 2:166167.
[2] The relatively small dimensions of the panel and its particular format,
favoring width at the expense of height, preclude the hypothesis that it
formed the central gable of a polyptych. The alternative suggestion, that it
might have been part of the predella of an altarpiece, would seem to be
discounted by the vertical graining of the wood. For small portable triptychs
in which the Crucifixion appears above the image of the Madonna and
Child, cf. Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice,
1964), fig. 74, 202, 366, 524.
[3] The article by Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval (in English) was prepared for the
Worcester Art Museum Bulletin in 1939 but long remained unpublished. It
was finally printed in an Italian translation by Michelangelo Muraro, as
Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, Maestro Paolo Veneziano: Suoi dipinti in America
e altrove, in Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 99101. Sandberg-Vaval was
the first to point out the close resemblances between the panel then in the
Kress Collection and the corresponding scene in the small triptych of the
Galleria Nazionale in Parma (no. 438), for which see Rosa DAmico, in
Galleria Nazionale di Parma, vol. 1, Catalogo delle opere dallantico al
Cinquecento, ed. Lucia Fornari Schianchi (Milan, 1997), 4446. More
especially, she noted the virtual identity in iconography and composition
between this triptych and a very similar altarpiece of which the fragments
now in the Worcester Art Museum originally formed part (no. 1927.19); see
Martin Davies, Italian School, in European Paintings in the Collection of the
Worcester Art Museum, vol. 1, Text, ed. Worcester Art Museum (Worcester,
MA, 1974), 412417. She concluded that the Crucifixion now in the National


Gallery of Art originally belonged to the same ensemble.
[4] The dimensions of the panels with figures of saints in the Worcester
Museum, cut from the shutters of a triptych, vary between 27.7 and 28.3 9
and 9.2 cm, while the Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene, the only panel to
preserve the entire width of the triptychs right wing, is 27.7 18.1 cm.
Therefore, the shutterswithout the upper gables, which could (on the
analogy of the model in Parma) have been some 2030 cm highwould
have measured c. 56 18 cm; see Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura
veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), pls. 7778. After various transfers on
the Italian art market, where they were recorded at least until 1925, the
seven fragments were purchased by the Worcester Museum in 1927 from
the dealer Paul Bottenwieser (New York and Berlin). See Martin Davies,
Italian School, in European Paintings in the Collection of the Worcester Art
Museum, vol. 1, Text, ed. Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, MA, 1974),
415416.
[5] Michel Laclotte, De Giotto Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les muses de
France (Paris, 1956), 19; Michel Laclotte, Peintures italiennes des XIVe et
XVe sicles lOrangerie, Arte veneta 10 (1956): 226; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Century (London, 1966), 8, fig. 10; Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia
(Milan, 1969), 156158. Michelangelo Muraro (1969, 125) accepted the
hypothesis but believed the Madonna now in Avignon to be later in date
and not part of the complex. Michel Laclotte and Elisabeth Mognetti,
Avignon, Muse du Petit Palais: Peinture italienne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1976),
no. 202; and Robert Gibbs, Paolo Veneziano, in The Dictionary of Art, ed.
Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 24:32, also accepted the
reconstruction.
[6] No. 87.PB.117; 22.5 13.5 each; see David Jaff, Paintings: An Illustrated
Summary Catalogue of the Collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu,
1997), 129. The two fragments come from the Florentine collection of
Charles Loeser (18641928). Joanna R. Dunn of the National Gallery of Arts
conservation department, who has examined the two panels at my request,
thinks they probably were cut down along the diagonal sides as well as on
the acute-angle corners. She estimates that their original width might have
been as much as 18 cm.
[7] No. 20194; 44 40 cm. See Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench, Peinture
italienne: Muse du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), no. 224. The
painting, first recorded in the famous Roman collection of Giampiero
Campana (18081880) in the mid-nineteenth century, was sold in 1862,
together with the entire Campana collection, to the Muse Napolon III in
Paris. It was subsequently placed on loan in the museum in Montargis,
where it remained on display for almost a century before being transferred
to the Muse du Petit Palais in Avignon. Since the Madonna was catalogued


as a work of Ottaviano da Faenza in the Campana collection, it may be, or

has been, inferred that it was originally intended for a patron in Emilia-
Romagna. Cf. Roberto Longhi, Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana
(Florence, 1946), 4445.
[8] Rodolfo Pallucchini (1956) doubted the reconstruction on chronological

grounds, though subsequently (1964) he did not discount the possibility that
the Crucifixion discussed here and the Madonna now in Avignon might have
belonged to the same complex. Muraro, as we have seen, rejected this
hypothesis. According to Martin Davies (1974), the various conjectural
reconstructions of the complex are unproved. According to Filippo
Pedrocco (2003), two circumstances would have precluded the
reconstruction: the differences (though minimal) in measurements and the
chronological disparities in style. See Rodolfo Pallucchini, Nota per Paolo
Veneziano, in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Lionello Venturi, 2 vols.
(Rome, 1956), 1:135; Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del
Trecento (Venice, 1964), 32; Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan,
1969), 125; Martin Davies, Italian School, in European Paintings in the
Collection of the Worcester Art Museum, vol. 1, Text, ed. Worcester Art
Museum (Worcester, MA, 1974), 415; Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano
(Milan and Venice, 2003), 126, 131 n. 79.
[9] For the problems of chronology, see below. With regard to the tiny disparity
of 1.1 cm between the present width of the panels in Washington and
Avignon, it should be borne in mind that the latter only partially retains its
engaged frame; originally it must have been wider. The cropping of the
panels now in Worcester is far more considerable, but not even their
measurements contradict, in my view, the proposed reconstruction. It is
difficult, however, to incorporate the gable panels in Los Angeles in the
reconstruction.
[10] See Roger Fry, Exhibition of Pictures and the Early Venetian School at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 21
(1912): 47, pl. 2, and Provenance note 1.
[11] In a handwritten expertise on the back of a photograph of the painting,

Raimond van Marle declared, No doubt it is a work of Lorenzo Veneziano.
Other expert opinions supporting an attribution of Paolo Veneziano were
sent to Samuel H. Kress by Bernard Berenson, Giuseppe Fiocco, Roberto
Longhi, F. Mason Perkins, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi. Presumably
written at the same time as van Marles, most bear the date 1934; copies in
[12] The only dissenting voice was that of Edoardo Arslan (1956), who thought
that the Crucifixion was a work by an assistant of Paolos. Edoardo Arslan,
Una nuova Madonna di Paolo Veneto, Commentari 7 (1956): 21 n. 8.
[13] Roberto Longhi, Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana (Florence,


1946), 45, based his proposal on the affinities he identified between the
work and polyptych no. 21 of the Gallerie dellAccademia in
Venicealthough the more recent literature no longer accepts the late
dating of this polyptychand on presumed reflections in the paintings of
Vitale da Bologna in his phase around 1350. Maria Walcher Casotti, Il Trittico
di S. Chiara di Trieste e lorientamento paleologo nellarte di Paolo
Veneziano (Trieste, 1961), 19; Michelangelo Muraro, Paolo da Venezia
(Milan, 1969), 156; Michel Laclotte and Elisabeth Mognetti, Avignon, Muse
du Petit Palais: Peinture italienne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1976), no. 202; Hanna Kiel,
Das Polyptychon von Paolo und Giovanni Veneziano in Sanseverino
Marche, Pantheon 35 (1977): 107, 108 n. 8; Robert Gibbs, Paolo
Veneziano, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York,
1996), 24:32; Cristina Guarnieri, Per la restituzione di due croci perdute di
Paolo Veneziano: Il leone marciano del Museo Correr e i dolenti della
Galleria Sabauda, in Medioevo adriatico: Circolazione di modelli, opere,
maestri, ed. Giovanna Valenzano and Federica Toniolo (Rome, 2010), 140,
152, have all endorsed Longhis dating.
[14] According to Francesca Flores DArcais (1994), the Washington Crucifixion

was forse vicina alla Pala marciana (perhaps close to the altarpiece in San
Marco), i.e., the Pala feriale executed in 13431345. Michel Laclotte and
Esther Moench (2005) suggested the decade c. 13401350 as the most
plausible period for the execution of the painting. Andrea De Marchi (2005)
preferred a slightly later dating, towards the end of the 1340s. See
Francesca Flores dArcais, La pittura, in Storia di Venezia: Temi; LArte, ed.
Rodolfo Pallucchini, 2 vols. (Rome, 1994), 1:259; Michel Laclotte and Esther
172; Andrea De Marchi, Polyptyques vnitiens: Anamnse dune identit
mconnue, in Autour de Lorenzo Veneziano: Fragments de polyptyques
vnitiens du XIVe sicle, ed. Andrea De Marchi (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan,
2005), 19, 20.
[15] Also supporting the dating c. 1340 given in NGA 1965 and NGA 1985 were
Frankfurter 1944, Shapley 1966 and 1979, and Mori 2002. See National
(Washington, DC, 1965), 99; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An
Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 299; Alfred M. Frankfurter,
The Kress Collection in the National Gallery (New York, 1944), 71, 74; Fern
Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 8, fig. 10; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979),
1:354355; Francesco Mori, Paolo Veneziano, in La pittura in Europa: Il
dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 3:676677.
[16] The work was dated between 1330 and 1340 by Laclotte in his first
publication on the painting: Michel Laclotte, De Giotto Bellini: Les primitifs


italiens dans les muses de France (Paris, 1956), 19; and by Grgo Gamulin,
Un crocefisso di Maestro Paolo e di altri due del Trecento, Arte veneta 19
(1965): 37; Francesca Flores dArcais, Venezia, in La Pittura nel Veneto: Il
Trecento, ed. Mauro Lucco, 2 vols. (Milan, 1992), 1:30; Francesca Flores
dArcais, Paolo Veneziano, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols.
(Rome, 1998), 9:158; Francesca Flores dArcais, Paolo Veneziano e la
pittura del Trecento in Adriatico, in Il Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e
la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente, ed. Francesca Flores dArcais and
Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2002), 22; Giorgio Fossaluzza,
ed., Da Paolo Veneziano a Canova: Capolavori dei musei veneti restaurati
dalla Regione del Veneto 19842000 (Venice, 2000), 43; Angelo Loda, in Il
Trecento adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente,
ed. Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni Gentili (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan,
2002), 148; and Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice,
2003), 154. In another publication, even Andrea De Marchi (2005) seemed
to accept the proposal. See Andrea De Marchi, in Splendeurs de la peinture
italiane, 12501510 (Paris, 2005), 32, 37.
[17] Clara Santini, Un episodio della pittura veneziana di primo Trecento: Il

Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington, Il Santo 37
(1997): 144, but perhaps only by an involuntary lapsus, meaning instead to
indicate the 1330s.
[18] The altarpiece in Rab (Arbe) representing the Crucifixion flanked by six
saints was thought to belong to the sixth decade by Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed.,
La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice, 1964), 50, 59; Michelangelo
Muraro, Paolo da Venezia (Milan, 1969), 103; and Igor Fiskovi, in Il Trecento
2002), 164. Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003),
190191, on the other hand, proposed a slightly earlier dating, to around
1350. For the crucifix and the figures of mourners in Dubrovnik, cf. Grgo
Gamulin, Alcune proposte per Maestro Paolo, Emporium 139 (1964): 154;
Rodolfo Pallucchini, Considerazioni sulla mostra Paolo Veneziano e la sua
cerchia di Zagabria, Arte veneta 21 (1967): 261; Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo
Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003), 126127.
[19] The polyptych, with a provenance from the Venetian church of Santa Chiara,
was considered until not many years ago as indicative of Paolos presumed
return to or reuse of Byzantine figurative models in the final phase of his
career. More recently, Andrea De Marchi (1995), followed by Robert Gibbs
(1996), proposed its execution, surely more correctly, around 1340. Filippo
Pedrocco (2003) went further and pushed back its date to c. 13331336. Cf.
Andrea De Marchi, Una tavola nella Narodna Galleria di Ljubljana e una
proposta per Marco di Paolo Veneziano, in Gotika v Sloveniji: Nastajanje
kulturnega prostora med Alpami, Panonijo in Jadranom; Akti


mednarodnega simpozija, Ljubljana, Narodna galerija, ed. Janez Hfler

(Ljubljana, 1995), 243; Robert Gibbs, Paolo Veneziano, in The Dictionary of
Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 24:32; Filippo Pedrocco,
Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003), 150153.
[20] Inv. A 157; cf. Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003),
142145.
[21] Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003), 180183. The
fragmentary inscription, still legible on the panel, also contains a date,
usually interpreted as 1349.
[22] Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003), 170173.
Commissioned in 1343, the Pala feriale bears not only the signatures of
Paolo and of his two sons but also the date 1345.
[23] Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003), 166167,
176177.
[24] According to Rebecca W. Corrie, the motif alludes to the Crucifixion and to
the theme of the Eucharist, but her argument does not seem entirely
convincing. Rebecca W. Corrie, Coppo di Marcovaldos Madonna del
Bordone and the Meaning of the Bare-Legged Christ Child in Siena and the
East, Gesta 35 (1996): 4365.
[25] On the motif of the manicottolo and its significance as a clue for dating, see
the perceptive remarks of Luciano Bellosi (1974), the first to evaluate its
importance in art historical terms. He developed his proposals further in
later studies. Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin,
1974), 5154.
[26] Cf. Filippo Pedrocco, Paolo Veneziano (Milan and Venice, 2003), 202203.
[27] Cf. Rodolfo Pallucchini, ed., La pittura veneziana del Trecento (Venice,
1964), 7578, figs. 244, 247.
[28] Cf. Maria Walcher Casotti, Il Trittico di S. Chiara di Trieste e lorientamento

paleologo nellarte di Paolo Veneziano (Trieste, 1961); Carla Travi, Il
Maestro del trittico di Santa Chiara: Appunti per la pittura veneta di primo
Trecento, Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 8196.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The painting, executed on a single piece of wood with vertical grain, has triangular
additions of relatively recent date at the upper corners.[1] Narrow strips of wood
have been attached to the vertical edges of the panel, which has been thinned and
cradled at least twice. The paint is applied on a gesso ground; there is a layer of


red bole under the gilded areas. The x-radiographs reveal two pieces of fabric
under the gesso, which were probably applied to conceal flaws in the panel. An
incised line marks the inner periphery of the now lost original frame. The paint was
applied thinly with green underpaint beneath the flesh tones. The halos are
punched, and the soldiers armor is embellished with mordant gilding.
The panel has numerous old wormholes and some small cracks along the bottom
edge. A light overall abrasion can be observed on the painted surface, which has
two significant paint losses: one on Christs torso, and the other on his left arm.
Other, smaller losses are present in Christs loincloth, Mary Magdalenes nose, and
in the face and torso of the lower right-hand angel. The right half of the gold
background has been regilded. The dark outer contours have been reinforced in
some areas. Stephen Pichetto removed a discolored varnish and inpainted the
panel when he cradled it in 19341935.[2]
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Already by 1912, Roger Fry reproduced the panel with the upper corners
integrated with modern additions and the background regilded. Roger Fry,
Exhibition of Pictures and the Early Venetian School at the Burlington Fine
Arts Club, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 21 (1912): pl. 2.
[2] According to Fern Rusk Shapley, the panel was cradled, cleaned, restored
and varnished by S. Pichetto c. 1934/35. Evidently, it had also been treated
before Pichettos intervention, which presumably occurred after the painting
entered the Kress collection. Indeed, according to the examination report of
the NGA painting conservation department dated December 5, 1988, x-ray
documentation proves that an earlier, heavier cradle [probably added
during the early twentieth century restoration] was replaced by the present
one. Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:335 n. 6.
PROVENANCE
(Italian art market, probably Venice), by 1902.[1] Achillito Chiesa, Milan, early
twentieth century;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, Florence); sold July
1934 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] In his
article of 1912, Roger Fry reproduces the painting together with another, similarly


attributed to the school of Semitecolo, explaining that it was present some years
ago in the market in Italy (Roger Fry, "Exhibition of Pictures and the Early Venetian
School at the Burlington Fine Arts Club," The Burlington Magazine for
Connoisseurs 21 [1912]: 47, pl. 2). Fry had probably seen it in October 1902; in fact,
in a letter dated 10 October 1902, written to his wife from Venice, he reports, Ive
had great luck today, managed to get to see some pictures by Semitecolo what
Ive never managed before; Letters of Roger Fry, ed. Denys Sutton, 2 vols., New
York, 1972: 1:196. [2] The collection of Achillito Chiesa, which the great art dealer
Luigi Bellini calls the pi importante e intelligente collezione di oggetti darte
italiana fondata in questi ultimi cinquantanni in Italia ("the most important, and
intelligent, collection of Italian art objects formed in Italy within the last fifty years")
(Luigi Bellini, Nel mondo degli antiquari, Florence, 1947: 223224), was dispersed
between 1925 and 1931 because of the collectors financial difficulties; see
Elisabeth E. Gardner, A Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private Collections, 3
vols., ed. Chiara Ceschi and Katharine Baetjer, Vicenza, 1998: 1:227-228. [3] The bill
of sale is dated 13 July 1934 (copy in NGA curatorial files).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1912 Fry, Roger. "Exhibition of Pictures and the Early Venetian School at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
21 (1912): 47, pl. 2.
(repro.), 238.
repro. 163.
York, 1944: 73-74, repro. no. 84
1946 Longhi, Roberto. Viatico per cinque secoli di pittura veneziana.
Florence, 1946: 45, pl. 7.
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1855.
1956 Arslan, Edoardo. "Una nuova Madonna di Paolo Veneto." Commentari 7
(1956): 21 n. 8.
1956 Laclotte, Michel. "A propos de lexposition De Giotto Bellini." La
Revue des arts 6 (1956): 78, repro.


1956 Laclotte, Michel. "Peintures italiennes des XIVe et XVe sicles

lOrangerie." Arte veneta 10 (1956): 226.
1956 Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Nota per Paolo Veneziano." In Scritti di storia
dellarte in onore di Lionello Venturi. 2 vols. Rome, 1956: 1:131 fig. 10, 132,
135.
1957 Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian
1961 Walcher Casotti, Maria. Il Trittico di S. Chiara di Trieste e lorientamento
paleologo nellarte di Paolo Veneziano. Trieste, 1961: 19.
1964: 32, fig. 97.
1965 Gamulin, Grgo. "Un crocefisso di Maestro Paolo e di altri due del
Trecento." Arte veneta 19 (1965): 37.
1965 Muraro, Michelangelo. "Maestro Paolo da Venezia: fortuna critica."
Ateneo veneto 3 (1965): 93.
1969 Muraro, Michelangelo. Paolo da Venezia. Milan, 1969: 61, 78 n. 47, 99,
156-157, 158, pls. 91-93.
1969 Sandberg-Vaval, Evelyn. "Maestro Paolo Veneziano: suoi dipinti in
America e altrove." In Paolo da Venezia. Milan, 1969: 99.
1970 Gamulin, Grgo. "Di un libro su Paolo da Venezia." Arte veneta 24 (1970):
266.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 158, 291, 645, 660.
Museum. Worcester, MA, 1974: 415, 417.
peinture italienne. 2nd ed. Paris, 1976: no. 202.
1977 Kiel, Hanna. "Das Polyptychon von Paolo und Giovanni Veneziano in
Sanseverino Marche." Pantheon 35 (1977): 107, 108 n. 8, fig. 4.



256.
1983 Fornari Schianchi, Lucia. La Galleria Nazionale di Parma. Parma, 1983:
34.
1983 Loe, Georges de, Elisabeth Mognetti, and Dominique Thibaut.
Avignon, Muse du Petit Palais. Paris, 1983: 32.
peinture italienne. 3rd ed. Paris, 1987: 186.
1991 Flores dArcais, Francesca. "Paolo Veneziano." In Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 9(1998):158.
1992 Flores dArcais, Francesca. "Venezia." In La Pittura nel Veneto. Il
Trecento. Edited by Mauro Lucco. 2 vols. Milan, 1992: 1:30, fig. 16, pls. 31
and 34.
1994 Flores dArcais, Francesca. "La pittura." In Storia di Venezia. Temi.
LArte. 2 vols. Edited by Rodolfo Pallucchini. Rome, 1994: 1:259.
1996 Gibbs, Robert. "Paolo Veneziano." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by
Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York, 1996: 24:32.
1997 Fornari Schianchi, Lucia, ed. Galleria Nazionale di Parma. Vol. 1,
Catalogo delle opere dallantico al Cinquecento. Milan, 1997: 44.
1997 Santini, Clara. "Un episodio della pittura veneziana di primo Trecento: il
Maestro dellIncoronazione della Vergine di Washington." Il Santo 37
(1997): 144, pl. 25.
1998 Gardner, Elizabeth E. In A Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private
Collections. 4 vols. Edited by Chiara Ceschi and Katharine Baetjer.
Vicenza, 1998-2011: 1(1998):228.
2000 Fossaluzza, Giorgio, ed. Da Paolo Veneziano a Canova: capolavori dei
musei veneti restaurati dalla Regione del Veneto 1984-2000. Exh. cat.
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 2000: 43.
2002 Flores dArcais, Francesca, and Giovanni Gentili, eds. Il Trecento
Adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra Oriente e Occidente. Exh.
cat. Castel Sismondo, Rimini. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2002: 148, 164.
2002 Flores dArcais, Francesca. "Paolo Veneziano e la pittura del Trecento in
Adriatico." In Il Trecento Adriatico: Paolo Veneziano e la pittura tra
Oriente e Occidente. Edited by Francesca Flores dArcais and Giovanni
Gentili. Exh. cat. Castel Sismondo, Rimini. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan),
2002: 22.
2002 Mori, Francesco. "Paolo Veneziano." in La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario
dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan, 2002: 3:676-677,
repro.


2003 Pedrocco, Filippo. Paolo Veneziano. Milan and Venice, 2003: 70, 122
(repro.), 126, 131 n. 79, 154, repro. 155.
2005 De Marchi, Andrea, ed. Autour de Lorenzo Veneziano: fragments de
polyptyques vnitiens du XIVe sicle. Exh. cat. Muse des Beaux-Arts,
Tours. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2005: 19 (repro.), 20, 88.
Palais, Avignon. Paris, 2005: 172, repro. 246.
2005 Splendeurs de la peinture italienne, 1250-1510. Exh. cat. Galerie G. Sarti.
Paris, 2005: 32, 37.
2006 Guarnieri, Cristina. Lorenzo Veneziano. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2006:
96 n. 91.
2008 De Franceschi, Enzo. "I mosaici della cappella di SantIsidoro nella
Basilica di San Marco fra la tradizione bizantina e le novit di Paolo
Veneziano." Zograf 32 (2008): 125, repro. 126.
2010 Guarnieri, Cristina. "Per la Restituzione di due croci Perdute di Paolo
Veneziano: il Leone Marciano del Museo Correr e i dolenti della Galleria
Sabauda." In Medioevo Adriatico: Circolazione di Modelli, opere,
maestri. Edited by Giovanna Valenzano and Federica Toniolo. Rome,
2010: 140, 152 repro.


Puccio di Simone
Also known as
Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece
Florentine, active c. 1330 - 1360
BIOGRAPHY
The artist, who was enrolled in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali in Florence between
1346 and 1348, must have been an established artist by this time, not only because
a document datable between 1348 and 1349 lists him among the best Florentine
painters of the day,[1] but also because various paintings identified as his work
seem to date to the 1340s or even earlier. Knowledge of Puccio in the art historical
literature was confined for a long time to the signed polyptych in the Galleria
dellAccademia in Florence (no. 8569), but the clumsy repainting of its central
panel hardly facilitated a reconstruction of the painters oeuvre. However, in 1947
Richard Offner was able to identify many of the works now assigned to him in a
group of paintings that, on the basis of the location of one of them in Fabriano,[2]
previously had been attributed to Allegretto Nuzi (Umbrian, active from c. 1340;
died 1373). Art historians generally have recognized the congruity of this group
assembled by Offner under the conventional name of Master of the Fabriano
Altarpiece, but Roberto Longhi (1959) reassigned it to Puccio di Simone, having
discovered the artists name in the inscription legible on one of the works in the
catalog of the Fabriano Master. The painting in question is the Madonna and Child
formerly in the Artaud De Montor collection in Paris and now in the Alana collection
in New York, which with its date (1360) also indicates the end point of the artists
oeuvre.[3] Indeed, it seems probable that Puccio, recorded for the last time in
documents in 1357, died a few years later. Puccios apparent presence in Fabriano
in 13531354 and his partnership with the local master Allegretto, testified by the
triptych cataloged here, obviously implies stylistic contacts between the two. Apart
from that, art historians have long recognized the painters indebtedness to the art
of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348), conjecturing that his career
had indeed begun in the shop of this master.[4] According to some more recent
hypotheses, Puccio must have served a previous apprenticeship in the atelier of
Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) or of one of his disciples.[5]
Puccio di Simone 1115


Puccio undoubtedly was a charming and accomplished painter. Offner

commented, at its best his work is shot through with a winsome, sunny lyricism
rare in the period. Our painters color, Offner continued, like his humor, is
pitched in an upper key,[6] and these characteristics clearly distinguish his
paintings from the more composed and solemn manner of Bernardo Daddi. We
may cite, as examples of works probably executed in Daddis atelier in the 1340s,
two polyptychs, one divided between the Galleria Nazionale in Parma and a private
collection and the other between the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent and
the Gemldegalerie in Berlin, and also the recomposed polyptych in the Galleria
dellAccademia in Florence (nos. 443, 6140). In the early 1350s, however, Puccio
distanced himself from Daddis manner. He now embraced some of the more
naturalistic currents developed by such artists as Stefano Fiorentino and Giottino,
but he also succumbed to the influence of the effects of monumentality and strong
simplification of form that distinguish paintings produced in the atelier of Andrea
Orcagna; it is these aspects that characterize the final phase of Puccios career.
[1] An undated document in the Archivio di Stato in Pistoia, probably written shortly
after the plague epidemic (the Black Death) that struck Tuscany in 1348, listed
Master Puccio among the six reputedly best Florentine painters of the time;
Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonn
(Columbia, Mo, 1982), 56, 257 doc. 49.
[2] The panel in question is Saint Anthony Abbot and Group of Devotees now in
the Pinacoteca Civica in Fabriano. The local historiography had traditionally
attributed it to Allegretto, and Bernard Berenson used it as the basis for his
attempted reconstruction of Allegrettos catalog. See Bernard Berenson, The
Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (New York, 1909), 131.
485488; Ada Labriola, in The Alana Collection, vol. 1, Italian Paintings from the
13th to 15th Century, ed. Mikls Boskovits (Florence, 2009), 172176.
[4] Our painters type, forms, style, his store of shapes and motifs bear the stamp
of Daddis atelier in the latter thirties or early forties, when he was learning his
craft, wrote Offner in 1947; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of
Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His
Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed.


(Florence, 2001), 341. For his part, the present writer has identified the hand of
Puccio in the series of saints now displayed in the Galleria dellAccademia,
Florence (no. 6140), which had in the past invariably been considered a product of
Daddis shop. I therefore propose a direct collaboration between Daddi and Puccio
in the 1340s. Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency
(Florence, 1984), 7778.
[5] The present writer conjectured that Puccio spent an initial apprenticeship in
Giottos bottega , while Ada Labriola (2005) saw the painters exordium instead not
in direct contact with Giotto himself but with one of his pupils, such as Maso di
Banco or the Master of San Lucchese. See Mikls Boskovits, in A Critical and
Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5,
Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina
Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 1721; and Ada Labriola, in Da
Bernardo Daddi al Beato Angelico a Botticelli: Dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau
Museum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2005),
192195. Angelo Tartuferi (2005), on the other hand, revived the hypothesis of the
artists formation at the side of Bernardo Daddi. Angelo Tartuferi, Puccio di
Simone: Osservazioni sulla cronologia e lo svolgimento artistico, in Da Puccio di
Simone a Giottino: Restauri e conferme, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2005), 13
16.
339.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1907 Gronau, Hans Dietrich. Puccio di Simone. In

1907-1950: 27(1933):442.


1922 Berenson, Bernard. Prime opere di Allegretto Nuzi.

Bollettino dArte (1922): 297-309.

Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. New York, 1947: 141-240.

Century. Sec. III, Vol. VIII: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi. New York, 1958:
165-192.
1959 Longhi, Roberto. Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi ed altri.

Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 3-12.
1972 "Puccio di Simone." In

Turin, 1972-1976: 9(1975):259-260.

Century. Sec. III, Vol. IX: The Miniaturist Tendency. Florence, 1984: 74-
79, 367-377.
1986 Biagi, Enza. Puccio di Simone. In

1989 Baiocco, Simone. "Puccio di Simone." In

Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
1996 Richards, John. Puccio di Simone. In

London, 1996: 25:691.


Rodio.
Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. 2nd ed. Florence, 2001: 339-
527, 586-600.
2005 Tartuferi, Angelo, ed.

Da Puccio di Simone a Giottino: restauri e conferme. Exh. cat. Galleria
dell'Accademia, Florence, 2005: 13-24, 42-44, 50-51, 52-53.


Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi
Umbrian, active from c. 1340; died 1373
Madonna and Child Enthroned with

Four Saints and Eighteen Angels
[middle panel]
1354
tempera on panel
painted surface: 108 x 57.8 cm (42 1/2 x 22 3/4 in.)
overall (with cradle): 108.5 59.5 3.2 cm (42 11/16 23 7/16 1 1/4 in.)
framed: 150.5 x 66.7 x 8.3 cm (59 1/4 x 26 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on the Madonna's halo: .S[AN]C[T]A.MARIA.MATER.DEI.; on the Child's halo: IIS . XRO . M;[1] along the base:
[MCCC]LIIII.QUESTA TA[VOLA HA F]ATTA F[A]RE. FRATE GIOVANNI DA [...] (1354, this picture was commissioned by Fra
Giovanni)
[1] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, DC, 1979: 1:383, read HS.XRO. [LUX]
M[VNDI]. Presumably the first letters were intended to be IHS, the frequently used traditional abbreviation of the name of
Jesus, formed, at least partially, of the letters of the Greek version of the name: . The second group of letters is again an
incorrect transcription of the letters of the word Christus in Greek: ; see Hans Feldbusch, Christusmonogramm, in
Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, edited by Otto Schmitt and Zentralinstitut fr Kunstgeschichte Mnchen, 10
vols., Stuttgart, 1937-2003: 3(1954):707-720. The meaning of the final letter M, which might be an abbreviation of various
words, is difficult to interpret.
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle 1120
panel]

ENTRY
The triptych comprised of this panel, Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel], and Saint
Venantius [right panel] is in some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-
century painting in central Italy. First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be
characterized by such a disparity both in the distribution and in the proportions of
the figures: numerous and small in the center, large in the lateralseven larger in
scale than the Madonna enthroned in the main panel. Second, another very rare
feature is that one of the saints, Anthony Abbot, appears twice, once in the central
panel and again in the left lateral.[1] Third, and uniquely, a practically identical
version (only slightly larger in size) exists in the Duomo of Macerata, though with a
provenance from the church of SantAntonio Abate in that town.[2] It is dated 1369,
and the fact that, at an interval of fifteen years, both triptychs were commissioned
and their iconographic program established by a member of the Antonine order
named Giovanni (Johannes) makes it likely that both were executed for the same
patron.[3]
The composition at the center, with tiered angels and saints flanking the enthroned
Madonna, was probably based on a model developed in a portable triptych from
the shop of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348) or perhaps by the
hand of Puccio di Simone (Florentine, active c. 1330 - 1360) himself.[4] Mary holds
in her arms the naked child, who is draped from the hips downward in a precious
gold-embroidered cloth [fig. 1]. With an apparently playful gesture, she points her
index finger at him.[5] The Christ child is wearing a necklace with a small branch of
coral as a pendant.[6] With his left hand he grasps a small bird,[7] while with the
other hand he holds onto the hem of his mothers mantle. The Madonna and child
are flanked on either side by nine angels, probably alluding to the nine choirs of
angels.[8] The raised throne is approached by two steps, flanked in the foreground
by four saints. To the left we see Saint Catherine of Alexandria (unusually wearing
the imperial crown and with a palm branch in her right hand, while her other hand
is supported on the toothed wheel, instrument of her martyrdom) [9] and Saint
Benedict.[10] On the other side, closest to the throne, is Saint Anthony Abbot,
patron saint of the Order of Hospitallers of Saint Anthony, better known as the
Antonines, dressed in the dark brown tunic and beige mantle of his order. The
saint supports himself on the T-shaped handle of his staff, while at his feet a small
black pig, his usual attribute, can be glimpsed.[11] The female saint standing next to
him can be recognized as Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, another exemplary figure of
Christian charity, who gathers up her dress in front to support a posy of brightly
panel]

colored flowers.[12] Above the Madonna, Christ Crucified appears in the quatrefoil
medallion of the gable.[13] In the left lateral, Saint Anthony Abbot appears once
again. He is accompanied by his usual attributes. Directing his gaze at the Virgin
and Child, he raises his left hand in a gesture of homage and service,[14] while with
his other hand he holds the T-shaped staff. The half-figure Angel of the
Annunciation appears in the trefoil medallion in the gable above his head. In the
right lateral the martyr Saint Venantius is represented as a young knight dressed in
a precious gold-embroidered brocaded tunic.[15] He supports a standard in his
right hand. The half-figure of the Virgin Annunciate appears in the trefoil medallion
above his head.
It is not known at whose suggestion this triptych, on its appearance in a London

sale catalog of July 25, 1916, was cited as A Triptych...attributed to Allegretto Nuzi
da Fabriano. Presumably, Bernard Berenson had occasion to see it before the
sale and to connect it with the catalog of works he had begun to assemble under
the name of this Marchigian master some years earlier.[16] It cannot be excluded,
however, that the painting entered the Russell collection already with this
attribution in the course of the nineteenth century, given its provenance from a
church (and then from a collection) in Allegrettos hometown. In fact, even if the
original provenance of the altarpiece from the church of SantAntonio Abate in
Fabriano is undocumented, it can be regarded as virtually certain. It is suggested
first and foremost by the double presence of the patron saint of the Antonine
order, and also by the circumstance that another work by Allegretto, dating to the
year before the triptych discussed here, is also known to have a provenance from
the church of SantAntonio fuori Porta Pisana.[17] In any case, the attribution of the
triptych to Allegretto was supported with complete conviction by Berenson (1922,
1930), followed by Osvald Sirn (1924), Luigi Serra (1925, 19271928, 1929), Bruno
Molajoli (1928), Roger Fry (1931), Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933), Umberto Gnoli (1935),
Luigi Coletti (1946), Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca (1951), and Pietro Toesca
(1951). Robert Lehman (1928), on the other hand, accepted the attribution with
some reservations.[18]
The doubts can be traced back to Raimond van Marle, who in 1924 detected in the
triptych the presence of elements of Daddesque culture that he found
incompatible with the attribution to Allegretto.[19] Richard Offner (1927), Helen
Comstock (1928), and Mario Salmi (1930) endorsed van Marles doubts.[20] Some
years later, Offner recognized that the work is the result of two hands: that of
Allegretto, who painted only the left lateral, and that of an anonymous Florentine
panel]

follower of Daddi whom Offner dubbed the Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece and
who, he argued, was responsible for the rest of the altarpiece. These conclusions,
reported for the first time in the catalog of the National Gallery of Art (NGA 1941)
and then explained in detail by Offner himself (1947), were gradually accepted in all
the more recent literature on the painting.[21] After more than a decade, Roberto
Longhi (1959) succeeded in identifying the anonymous Florentine painter with
Puccio di Simone.[22] Offner did not accept the proposal,[23] and the name of the
Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece continued to survive for several years in the art
historical literature. Since the mid-1970s, however, the triptych in the National
Gallery of Art has been generally, and correctly, recognized as the joint work of
Puccio (central and right panels) and Allegretto (left panel).
The execution of an altarpiece by two different artists can hardly have been a rarity
in the practice of fourteenth-century painters: one of the most famous examples of
such a collaboration is that of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died
1344) and Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) in the triptych dated 1333 now
in the Uffizi, Florence, signed by both artists.[24] What is more rare is the execution
of a painting by two unrelated painters of different origin and formation, such as
Puccio from Florence and Allegretto from Fabriano. They could have gotten to
know each other during Allegrettos documented residence in Florence in 1346,
but the style of the earlier works by this painter suggests that while in Florence he
probably frequented the shops of Maso di Banco and the young Orcagna (Andrea
di Cione) and not that of Bernardo Daddi, who was the mentor of Puccio in those
years.[25] It is probable that the Marchigian artist remained in contact with the
Florentine scene also around 1350, when perhaps he returned to work there after
the devastating outbreak of the Black Death in 1348. Nor can it be excluded that it
might have been at the request of the Antonine canons of Fabriano, and not by
personal choice, that he sought the collaboration of a Florentine painter for the
works that the order had commissioned from him in his hometown.[26]
Though its style and other data suggest that Puccio should be given credit for the
overall planning of the triptych, the parts executed by the two masters can be
clearly distinguished. The ornamentation of the two lateral panelsa decorative
frieze delimiting the gold ground; a series of miniature lunettes around the arches,
within each of which an elegant foliated motif is inserted;[27] and the decoration of
the carpet that covers the flooris identical and repeats types of decoration found
in other, presumably earlier works by Puccio di Simone.[28] The central panel
proposes a composition of tiered angels and saints flanking the Madonna that is
panel]

unusual in paintings on a monumental scale but recurs in Puccios smaller panels

clearly destined for private devotion. The severe and solemn figure of Saint
Anthony Abbot in the left lateral [fig. 2], seen in half-profile while he raises his left
hand with a nonchalant gesture of locutio, forms part of the figurative repertoire of
Puccio di Simone.[29] Yet the hermit saint seems more noble in feature and more
youthful in appearance than similar figures painted by Puccio, while his unwrinkled
face and the fixed gaze of his almond eyes immediately betray the identity of the
master who painted him: Allegretto. Allegretto, in fact, would repeat the image of
the saint in a very similar way in later works, such as the lateral of a triptych in the
Pinacoteca Civica in Fabriano.[30]
A very different humanity is evident in the image of Saint Venantius [fig. 3], a
somewhat effeminate youth with a soft complexion, snub nose, and sharp little
eyes, whose long blond locks fall over the shoulders of his sumptuous court
dress.[31] With a slight smile playing on his thin lips, he complacently surveys the
saints gathered around the Virgins throne; they too have personalities, each with
individual features: etiolated and reserved female saints, their gestures expressing
timidity; self-assured monks with thick, silky beards and minutely described and
shadowed faces; and angels who move and dart glances with the alert grace of
college girls, completely filling the available space on both sides of the throne. The
naturalistic tendency that distinguishes Puccios style in this phase has sometimes
been related to the presence in Florence of another great non-Florentine painter,
Giovanni da Milano,[32] but more likely it depends rather on other artistic
developments that began to appear in Florence even earlier than the midcentury. I
refer in particular to the activity, undoubtedly important (even if still difficult to
quantify), of Stefano di Ricco [33] and of the Master of San Lucchese,[34] pioneers
of that minute vision to which Puccio would accede after the death of Bernardo
Daddi and that would characterize his output during the last decade of his life.[35]
The panel now in the Pinacoteca of Fabriano and the triptych discussed here
testify that in the years c. 13531354 Puccio had resolutely embarked on the path
of pictorial realism. He is to be considered not a follower of Giovanni da Milano or
of Giottino but their fellow traveler, or even perhaps their predecessor.
panel]

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Detail of Madonna and Child (central panel), Puccio

fig. 2 Detail of Saint Anthony (left panel), Puccio di Simone
di Simone and Allegretto Nuzi, Madonna and Child
and Allegretto Nuzi, Madonna and Child Enthroned with
Enthroned with Saints and Angels, 1354, tempera on
Saints and Angels, 1354, tempera on panel, National
Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Mellon Collection
panel]

fig. 3 Detail of Saint Venantius (right panel), Puccio di

Simone and Allegretto Nuzi, Madonna and Child
Mellon Collection
NOTES
[1] It seems possible, however, as Shapley pointed out, that the triptych
originally had a rather different iconographic program. The cut running
panel]

round the saint through the gold background, wrote Shapley with regard to
the left lateral with Saint Anthony, may indicate that Nuzi replaced a
damaged or unfinished figure. Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:384. Another theory is that the
cut is the incised line for a different figure, but the plan for that figure was
abandoned before it was painted and the figure of Saint Anthony was
painted instead. Technical examination with x-radiographs and infrared
reflectography cannot conclusively determine whether what Shapley
referred to as a cut is deliberate or might actually be just a somewhat
anomalous crack around the figure of Saint Anthony, which could have
occurred during the thinning or possible transfer of the panel. If that is the
case, then this figure is not a replacement.
[2] Alberto Rossi, in Pittura del Marceratese dal Duecento al tardo

gotico (Macerata, 1971), 6264, gives the measurements of the panel as 152
177 cm. The triptych in Macerata bears the inscription ISTAM/TABULAM
FECIT FIERI FRA/TER IOHANNES CLERICUS PRECEPTOR/TOLENTINI:
ALEGRITTUS DE FABRIANO ME PINXIT [. . .] MCCCLXVIIII. See Luigi
Serra, Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del
gotico (Pesaro, 1929), 287, 296. That painting, which Ricci recorded as
having come to the cathedral from the church of SantAntonio Abate in
Macerata, therefore had been commissioned by another community of the
Antonine order and then transferred to its present site following the
suppression of the religious orders in the Napoleonic period. Amico
Ricci, Memorie storiche delle arti e degli artisti della Marca di Ancona, 2
vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.
[3] Luigi Serra, Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del
gotico (Pesaro, 1929), 287, conjectured that the same person had
commissioned both this altarpiece and its prototype, now in Washington.
The various houses of the order were called preceptories, so it may be
surmised that, at least in 1369, Johannes clericusthe donor cited in the
inscriptionwas the superior of the house of the Antonine order in
Tolentino and, perhaps, the promoter of its daughterhouse in Macerata. For
the term preceptor, cf. Charles du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium medi et
infim latinitatis, 10 vols. (Niort, 18831887), 6:451.
2001), 394 n. 1, already observed that the grouping of the attendant figures
in tiers on either side of the Virgin has been handed down by Bernardo
Daddi in works such as Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels. He
also drew attention to the anomaly of the portrayal of the Madonna in a
smaller scale than the saints in the laterals. This was probably a solution
imposed by the need to follow a model specified by the donor, perhaps a
panel]

painting similar to Daddis aforementioned work or a similar composition by

Puccio himself. On the works of this type produced in the shops of Bernardo
Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348) and Puccio di Simone, cf. Offner
2001, 404 n. 2; on the relevant iconography, see Barbara Bruderer
Eichberg, Les neufs choeurs angliques: Origine et volution du thme
dans lart du Moyen ge (Poitiers, 1998), 6267.
[5] Dorothy C. Shorr (1954) stated, This action conceals some peculiar
significance and may possibly refer to the sacrificial aspect of the Lamb of
God (cf. Jn 1:29; Rev 5:6). On the other hand, as Offner (2001) notes, in
Puccios earlier paintings the Virgin is almost always engaged in play with
the Child.... The painter studiously endows the Child with artlessness and
the Mother with appropriate happiness untouched by the shadow of
prophecy. See Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in
Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 168; Richard Offner, A Critical
[6] This iconographic detail reflects a widespread practice in the Middle Ages,
when small necklaces with miniature branches of coral as pendants
frequently were given to children to wear to protect them from harm, thanks
to the apotropaic power attributed to coral. See Wolfgang Brckner,
Koralle, in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert
Kirschbaum and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, 1970), 2:556.
[7] Small birds, mainly fastened to a cord, were widely used as childrens toys in
the Middle Ages. But symbolic significances were also attributed to them,
with reference to the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Christ. Cf. Herbert
Friedmann, The Symbolic Goldfinch: Its History and Significance in
European Devotional Art (Washington, DC, 1946).
[8] See Barbara Bruderer Eichberg, Les neufs choeurs angliques: Origine et
[9] For the iconography, see George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art,
vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952),
225234. The peculiar form of her crown, conical with pointed termination,
corresponds to that introduced by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII and
appears with some frequency in the central decades of the fourteenth
century not only in representations of emperors but also in scenes of the
Coronation of the Virginfor example, in Puccio di Simones version of the
theme in a panel in the Muse de Valence in Valence; see Richard Offner, A
404408. On the historical circumstances surrounding the realization of this
panel]

form of crown, cf. Percy Ernst Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und

Staatssymbolik: Beitrge zu ihrer Geschichte vom dritten bis zum
sechzehnten Jahrhundert, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 19541956), 3:10151019.
[10] For the iconography of Saint Benedict, cf. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art,
145174. The presence of the saint, founder of Western monasticism, in the
place of honor, at the right-hand side of Mary and her son, is probably
motivated by the fact that the motherhouse of the Antonine order, St.
Antoine-en-Viennois, was originally a Benedictine abbey.
[11] See Laurence Meiffret, Saint Antoine ermite en Italie (13401540):

Programmes picturaux et dvotion (Rome, 2004). The cult of the fourth-
century hermit saint was especially spread in Italy through the hospitals run
by the Antonines after the lay confraternity established at La-Motteaux-Bois
was transformed into a religious order. La-Motteaux-Bois was the site of the
Benedictine abbey, later called St. Antoine-en-Viennois, where the relics of
Saint Anthony had been transferred in the eleventh century. The inscription
above the saints halo also alludes to the French origin of the order.
[12] Saint Elizabeth, the founder of a hospital, was especially venerated in the
Middle Ages for her charitable activities; cf. Sankt Elisabeth: Frstin,
Dienerin, Heilige (Sigmaringen, 1981), 101116 and passim. For her
iconography, see George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of
the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 337343.
[13] On the unusual motif of the isolated figure of the crucified Christ in the
gable medallion of an altarpiece, which recurs in some works of Allegretto
Nuzi and also in Florentine paintings of the second half of the fourteenth
century, see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 394 n. 3.
[14] See Franois Garnier, Le langage de limage au Moyen Age,

vol. 1, Signification et symbolique (Paris, 1982), 174.
[15] On Saint Venantius, martyred under the persecutions of Decius, see C.

Boccanera, Venanzio da Camerino, in Bibliotheca sanctorum, 12 vols.
(Rome, 1969), 12:969978. The saint, patron of the city of Camerino in the
Marche, was also the titular saint of the Collegiata (cathedral since 1728) of
Fabriano.
[16] See Bernard Berenson, The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, 2nd
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.
[17] I refer to the panel of Saint Anthony Abbot with a group of devotees
mentioned in Provenance note 1 above. The painting, dated 1353, was first
attributed to Allegretto Nuzi by Ricci in 1834. Although Offner in 1927
panel]

excluded it from the catalog of the Marchigian painter, it continued to be

attributed to him for many years to come, as was the triptych in the National
Gallery of Art. Riccis description does not perfectly coincide with the work
now displayed in the Pinacoteca of Fabriano, probably because he wrote
from memory without checking the characteristics of the image against the
painting. In any case, the date 1353 that Ricci read in the painting makes it
virtually certain that it is the same painting. The triptych in the Gallery and
the panel in Fabriano are the only paintings certainly produced by Puccio
outside Tuscany. A period of activity in Perugia has also been surmised,
however; Puccio could have stopped there during his journey to or from
Fabriano. Cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 378 and n. 2, and a non-Florentine (Umbrian or
Marchigian) destination cannot be excluded also for Puccios triptych now in
the Cleveland Museum of Art (Offner 2001, 18 and n. 43).
[18] Bernard Berenson, Prime opere di Allegretto Nuzi, Bollettino darte (1922):
296309; Bernard Berenson, Studies in Medieval Painting(New Haven,
1930), 6373; Osvald Sirn, Three Early Florentine Trecento Pictures, The
Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 45 (1924): 285; Luigi Serra, Le
gallerie comunali delle Marche (Rome, 1925), 132; Luigi Serra, Larte nelle
Marche: La pittura gotica; La scuola fabrianese, Rassegna marchigiana 6
(19271928): 128, 130, 136, 138, 146; Luigi Serra, Larte nelle Marche,
vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del gotico (Pesaro, 1929), 280281,
286288, 293; Bruno Molajoli, La scuola pittorica fabrianese, Gentile da
Fabriano: Bollettino mensile per la quinta commemorazione centenaria a
cura della Societ Fabrianese per la Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico ed
Archeologico 1 (1928): 16; Roger Fry, Mr Berenson on Medieval
Painting, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931):
245; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 87;
Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 107;
Umberto Gnoli, Nuzi, Allegretto, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere
ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1935), 25:86; Luigi
Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xlix; Ugo
Galetti and Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols.
(Milan, 1951), 3:1779; Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento. Storia dellarte classica e
italiana 3; Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 677; Robert Lehman, The
vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 395.
[20] Richard Offner, Studies in Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century (New
York, 1927), 143; Helen Comstock, The Bernardo Daddis in the United
panel]

States, International Studio 38 (1928): 94; Mario Salmi, Review of Larte

nelle Marche dalle origini cristiane alla fine del Gotico by Luigi
Serra, Rivista darte 12 (1930): 303, 308.

Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 128, 142; Richard Offner, A Critical and
vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle (New York, 1947), 182184.
[22] Roberto Longhi, Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi ed altri, Paragone 10,
no. 111 (1959): 910.
[23] In the foreword to the volume in which he discussed Puccios oeuvre,

Richard Offner reprimanded the error of some art historians who proposed
to link polyptych no. 8569 in the Galleria dellAccademia in Florence (signed
by Puccius Simonis) with a group of paintings like those of the Fabriano
Master, adding, Affinities between the Fabriano Master and Puccio must
be admitted to exist as between two painters from a common stock, but it
becomes the less likely that they are the same person as their paintings...
would...have to show greater analogies of style than actually appear.
1958), iii. Offners doubts probably can be explained by the circumstance
that the central panel of the altarpiece in question was illegible until a few
years ago as a result of a maladroit repainting, from which only the recent
restoration has freed it. See Angelo Tartuferi with Roberto Buda and Rosella
Lari, in Da Puccio di Simone a Giottino: Restauri e conferme, ed. Angelo
Tartuferi and Daniella Parenti (Florence, 2005), 4245.
[24] Though signed by both artists, the work has been very differently assessed
in the art historical literature; cf. in this regard the papers in the
volume Simone Martini e lAnnunciazione degli Uffizi, ed. A. Cecchi
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2001), which tend to circumscribe Lippos role in
the execution of the triptych; and the more recent article by Andrea De
Marchi, La parte di Simone e la parte di Lippo, Nuovi studi 11 (2006): 524,
which considers the execution divided substantially into two equal parts.
[25] In attempting for the first time to reconstruct the career of his Master of the
Fabriano Altarpiece, Richard Offner conjectured that he was born around
1320...[and] he learned his craft under the spell of Daddi, which served...to
mold his artistic personality, in the mid-thirties of the century;...he persisted
in this state for about ten years...[and] for some years thereafter his native
talents seem...to blossom into full flower...about the time of Daddis reputed
death in 1348. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine
new ed. (Florence, 2001), 347348. Recent reflection on the question,
panel]

summarized in my essay in the above-cited volume of Offner (2001, 1721),

suggests to me the probability that during the 1330s, Puccio could have
spent some time in Giottos shop, entering Daddis only after the death of
the great master.
[26] The church of SantAntonio Abate in Florence was built and successively
enlarged in the course of the fourteenth century and frescoed, according to
Vasari, by a painter he called Lippo (perhaps Lippo di Benivieni?) and by
Buonamico Buffalmacco. Cf. Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese
fiorentine divise ne suoi quartieri, 10 vols. (Florence, 17541762), 4:110; and
Giorgio Vasari, I Ragionamenti, in Le vite dei pi eccellenti pittori, scultori
ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence, 1882), 8:105106. By
the sixteenth century it already had been demolished. It must have been a
complex of imposing dimensions and striking decoration, and it cannot be
excluded that other later Antonine communities, such as that of Fabriano,
considered it a model to be imitated. The association of Allegretto with
Puccio surely was not formed merely to paint the triptych now in
Washington. As we have seen (Provenance note 2), Luigi Lanzi recorded
frescoes signed by Allegretto still surviving in the cloister adjoining the
church in Fabriano, and it does not seem to go too far to assume that
Allegretto, before frescoing the cloister, might also have frescoed the
interior of the church.
[27] A small but significant difference between the two laterals should be
pointed out, suggesting a change or reconsideration in iconographic
program. Although, as Erling S. Skaug (1994) rightly pointed out, the left
wing of the Washington triptych...displays none of Nuzis punch marks, the
execution of the lettered halo to the left...is clearly different from Puccios
manner: the outline of each letter is stippled (with a single point punch),
whereas Puccios letters consistently retain their incised outlines, and the
granulation...is confined to the ground. The halo may have been executed
by Nuzi. Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico:
(Oslo, 1994), 1:141. The presence of a different system of punch decoration in
Saint Anthonys halo, along with the technical anomalies noted in the figure
of the saint (see note 1 above), suggest that this aspect of the left panel may
have been modified in course of the altarpieces realization.
[28] In various panels by Puccio di Simone, the molding of the upper arch is
embellished on the inside with a corbel frieze, the lunette-shaped
interspaces decorated with a foliate motif incised in the gold ground, just as
in the Washington triptych. We may cite Coronation of the Virgin no. 16 in
the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg; the triptych formed by the Coronation
of the Virgin in the Muse des Beaux-Arts in Ghent (no. 1903A) and the two
panels of saints in the Gemldegalerie in Berlin (no. III.20); or the other
panel]

version of the Coronation of the Virgin, in the Muse du Petit Palais in

Avignon (no. M.I. 414), all datable to the 1340s. The ornamental motif of the
carpet on which the saints are standing in the lateral panels recurs, as noted
by Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14.
Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 219, 220, in such works by Puccio di Simone as
the former Lehman Madonna now in the Norton Simon Museum in
Pasadena and the former Dijon triptych now in the Muse du Petit Palais in
Avignon (no. 20155).
[29] The saint is portrayed by Puccio in an identical pose in the Petrognano

polyptych now in the Museo di Arte Sacra at Certaldo and, in reverse, in the
small triptych formerly in the collection of Carlo De Carlo in Florence; see
2001), 476482, 595596.
[30] Allegretto painted the figure of Saint Anthony Abbot with the same pose
and facial features as in the Washington triptych not only in the Macerata
triptych but also in a panel in the Pinacoteca of Fabriano. The latter presents
Saint Anthony Abbot and Saint John the Evangelist and, together with
another lateral of the same triptych, depicting the Baptist and Saint
Venantius, comes from the abbey of Santa Maria dAppennino. Cf. Fabio
Marcelli, Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli (Fano, 1997), 60.
[31] The saints brocaded tunic, embroidered with motifs of flowers, birds, and
tortoises, is one of the most lavishly decorated and complex fabrics to be
found in paintings executed in the mid-fourteenth century. It is displayed
almost ostentatiously by the young Saint Venantius, who throws one side of
his mantle behind his right shoulder seemingly with no other purpose than
to display his sumptuous dress. The same lavishly brocaded tunic, similarly
exhibited, is seen not only in the copy of the Washington triptych now in
Macerata but also in the image of Saint Venantius in the triptych cited in the
previous note, now in the Pinacoteca Civica of Fabriano, and in various
other works. The material, of which the public in Fabriano was clearly fond,
also appears in the painted mantle of a statue of the Madonna and Child
with a provenance from a church in the environs of Fabriano and now in a
private collection in Perugia. Cf. Enrica Neri Lusanna, in Leredit di Giotto:
Arte a Firenze 13401375, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2008), 132. The
fabric in question should be understood as Florentine in origin. Brigitte
1967), 140142, pointed out that it appears, with variants, in various paintings
produced in the shop of Andrea Orcagna.
[32] It is Roberto Longhi who proposed that the naturalistic approach

exemplified by the figures in the Gallery triptych reflects models
disseminated by Giovanni da Milano during his activity in Florence. Roberto
panel]

Longhi, Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi ed altri,Paragone 10, no. 111

(1959): 910; Roberto Longhi, Una riconsiderazione dei primitivi italiani a
Londra, Paragone 16 (1965): 13. The proposal has been repeated in various
more recent contributions: Carlo Volpe, Il lungo percorso del dipingere
dolcissimo e tanto unito, in Storia dellarte italiana, vol. 2, Dal Medioevo al
Novecento, pt. 1, Dal Medioevo al Quattrocento, ed. Federico Zeri, Giulio
Bollati, and Paolo Fossati (Turin, 1983), 281 n. 30, 299; Silvia Giorgi,
in Galleria Nazionale di Parma, vol. 1, Catalogo delle opere dallantico al
Cinquecento, ed. Lucia Fornari Schianchi (Milan, 1997), 47.
[33] The Florentine painter Stefano, whose name is cited without patronymic but
with great admiration by Trecento sources, is probably to be identified with
Stefano di Ricco di Lapo, son-in-law of Giotto and father of the painter
Giottino. Cf. Brendan Cassidy, Stefano Fiorentino, in The Dictionary of Art,
ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 29:598599; Giovanna
Ragionieri, Stefano Fiorentino, in La pittura in Europa: Il dizionario dei
pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 3:867868.
Reconstructions, in part divergent, of Stefanos oeuvre have been proposed
by Luciano Bellosi, Giottino e la pittura di filiazione giottesca intorno alla
met del Trecento, Prospettiva 101 (2001): 1940; and the present writer,
Mikls Boskovits, Ancora su Stefano fiorentino (e su qualche fatto pittorico
di Firenze verso la met del Trecento), Arte cristiana 91 (2003): 173180.
How closely linked Puccios painting is with the reformed, gothicizing
Giottism of the mid-fourteenth century is shown by the fact that Bellosi
(2001, 3133) attributed to Stefano, though with extreme caution, the great
painted cross in the church of San Marco in Florence, which others
consider executed by Puccio. Cf. Erling S. Skaug, Punch Marks from Giotto
c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:137138; Mojmir Svatopluk
Painting (Prague, 1998), 427; and Mikls Boskovits, in Richard Offner, A
Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 1721.
[34] On the still inadequately defined personality of the Master of San Lucchese,
cf. Mikls Boskovits, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessantanni di studi e
ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 208211; Mikls Boskovits,
Ancora su Stefano fiorentino (e su qualche fatto pittorico di Firenze verso la
met del Trecento), Arte cristiana 91 (2003): 175177; Luciano Bellosi,
Giottino e la pittura di filiazione giottesca intorno alla met del
[35] For the chronology of Puccios oeuvre since the mid-fourteenth century, I
refer the reader to my own proposals: Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and
panel]


vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 7479; Richard Offner, A
Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 1721,
though with the caveat that I erroneously included the polyptych now in the
Museo Diocesano in Certaldo and the signed polyptych in the Galleria
dellAccademia in Florence among the painters late works.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The altarpiece is constructed of three panels, the central one of which is fabricated
of at least two pieces of wood with vertical grain. The original thickness of the
panels was reduced to 1.31.7 cm, and it has been cradled. These alterations may
have been accomplished during an undocumented treatment that possibly
occurred in the 1920s.[1] Part of the frame is original, but the ornamental painting of
the gables is a later addition.[2] The painted surface is realized on a white gesso
preparation applied over a layer of fabric, whereas the gilding is applied over an
additional layer of red bole. Despite some worm tunneling and the slight concavity
over the join of the planks in the central panel and some resulting paint losses,
which have required integrations, the panels are generally in fine condition. There
is extensive inpainting in the robe of Saint Anthony and scattered inpainting in the
hands of Saint Venantius, in the Virgins cloak, and in some of the heads of the
angels; however, the thick surface coating masks the true degree of inpainting.
The gold and the punched decoration at the top of the left panel above the halo of
Saint Anthony, as well as in part of the halo itself, are modern.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] No information is available about this treatment, which was made several
years ago, according to a 1939 letter from David E. Finley to Richard Offner
(copy in NGA curatorial files), possibly in the period when the altarpiece was
returned from Carl Hamilton to Duveen Brothers (see Provenance note 5).
Comparison of the photograph that Bernard Berenson published in 1922
with a photograph dated 1937 in the NGA photo archives indicates that the
painting was treated between the dates when these photos were taken.
However, it is unclear if the thinning and cradling took place during that
panel]

treatment or if it had already occurred. A letter dated December 12, 1917

from Muscat Rougeron Picture Restoration to Duveen Brothers discusses
treatment of a quimptich by Allegretto di Muzzi, which may refer to the
NGA panel. Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research
Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 114, box 259, folder 12.
[2] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the frame using x-ray
fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), cross-sections, and polarized light
microscopy (see report dated April 1, 2002, in NGA conservation files). The
analysis showed that the frame was silver leaf, which was toned and
decorated with red and green transparent glazes.
PROVENANCE
Probably commissioned for the high altar of the demolished church of SantAntonio
Abate fuori Porta Pisana, Fabriano;[1] apparently by the early years of the
nineteenth century it was no longer in this church, presumably having passed into
a local private collection.[2] Joseph Russell Bailey [1840-1906], 1st Baron Glanusk,
Glanusk Park, Breconshire, Wales; by inheritance to his son, Joseph Henry Russell
Bailey [1864-1928], 2nd Baron Glanusk, Glanusk Park; sold in 1915.[3] (sale,
Sothebys, London, 25 July 1916, no. 137, as Attributed to Allegretto Nuzi);
purchased by Walter Dowdeswell[4] for (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York,
and Paris); Carl W. Hamilton [1886-1967], New York, in the early 1920s; (Duveen
Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris), by 1929;[5] sold 15 December 1936 to
The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[6] gift 1937 to NGA.
[1] The church, recorded for the first time in 1313, was officiated by the regular
canons of Saint Augustine of Saint-Antoine de Vienne, a Hospitaler company
founded by Gaston de Dauphin in 1095 and transformed by Pope Boniface VIII
into a religious order in 1297. It enjoyed a very rapid diffusion throughout Europe
(see Italo Ruffino, Canonici regolari di S. Agostino di S. Antonio di Vienne, in
Dizionario degli istituti di Perfezione 2 [1973]: 134-141; Adalbert Mischlewski,
Grundzge der Geschichte des Antoniterordens bis zur Ausgang des 15.
Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1976). Romualdo Sassi (Le chiese di Fabriano. Brevi cenni
storico artistici, Fabriano, 1961: 11-12) recalls that the church of SantAntonio Abate
in Fabriano had three altars, of which presumably the high altar was dedicated to
the Madonna and one other to the titular saint. In the late eighteenth century,
following the decline of the order, the church was transferred to the hospital, which
had used it as a mortuary when the city was struck by an epidemic in 1818. By this
panel]

time the building must already have been stripped of its movable works of art,
even though Amico Ricci (Memorie storiche delle arti e degli artisti della Marca di
Ancona, Macerata, 1834: 88) records the continuing presence in the sacristy of the
panel of Saint Anthony Abbot with a Group of Devotees now in the Pinacoteca of
Fabriano and unanimously attributed to Puccio di Simone (see Fabio Marcelli,
Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli, Fano, 1997: 26). The church, as Sassi reports,
was demolished in 1834. Richard Offner (A Critical and Historical Corpus of
his circle, Brattleboro, 1947; 2nd edition by Mikls Boskovits, assisted by Ada
Labriola and Martina Ingedaay Rodio, Florence, 2001: 394-399, n. 5) presents the
reasons that suggest the provenance of the Washington triptych from the church in
Fabriano. [2] This is suggested by the fact that during the Napoleonic occupation of
the Marche (1797-1811) many churches, especially those of religious orders, were
expropriated and stripped of their works of art, and by the fact that Luigi Lanzi (
Storia pittorica della Italia dal Risorgimento delle Belle Arti fin presso al fine del
XVIII secolo (1808), ed. Martino Capucci, Florence, 1968: 266), who records the
presence in the church of frescoes signed by Allegretto and dated 136[?] , does not
mention the presence of the triptych. The same argument ex silentio can be
adduced from Ricci (1834, 88), who claims that even the frescoes formerly situated
in the cloister annexed to the church had been lost and similarly fails to mention
the triptych: had it been present, it surely would not have escaped his attention. [3]
This information was gleaned by Duveen Brothers, and included in the prospectus
they supplied to Andrew Mellon (in NGA curatorial files). [4] Walter Dowdeswell was
the agent for Duveen Brothers at this time (see Edward Fowles, Memories of
Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 64, and passim). The Duveen Brothers X-Book
entry for the triptych (the painting was X 170) begins with Purchased from
Sothebys 25/7/1916 (Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015,
Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 422; see also reel 45,
box 133, folder 5; copies in NGA curatorial files). A copy of the sale catalogue in the
Frick Art Reference Library, New York (copy in NGA curatorial files), is annotated
with Dowdeswells name as the buyer. [5] The American oil millionaire Carl W.
Hamilton decided in c. 1920 to furnish his New York apartment with works of art
furnished by the Duveen Brothers; a few years later, however, he returned most of
his collection to Duveen (see Fowles 1976, 98-99, 127-130; Maryle Secrest,
Duveen. A Life in Art, New York, 2004: 181-184, 368). Joseph Duveen, head of the
firm, had the triptych again by at least 19 January 1929, when he responded to a
letter originally sent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then on to Hamilton,
panel]

stating, The correspondence has been sent to me because Mr. Hamilton no

longer possesses the Triptych, which is now in my private collection . . . (Duveen
Brothers Records, reel 125, box 270, folder 3). [6] The original bill of sale is in
Records of The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, subject files, box 2,
NGA archives; copy in NGA curatorial files.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1926 Sesquicentennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1926.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1922 Berenson, Bernard. "Prime opere di Allegretto Nuzi." Bollettino darte

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309, repro. 300.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
1924 Sirn, Osvald. "Three Early Florentine Trecento Pictures." The Burlington
1925 Serra, Luigi. Le gallerie comunali delle Marche. Rome, 1925: 132.
New York, 1927: 143.
1927 Serra, Luigi. "Larte nelle Marche. La pittura gotica. La scuola
fabrianese." Rassegna marchigiana 6 (1927-1928): 128, 129 (repro.), 130,
136, 138, 146.
Paris, 1928: no. LXVII, repro.
1928 Molajoli, Bruno. "La scuola pittorica fabrianese." Gentile da Fabriano:
bollettino mensile per la quinta commemorazione centenaria a cura
della Societ Fabrianese per la Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico ed
Archeologico 1 (1928): repro. 16.
1929 Gnoli, Umberto. "Nuzi, Allegretto." In Enciclopedia italiana di scienze,
1939: 25(1935):86.
1929 Serra, Luigi. Larte nelle Marche. Vol. 1 (of 2), Dalle origini cristiane alla
fine del gotico. Pesaro, 1929: 280-281, 286, 287, 288, 293, fig. 462.
73, figs. 51, 52.
panel]

fine del Gotico by Luigi Serra." Rivista darte 12 (1930): 303, 308.
1:no. 107, repro.
1941 Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 2(1946):xlix.
New York, 1941: nos. 21-22, repro., as by Alegretto Nuzi.
Art, Washington, 1941: 128, 142, no. 6, as by Allegretto Nuzi and Master
of the Fabriano Altarpiece.
repro. 159, as by Allegretto Nuzi and Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece.
Significance in European Devotional Art. Washington, DC, 1946: 26, 120,
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 9, repro., as by Master
of the Fabriano Altarpiece and Alegretto Nuzi.
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
1951 Marabottini, Alessandro. "Allegretto Nuzi." Rivista darte 27 (1951-1952):
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
1952 Kaftal, George. Saints in Italian Art. Vol. 1 (of 4), Iconography of the
Saints in Tuscan Painting. Florence, 1952: 1001.
the XIV Century. New York, 1954: 112 n. 9, 168 n. 2.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
1959 Longhi, Roberto. "Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi ed altri."
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10, fig. 12a.
panel]

1962 Klesse, Brigitte. "Literatur zur Trecentomalerei in Florenz." Zeitschrift fr

1963 Dal Poggetto, Paolo, ed. Arte in Valdelsa dal sec. XII al sec. XVIII. Exh.
cat. Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Certaldo. Florence, 1963: 28.
1965 Longhi, Roberto. "Una riconsiderazione dei primitivi italiani a Londra."
Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 85, as by Allegretto Nuzi and Master of
the Fabriano Altarpiece.
Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 51, 135, 140, 142 (repro.), 222, 242, 335.
1968 Aliberti Gaudioso, Filippa M., ed. Mostra di opere darte restaurate. Exh.
cat. Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 1968: 18.
Washington, 1968: 74, repro., as by Allegretto Nuzi and Master of the
Fabriano Altarpiece.
1968 Molajoli, Bruno. Guida artistica di Fabriano. Fabriano, 1968: 64.
1968 Vitalini Sacconi, Giuseppe. Pittura marchigiana: la scuola camerinese.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
1971 Boskovits, Mikls. "Notes sur Giovanni da Milano." Revue de lart 11
(1971): 58 n. 2.
S. Paolo, Macerata, 1971: 62.
1972 "Allegretto Nuzi" and "Puccio di Simone." In Dizionario Enciclopedico
Bolaffi dei pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo. Edited by
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
1973 Boskovits, Mikls. Pittura umbra e marchigiana fra Medioevo e
Rinascimento: studi nella Galleria Nazionale di Perugia. Florence, 1973:
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.
1975 Donnini, Giampiero. "On Some Unknown Masterpieces by Nuzi." The
Burlington Magazine 117 (1975): 536 n. 11.
panel]


of Art, Washington, 1975: 220, repro., as by Master of the Fabriano
Altarpiece and Alegretto Nuzi.
92, fig. 181.
1982 Donnini, Giampiero. "La pittura del XIII al XVIII secolo." In La citt della
carta: ambiente, societ, cultura nella storia di Fabriano. Edited by
Giancarlo Castagnoli. Fabriano, 1982: 393-394.
Paolo Fossati. Turin, 1983: 281 n. 30, 299.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
1984: 73, no. 17, color repro., as by Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece
and Allegretto Nuzi
1986 Biagi, Enza. "Puccio di Simone." In La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il
Katalog der Gemlde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 148,
149.
1988 Dal Poggetto, Paolo, ed. Capolavori per Urbino: Nove dipinti gi di
collezione Cini, ceramiche Roveresche, e altri Acquisti dello Stato (1983-
1988). Exh. cat. Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. Florence, 1988: 48.
1988 Zampetti, Pietro. Pittura nelle Marche, vol. 1, dalle origini al primo
Rinascimento. Florence, 1988: 120.
1989 Baiocco, Simone. "Puccio di Simone." In Dizionario della pittura e dei
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
1990 Monnas, Lisa. "Silk Textiles in the Paintings of Bernardo Daddi, Andrea
di Cione and their Followers." Zeitschrift fr Kunstgeschichte 53 (1990):
53.
1991 Ghisalberti, Carla. "Allegretto Nuzi." In Enciclopedia dellarte medievale.
panel]


1(1991):400.
1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
1995 De Benedictis, Cristina. "Firenze. Pittura. Sec. 14." In Enciclopedia
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
1996 Friedman, Joan Isobel, "Nuzi, Allegretto," and Richards, John, "Puccio di
Simone." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
1997 Marcelli, Fabio. Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli. Fano, 1997: 26.
1998 Bruderer Eichberg, Barbara. Les neufs choeurs angliques: origine et
volution du thme dans lart du Moyen ge. Poitiers, 1998: 22, 59, fig.
133.
1998 Kustodieva, Tatiana K. "Una Madonna dellUmilt dalla collezione
dellErmitage." Paragone 49 (1998): 7, 8, fig. 7.
2001 Fehlmann, Marc, and Gaudenz Freuler. Die Sammlung Adolf von Strler:
in memoriam Eduard Httinger (1926-1998). Schriftenreihe
Kunstmuseum Bern Nr 7. Bern, 2001: 84-85.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
dell'Accademia, Florence. 1st ed. Florence, 2003: 237.
2003 Moretti, Fabrizio, ed. Da Ambrogio Lorenzetti a Sandro Botticelli. Exh.
cat. Galleria Moretti, Florence, 2003: 38, 42-43.
2004 Marcelli, Fabio. Allegretto di Nuzio: pittore fabrianese. Fabriano, 2004:
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.
panel]

2005 Costanzi, Costanza, ed. Le Marche disperse: repertorio di opere darte

dalle Marche al mondo. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2005: 120.
2005 Moretti, Fabrizio, and Gabriele Caioni, eds. Da Allegretto Nuzi a Pietro
Perugino. Exh. cat. Galleria Moretti, Florence, 2005: 30, 36.
2005 Tartuferi, Angelo, ed. Da Puccio di Simone a Giottino: restauri e
conferme. Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, 2005: 17, 50, 52.
Siena, 2008: 218.
2008 Gregori, Mina. "Angeli e Diavoli: genesi e percorso di Giovanni da
Milano." In Giovanni da Milano: capolavori del gotico fra Lombardia e
Toscana. Edited by Daniela Parenti. Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia,
Florence, 2008: 37.
cat. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 2008: 128, 132.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.
panel]

Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi

Saints and Angels, and Saints Anthony
Abbot and Venantius [entire triptych]
1354
tempera on panel
Inscription: left panel, on Saint Anthony's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S.ANTONIVS.D[E].VIENA; middle panel, on the Madonna's halo:
.S[AN]C[T]A.MARIA.MATER.DEI.; middle panel, on the Child's halo: IIS . XRO . M;[1] middle panel, along the base:
Giovanni); right panel, on Saint Venantius's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S . VENANCIVS . M[A]RTIRI (Saint Venantius Martyr)
ENTRY
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels, and Saints Anthony Abbot 1144
and Venantius [entire triptych]

This triptych is in some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-century

painting in central Italy. First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be
patron.[3]
hand of Puccio di Simone himself.[4] Mary holds in her arms the naked child, who is
draped from the hips downward in a precious gold-embroidered cloth [fig. 1]. With
an apparently playful gesture, she points her index finger at him.[5] The Christ child
is wearing a necklace with a small branch of coral as a pendant.[6] With his left
hand he grasps a small bird,[7] while with the other hand he holds onto the hem of
his mothers mantle. The Madonna and child are flanked on either side by nine
angels, probably alluding to the nine choirs of angels.[8] The raised throne is
approached by two steps, flanked in the foreground by four saints. To the left we
see Saint Catherine of Alexandria (unusually wearing the imperial crown and with a
palm branch in her right hand, while her other hand is supported on the toothed
wheel, instrument of her martyrdom)[9] and Saint Benedict.[10] On the other side,
closest to the throne, is Saint Anthony Abbot, patron saint of the Order of
Hospitallers of Saint Anthony, better known as the Antonines, dressed in the dark
brown tunic and beige mantle of his order. The saint supports himself on the T-
shaped handle of his staff, while at his feet a small black pig, his usual attribute,
can be glimpsed.[11] The female saint standing next to him can be recognized as
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, another exemplary figure of Christian charity, who
gathers up her dress in front to support a posy of brightly colored flowers.[12]
Above the Madonna, Christ Crucified appears in the quatrefoil medallion of the
gable.[13] In the left lateral, Saint Anthony Abbot appears once again. He is
accompanied by his usual attributes. Directing his gaze at the Virgin and Child, he

raises his left hand in a gesture of homage and service,[14] while with his other
hand he holds the T-shaped staff. The half-figure Angel of the Annunciation
appears in the trefoil medallion in the gable above his head. In the right lateral the
martyr Saint Venantius is represented as a young knight dressed in a precious
gold-embroidered brocaded tunic.[15] He supports a standard in his right hand. The
half-figure of the Virgin Annunciate appears in the trefoil medallion above his head.




COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection


Mellon Collection
NOTES


gotico(Macerata, 1971), 6264, gives the measurements of the panel as 152
Serra,Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del
vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.


Koralle, inLexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum
and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, 1970), 2:556.
vol. 1,Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952),





Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.


296309; Bernard Berenson, Studies in Medieval Painting (New Haven,
Painting,The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245;
Venturi,Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 107; Umberto
Gnoli, Nuzi, Allegretto, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti,
ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1935), 25:86; Luigi Coletti, I
Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xlix; Ugo Galetti and
3:1779; Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento. Storia dellarte classica e italiana 3;Storia
dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 677; Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
vol. 3,The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 395.



Sculpture(Washington, DC, 1941), 128, 142; Richard Offner, A Critical and
no. 111 (1959): 910.



the great master.



2001), 476482, 595596.


Longhi, Qualit e industria in Taddeo Gaddi ed altri, Paragone 10, no. 111


Century, sec. 3, vol. 5,Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits,
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES


PROVENANCE
Sothebys, London, 25 July 1916, no. 137, as by Allegretto Nuzi); purchased by
Walter Dowdeswell[4] for (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);
Carl W. Hamilton [1886-1967], New York, in the early 1920s; (Duveen Brothers, Inc.,
London, New York, and Paris), by 1929;[5] sold 15 December 1936 to The A.W.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[6] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The
church, recorded for the first time in 1313, was officiated by the regular canons of
Saint Augustine of Saint-Antoine de Vienne, a Hospitaler company founded by
Gaston de Dauphin in 1095 and transformed by Pope Boniface VIII into a religious
order in 1297. It enjoyed a very rapid diffusion throughout Europe (see Italo Ruffino,
Canonici regolari di S. Agostino di S. Antonio di Vienne, in Dizionario degli istituti
di Perfezione 2 [1973]: 134-141; Adalbert Mischlewski, Grundzge der Geschichte
des Antoniterordens bis zur Ausgang des 15. Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1976). Romualdo
Sassi (Le chiese di Fabriano. Brevi cenni storico artistici, Fabriano, 1961: 11-12)
recalls that the church of SantAntonio Abate in Fabriano had three altars, of which
presumably the high altar was dedicated to the Madonna and one other to the
titular saint. In the late eighteenth century, following the decline of the order, the
church was transferred to the hospital, which had used it as a mortuary when the
city was struck by an epidemic in 1818. By this time the building must already have

been stripped of its movable works of art, even though Amico Ricci (Memorie
storiche delle arti e degli artisti della Marca di Ancona, Macerata, 1834: 88) records
the continuing presence in the sacristy of the panel of Saint Anthony Abbot with a
Group of Devotees now in the Pinacoteca of Fabriano and unanimously attributed
to Puccio di Simone (see Fabio Marcelli, Pinacoteca Civica Bruno Molajoli, Fano,
1997: 26). The church, as Sassi reports, was demolished in 1834. Richard Offner (A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Sec. III, vol. V, The Fourteenth
Century. Bernardo Daddi and his circle, Brattleboro, 1947; 2nd edition by Mikls
Boskovits, assisted by Ada Labriola and Martina Ingedaay Rodio, Florence, 2001:
394-399, n. 5) presents the reasons that suggest the provenance of the
Washington triptych from the church in Fabriano. [2] This is suggested by the fact
that during the Napoleonic occupation of the Marche (1797-1811) many churches,
especially those of religious orders, were expropriated and stripped of their works
of art, and by the fact that Luigi Lanzi (Storia pittorica della Italia dal Risorgimento
delle Belle Arti fin presso al fine del XVIII secolo (1808), ed. Martino Capucci,
Florence, 1968: 266), who records the presence in the church of frescoes signed
by Allegretto and dated 136[?] , does not mention the presence of the triptych. The
same argument ex silentio can be adduced from Ricci (1834, 88), who claims that
even the frescoes formerly situated in the cloister annexed to the church had been
lost and similarly fails to mention the triptych: had it been present, it surely would
not have escaped his attention. [3] This information was gleaned by Duveen
Brothers, and included in the prospectus they supplied to Andrew Mellon (in NGA
curatorial files). [4] Walter Dowdeswell was the agent for Duveen Brothers at this
time (see Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers, London, 1976: 64, and
passim). The Duveen Brothers X-Book entry for the triptych (the painting was
their number X 170) begins with Purchased from Sothebys 25/7/1916 (Duveen
Institute, Los Angeles: reel 422; see also reel 45, box 133, folder 5; copies in NGA
curatorial files). A copy of the sale catalogue in the Frick Art Reference Library,
New York (copy in NGA curatorial files), is annotated with Dowdeswells name as
the buyer. [5] The American oil millionaire Carl W. Hamilton decided in c. 1920 to
furnish his New York apartment with works of art furnished by the Duveen
Brothers; a few years later, however, he returned most of his collection to Duveen
(see Fowles 1976, 98-99, 127-130; Maryle Secrest, Duveen. A Life in Art, New York,
2004: 181-184, 368). Joseph Duveen, head of the firm, had the triptych again by at
least 19 January 1929, when he responded to a letter originally sent to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and then on to Hamilton, stating, The

correspondence has been sent to me because Mr. Hamilton no longer possesses

the Triptych, which is now in my private collection . . ." (Duveen Brothers Records,
reel 125, box 270, folder 3). [6] The original bill of sale is in Records of The A.W.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, subject files, box 2, NGA archives; copy in
EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
73, fig. 51.

1:no. 107, repro.
New York, 1941: no. 21, as by Alegretto Nuzi.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10.


Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.


92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
1984: 73, no. 17, color reproduction, as by Master of the Fabriano
Altarpiece and Allegretto Nuzi
149.
1988 Zampetti, Pietro. Pittura nelle Marche. Vol. 1 (of 4), Dalle origini al primo
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.


1(1991):400.
1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.


Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.

Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi
Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel]

1354
tempera on panel
overall (with cradle): 90 35.5 2.8 cm (35 7/16 14 1 1/8 in.)
framed: 123.8 x 45.7 x 8.3 cm (48 3/4 x 18 x 3 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on Saint Anthony's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S.ANTONIVS.D[E].VIENA
ENTRY
The triptych comprised of this panel, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four
Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle panel], and Saint Venantius [right panel] is in
some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-century painting in central Italy.
First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be characterized by such a
disparity both in the distribution and in the proportions of the figures: numerous
and small in the center, large in the lateralseven larger in scale than the Madonna
enthroned in the main panel. Second, another very rare feature is that one of the
saints, Anthony Abbot, appears twice, once in the central panel and again in the
left lateral.[1] Third, and uniquely, a practically identical version (only slightly larger
in size) exists in the Duomo of Macerata, though with a provenance from the
church of SantAntonio Abate in that town.[2] It is dated 1369, and the fact that, at
an interval of fifteen years, both triptychs were commissioned and their
iconographic program established by a member of the Antonine order named
Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel] 1168


Giovanni (Johannes) makes it likely that both were executed for the same
patron.[3]
gathers up her dress in front to support a posy of brightly colored
flowers.[12] Above the Madonna, Christ Crucified appears in the quatrefoil
above his head.





such a collaboration is that of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344)
and Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) in the triptych dated 1333 now in the
Uffizi, Florence, signed by both artists.[24] What is more rare is the execution of a
painting by two unrelated painters of different origin and formation, such as Puccio
from Florence and Allegretto from Fabriano. They could have gotten to know each
other during Allegrettos documented residence in Florence in 1346, but the style
of the earlier works by this painter suggests that while in Florence he probably
frequented the shops of Maso di Banco and the young Orcagna (Andrea di Cione)
and not that of Bernardo Daddi, who was the mentor of Puccio in those years.[25] It
is probable that the Marchigian artist remained in contact with the Florentine scene
also around 1350, when perhaps he returned to work there after the devastating
outbreak of the Black Death in 1348. Nor can it be excluded that it might have been
at the request of the Antonine canons of Fabriano, and not by personal choice, that
he sought the collaboration of a Florentine painter for the works that the order had
commissioned from him in his hometown.[26]


Daddi and that would characterize his output during the last decade of his
life.[35] The panel now in the Pinacoteca of Fabriano and the triptych discussed
here testify that in the years c. 13531354 Puccio had resolutely embarked on the
path of pictorial realism. He is to be considered not a follower of Giovanni da
Milano or of Giottino but their fellow traveler, or even perhaps their predecessor.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection



Mellon Collection
NOTES


[2] Alberto Rossi, in Pittura del Marceratese dal Duecento al tardo gotico
(Macerata, 1971), 6264, gives the measurements of the panel as 152 177
cm. The triptych in Macerata bears the inscription ISTAM/TABULAM FECIT
FIERI FRA/TER IOHANNES CLERICUS PRECEPTOR/TOLENTINI:
ALEGRITTUS DE FABRIANO ME PINXIT [. . .] MCCCLXVIIII. See Luigi Serra,
Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del gotico (Pesaro,
1929), 287, 296. That painting, which Ricci recorded as having come to the
cathedral from the church of SantAntonio Abate in Macerata, therefore had
been commissioned by another community of the Antonine order and then
transferred to its present site following the suppression of the religious
orders in the Napoleonic period. Amico Ricci, Memorie storiche delle arti e
degli artisti della Marca di Ancona, 2 vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.


2001, 404 n. 2; on the relevant iconography, see Barbara Bruderer Eichberg,
Les neufs choeurs angliques: Origine et volution du thme dans lart du
Moyen ge (Poitiers, 1998), 6267.
[9] For the iconography, see George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1,
Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 225234.
The peculiar form of her crown, conical with pointed termination,




[14] See Franois Garnier, Le langage de limage au Moyen Age, vol. 1,

Signification et symbolique (Paris, 1982), 174.

Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.


(19271928): 128, 130, 136, 138, 146; Luigi Serra, Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1,
Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del gotico (Pesaro, 1929), 280281, 286288,
293; Bruno Molajoli, La scuola pittorica fabrianese, Gentile da Fabriano:
Bollettino mensile per la quinta commemorazione centenaria a cura della
Societ Fabrianese per la Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico ed Archeologico 1
(1928): 16; Roger Fry, Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245; Lionello Venturi, Pitture
italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 87; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in
America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New
York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 107; Umberto Gnoli, Nuzi, Allegretto, in
Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni
Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1935), 25:86; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi
e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xlix; Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca,
Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951), 3:1779; Pietro
Toesca, Il Trecento. Storia dellarte classica e italiana 3; Storia dellarte
italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 677; Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection,
New York (Paris, 1928), no. 67.


nelle Marche dalle origini cristiane alla fine del Gotico by Luigi Serra,
Rivista darte 12 (1930): 303, 308.

(Washington, DC, 1941), 128, 142; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Bernardo Daddi and His Circle (New York, 1947), 182184.
no. 111 (1959): 910.

in the art historical literature; cf. in this regard the papers in the volume
Simone Martini e lAnnunciazione degli Uffizi, ed. A. Cecchi (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan, 2001), which tend to circumscribe Lippos role in the
execution of the triptych; and the more recent article by Andrea De Marchi,
La parte di Simone e la parte di Lippo, Nuovi studi 11 (2006): 524, which
considers the execution divided substantially into two equal parts.


the great master.



2001), 476482, 595596.




Bollati, and Paolo Fossati (Turin, 1983), 281 n. 30, 299; Silvia Giorgi, in
c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:137138; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta,
(Prague, 1998), 427; and Mikls Boskovits, in Richard Offner, A Critical and
vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola,
and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 1721.
Giottino e la pittura di filiazione giottesca intorno alla met del Trecento,
Prospettiva 101 (2001): 3437.



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES



PROVENANCE




EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
73, fig. 51.



1:no. 107, repro.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10.


Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.



92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
149.
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.
1(1991):400.


1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.


Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.


Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi
Saint Venantius [right panel]

1354
tempera on panel
painted surface: 89.2 x 33 cm (35 1/8 x 13 in.)
overall (with cradle): 91 34.2 2.5 cm (35 13/16 13 7/16 1 in.)
framed: 123.8 x 43.2 x 8.3 cm (48 3/4 x 17 x 3 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on Saint Venantius's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S . VENANCIVS . M[A]RTIRI (Saint Venantius Martyr)
ENTRY
The triptych comprised of this panel, Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel], and
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle
panel] is in some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-century painting in
central Italy. First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be characterized by
such a disparity both in the distribution and in the proportions of the figures:
numerous and small in the center, large in the lateralseven larger in scale than
the Madonna enthroned in the main panel. Second, another very rare feature is
that one of the saints, Anthony Abbot, appears twice, once in the central panel and
again in the left lateral.[1] Third, and uniquely, a practically identical version (only
slightly larger in size) exists in the Duomo of Macerata, though with a provenance
from the church of SantAntonio Abate in that town.[2] It is dated 1369, and the fact
that, at an interval of fifteen years, both triptychs were commissioned and their
Saint Venantius [right panel] 1192


patron.[3]
above his head.









COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection



Mellon Collection
NOTES



vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.









Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.







no. 111 (1959): 910.




the great master.




2001), 476482, 595596.







TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES



PROVENANCE
Sothebys, London, 25 July 1916, no. 137, as Attributed to Allegretto Nuzi da
Fabriano); purchased by Walter Dowdeswell[4] for (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London,
New York, and Paris); Carl W. Hamilton [1886-1967], New York, in the early 1920s;
(Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris), by 1929;[5] sold 15
gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The church, recorded for the first time in 1313, was officiated by
the regular canons of Saint Augustine of Saint-Antoine de Vienne, a Hospitaler
company founded by Gaston de Dauphin in 1095 and transformed by Pope
Boniface VIII into a religious order in 1297. It enjoyed a very rapid diffusion
throughout Europe (see Italo Ruffino, Canonici regolari di S. Agostino di S. Antonio
di Vienne, in Dizionario degli istituti di Perfezione 2 [1973]: 134-141; Adalbert
Mischlewski, Grundzge der Geschichte des Antoniterordens bis zur Ausgang des
15. Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1976). Romualdo Sassi (Le chiese di Fabriano. Brevi cenni





EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
1929 Serra, Luigi. Larte nelle Marche. Vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine
del gotico. Pesaro, 1929: 280-281, 286, 287, 288, 293, fig. 462.
73, fig. 51.


1:no. 107, repro.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10.



Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.



92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
1984: 73, no. 17, color repro., as by Master of teh Fabriano Altarpiece
and Allegretto Nuzi.
149.
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.



1(1991):400.
1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.



Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.


Allegretto Nuzi
Also known as
Allegretto di Nuzio
Allegretto di Nuzi
BIOGRAPHY
The artist probably was born in Fabriano, in the Marches; indeed, he signed his
name on various occasions as Allegritus de Fabriano. The artist is documented for
the first time in Florence in 1346, when he enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca,
the lay confraternity of painters. His name, written as Allegrettus Nuccii de Senis,
also appears in the register of foreign members of the Arte dei Medici e Speziali in
Florence, a guild that also comprised painters.[1] The claimed Sienese origin can
probably be explained by the supposition that Allegretto had arrived in Florence
after a period in Siena. Local sources in Fabriano record the presence of his works,
dated respectively 1345 and 1349, in the church of Santa Lucia at Fabriano,[2] but
the reliability of this information cannot now be corroborated, since the paintings in
question have been lost. Amico Ricci (1834) identified the former with a panel of the
Madonna and Child Enthroned with eight angels formerly in the collection of the
Viscountess DAbernon in London, a proposal accepted by the editors of the last
edition of Bernard Berensons Italian Pictures (1968),[3] but this claim cannot be
verified since the panels inscription is now illegible.
The painters first securely dated work remains the left lateral of the Washington
triptych, executed (according to the inscription below the central panel) in 1354. But
perhaps a street tabernacle with a fresco of the Madonna and Child with two saints
and two angels, formerly on the Via di San Filippo in Fabriano and now in the
Pinacoteca Civica in that town, also dates to the same year: its inscription is now
lost, and the date reported by local sources has been incorrectly transcribed.
These works were followed in chronological order by the much-ruined Madonna
formerly in the Sabatucci collection in Fabriano (1358); the triptych in the
Pinacoteca Vaticana (1365); the polyptych in the Palazzo Municipale in Apiro
(Macerata) and the Madonna of Humility in the Pinacoteca at San Severino Marche,
both dated 1366; the triptych in the cathedral of Macerata (1369); and the
Madonna and Child Enthroned in the Galleria Nazionale in Urbino (1372).
Allegretto Nuzi 1216


The initial phase of the painters career can be reconstructed on the basis of some
works in which the Florentine stylistic component, essentially derived from Maso di
Banco, is fused with elements that reveal the artists familiarity with the art of the
Sienese Lorenzetti brothers, such as the polyptych of the J. G. Johnson collection
in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the DAbernon Madonna, the portable triptych in
the Kunstmuseum in Bern, and the Crucifixion in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
in Richmond. Documented back in Fabriano again in 1348 and 1350,[4] Allegretto
probably resumed his contacts with Florence in the 1350s, more particularly with
the thriving shop of Andrea Orcagna. But at this time he also seems to have
formed a professional association with Puccio di Simone (Florentine, active c. 1330
- 1360), with whom he would later work in Fabriano. In the 1350s, Allegretto
probably painted the five-part Madonna and Saints in the Pinacoteca of Fabriano;
the diptych in the Gemldegalerie in Berlin and that of the Madonna and Child and
Vir dolorum, now divided between private collections;[5] as well as a large part of
the frescoes in the cathedral and church of Santa Lucia in Fabriano. A gradual
stiffening of his compositional schemes, metallic hardness of modeling, and ever
more frequent use of sumptuous fabrics with striking decorative motifs in his
paintings characterize the final phase of the artist, who died at Fabriano between
September and November 1373.
[1] See Ugo Procacci, Il primo ricordo di Giovanni da Milano a Firenze, Arte antica
e moderna 1316 (1961): 65. The name of the painter also appears, but without a
date, in a register begun in 1343 of members of a confraternity in Fabriano. See
Stefano Felicetti, Regesti documentari, 12991499, in Il maestro di Campodonico:
Rapporti artistici fra Umbria e Marche nel Trecento, ed. Fabio Marcelli (Fabriano,
1998), 215.
[2] Amico Ricci, Memorie storiche delle arti e degli artisti della Marca di Ancona, 2
vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:88, 109 n. 49.
[3] Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North
Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2: fig. 206. I suspect that the dated paintings
formerly to be seen in the choir of the church of Santa Lucia, which Ricci said were
lost following the transformation of the church, were probably frescoes.
[4] See Stefano Felicetti, Regesti documentari, 12991499, in Il maestro di

Campodonico: Rapporti artistici fra Umbria e Marche nel Trecento, ed. Fabio
Marcelli (Fabriano, 1998), 215.


[5] See Angelo Tartuferi, in Da Allegretto Nuzi a Pietro Perugino, ed. Fabrizio
Moretti and Gabriele Caioni (Florence, 2005), 2637.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1834 Ricci, Amico.

Memorie storiche delle arti e degli artisti della Marca di Ancona. 2 vols.
Macerata, 1834: 1:88-91.
1929 Serra, Luigi.

Larte nelle Marche. 2 vols. Pesaro, 1929-1934: 1:162, 261, 279-293, 294,
296, 313.
1951 Marabottini, Alessandro. Allegretto Nuzi.

Rivista darte 27 (1951-1952): 23-55.
1961 Procacci, Ugo. Il primo ricordo di Giovanni da Milano a Firenze.

Arte Antica e Moderna 13-16 (1961): 49-66.

Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian
Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:302-305.
1975 Zeri, Federico. Unipotesi sui rapporti tra Allegretto Nuzi e

Francescuccio Ghissi.
Antichit viva 14, no. 5 (1975): 3-7.
1992 Donnini, Giampiero. Allegretto Nuzi. In

2(1986):180-182.
1998 Felicetti, Stefano. Regesti documentari, 12991499. In

Il maestro di Campodonico: rapporti artistici fra Umbria e Marche nel
Trecento. Edited by Fabio Marcelli. Fabriano, 1998: 214-226.
2004 Marcelli, Fabio.

Allegretto di Nuzio: pittore fabrianese. Fabriano, 2004.


2005 Tartuferi, Angelo. In

Da Allegretto Nuzi a Pietro Perugino. Edited by Fabrizio Moretti and
Gabriele Caioni. Exh. cat. Galleria Moretti, Florence, 2005: 26-37.


Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi

Four Saints and Eighteen Angels
[middle panel]
1354
tempera on panel
overall (with cradle): 108.5 59.5 3.2 cm (42 11/16 23 7/16 1 1/4 in.)
framed: 150.5 x 66.7 x 8.3 cm (59 1/4 x 26 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on the Madonna's halo: .S[AN]C[T]A.MARIA.MATER.DEI.; on the Child's halo: IIS . XRO . M;[1] along the base:
Giovanni)
panel]

ENTRY
The triptych comprised of this panel, Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel], and Saint
Venantius [right panel] is in some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-
century painting in central Italy. First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be
patron.[3]
hand of Puccio di Simone (Florentine, active c. 1330 - 1360) himself.[4] Mary holds
in her arms the naked child, who is draped from the hips downward in a precious
gold-embroidered cloth [fig. 1]. With an apparently playful gesture, she points her
index finger at him.[5] The Christ child is wearing a necklace with a small branch of
coral as a pendant.[6] With his left hand he grasps a small bird,[7] while with the
other hand he holds onto the hem of his mothers mantle. The Madonna and child
are flanked on either side by nine angels, probably alluding to the nine choirs of
angels.[8] The raised throne is approached by two steps, flanked in the foreground
by four saints. To the left we see Saint Catherine of Alexandria (unusually wearing
the imperial crown and with a palm branch in her right hand, while her other hand
is supported on the toothed wheel, instrument of her martyrdom) [9] and Saint
Benedict.[10] On the other side, closest to the throne, is Saint Anthony Abbot,
patron saint of the Order of Hospitallers of Saint Anthony, better known as the
Antonines, dressed in the dark brown tunic and beige mantle of his order. The
saint supports himself on the T-shaped handle of his staff, while at his feet a small
black pig, his usual attribute, can be glimpsed.[11] The female saint standing next to
him can be recognized as Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, another exemplary figure of
Christian charity, who gathers up her dress in front to support a posy of brightly
panel]

colored flowers.[12] Above the Madonna, Christ Crucified appears in the quatrefoil
above his head.

panel]

panel]


panel]

COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection
panel]


Mellon Collection
NOTES
panel]


vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.
panel]


panel]





Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.
panel]


panel]



no. 111 (1959): 910.

panel]


the great master.
panel]



2001), 476482, 595596.

panel]


panel]


TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES
panel]


PROVENANCE
Sothebys, London, 25 July 1916, no. 137, as Attributed to Allegretto Nuzi);
purchased by Walter Dowdeswell[4] for (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York,
and Paris); Carl W. Hamilton [1886-1967], New York, in the early 1920s; (Duveen
Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris), by 1929;[5] sold 15 December 1936 to
The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[6] gift 1937 to NGA.
[1] The church, recorded for the first time in 1313, was officiated by the regular
canons of Saint Augustine of Saint-Antoine de Vienne, a Hospitaler company
founded by Gaston de Dauphin in 1095 and transformed by Pope Boniface VIII
into a religious order in 1297. It enjoyed a very rapid diffusion throughout Europe
(see Italo Ruffino, Canonici regolari di S. Agostino di S. Antonio di Vienne, in
Dizionario degli istituti di Perfezione 2 [1973]: 134-141; Adalbert Mischlewski,
Grundzge der Geschichte des Antoniterordens bis zur Ausgang des 15.
Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1976). Romualdo Sassi (Le chiese di Fabriano. Brevi cenni
panel]

panel]


EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309, repro. 300.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
73, figs. 51, 52.
panel]

1:no. 107, repro.
New York, 1941: nos. 21-22, repro., as by Alegretto Nuzi.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10, fig. 12a.
panel]


Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.
panel]


92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
1984: 73, no. 17, color repro., as by Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece
and Allegretto Nuzi
149.
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.
panel]


1(1991):400.
1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.
panel]


Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.
panel]

Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi

Saints and Angels, and Saints Anthony
Abbot and Venantius [entire triptych]
1354
tempera on panel
Inscription: left panel, on Saint Anthony's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S.ANTONIVS.D[E].VIENA; middle panel, on the Madonna's halo:
.S[AN]C[T]A.MARIA.MATER.DEI.; middle panel, on the Child's halo: IIS . XRO . M;[1] middle panel, along the base:
Giovanni); right panel, on Saint Venantius's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S . VENANCIVS . M[A]RTIRI (Saint Venantius Martyr)
ENTRY

This triptych is in some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-century

painting in central Italy. First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be
patron.[3]
gathers up her dress in front to support a posy of brightly colored flowers.[12]
Above the Madonna, Christ Crucified appears in the quatrefoil medallion of the
gable.[13] In the left lateral, Saint Anthony Abbot appears once again. He is
accompanied by his usual attributes. Directing his gaze at the Virgin and Child, he

raises his left hand in a gesture of homage and service,[14] while with his other
hand he holds the T-shaped staff. The half-figure Angel of the Annunciation
appears in the trefoil medallion in the gable above his head. In the right lateral the
martyr Saint Venantius is represented as a young knight dressed in a precious
gold-embroidered brocaded tunic.[15] He supports a standard in his right hand. The
half-figure of the Virgin Annunciate appears in the trefoil medallion above his head.




COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection


Mellon Collection
NOTES


gotico(Macerata, 1971), 6264, gives the measurements of the panel as 152
Serra,Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del
vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.


Koralle, inLexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum
and Gnter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, 1970), 2:556.
vol. 1,Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952),





Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.


Painting,The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245;
Venturi,Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 107; Umberto
Gnoli, Nuzi, Allegretto, in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti,
ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1935), 25:86; Luigi Coletti, I
Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xlix; Ugo Galetti and
3:1779; Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento. Storia dellarte classica e italiana 3;Storia
dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 677; Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
vol. 3,The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 395.



Sculpture(Washington, DC, 1941), 128, 142; Richard Offner, A Critical and
no. 111 (1959): 910.



the great master.



2001), 476482, 595596.




Century, sec. 3, vol. 5,Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits,
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES


PROVENANCE



EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
73, fig. 51.

1:no. 107, repro.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10.


Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.


92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
149.
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.


1(1991):400.
1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.


Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.

Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi
Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel]

1354
tempera on panel
overall (with cradle): 90 35.5 2.8 cm (35 7/16 14 1 1/8 in.)
framed: 123.8 x 45.7 x 8.3 cm (48 3/4 x 18 x 3 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on Saint Anthony's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S.ANTONIVS.D[E].VIENA
ENTRY
The triptych comprised of this panel, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four
Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle panel], and Saint Venantius [right panel] is in
some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-century painting in central Italy.
First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be characterized by such a
disparity both in the distribution and in the proportions of the figures: numerous
and small in the center, large in the lateralseven larger in scale than the Madonna
enthroned in the main panel. Second, another very rare feature is that one of the
saints, Anthony Abbot, appears twice, once in the central panel and again in the
left lateral.[1] Third, and uniquely, a practically identical version (only slightly larger
in size) exists in the Duomo of Macerata, though with a provenance from the
church of SantAntonio Abate in that town.[2] It is dated 1369, and the fact that, at
an interval of fifteen years, both triptychs were commissioned and their


patron.[3]
above his head.









COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection



Mellon Collection
NOTES


[2] Alberto Rossi, in Pittura del Marceratese dal Duecento al tardo gotico
(Macerata, 1971), 6264, gives the measurements of the panel as 152 177
cm. The triptych in Macerata bears the inscription ISTAM/TABULAM FECIT
FIERI FRA/TER IOHANNES CLERICUS PRECEPTOR/TOLENTINI:
ALEGRITTUS DE FABRIANO ME PINXIT [. . .] MCCCLXVIIII. See Luigi Serra,
Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del gotico (Pesaro,
1929), 287, 296. That painting, which Ricci recorded as having come to the
cathedral from the church of SantAntonio Abate in Macerata, therefore had
been commissioned by another community of the Antonine order and then
transferred to its present site following the suppression of the religious
orders in the Napoleonic period. Amico Ricci, Memorie storiche delle arti e
degli artisti della Marca di Ancona, 2 vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.


2001, 404 n. 2; on the relevant iconography, see Barbara Bruderer Eichberg,
Les neufs choeurs angliques: Origine et volution du thme dans lart du
Moyen ge (Poitiers, 1998), 6267.
[9] For the iconography, see George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1,
Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 225234.
The peculiar form of her crown, conical with pointed termination,




[14] See Franois Garnier, Le langage de limage au Moyen Age, vol. 1,

Signification et symbolique (Paris, 1982), 174.

Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.


(19271928): 128, 130, 136, 138, 146; Luigi Serra, Larte nelle Marche, vol. 1,
Dalle origini cristiane alla fine del gotico (Pesaro, 1929), 280281, 286288,
293; Bruno Molajoli, La scuola pittorica fabrianese, Gentile da Fabriano:
Bollettino mensile per la quinta commemorazione centenaria a cura della
Societ Fabrianese per la Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico ed Archeologico 1
(1928): 16; Roger Fry, Mr Berenson on Medieval Painting, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 58, no. 338 (1931): 245; Lionello Venturi, Pitture
italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 87; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in
America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New
York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 107; Umberto Gnoli, Nuzi, Allegretto, in
Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni
Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1935), 25:86; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi
e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xlix; Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca,
Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951), 3:1779; Pietro
Toesca, Il Trecento. Storia dellarte classica e italiana 3; Storia dellarte
italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 677; Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection,
New York (Paris, 1928), no. 67.


nelle Marche dalle origini cristiane alla fine del Gotico by Luigi Serra,
Rivista darte 12 (1930): 303, 308.

(Washington, DC, 1941), 128, 142; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical
Bernardo Daddi and His Circle (New York, 1947), 182184.
no. 111 (1959): 910.

in the art historical literature; cf. in this regard the papers in the volume
Simone Martini e lAnnunciazione degli Uffizi, ed. A. Cecchi (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan, 2001), which tend to circumscribe Lippos role in the
execution of the triptych; and the more recent article by Andrea De Marchi,
La parte di Simone e la parte di Lippo, Nuovi studi 11 (2006): 524, which
considers the execution divided substantially into two equal parts.


the great master.



2001), 476482, 595596.




Bollati, and Paolo Fossati (Turin, 1983), 281 n. 30, 299; Silvia Giorgi, in
c. 13301430, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1994), 1:137138; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta,
(Prague, 1998), 427; and Mikls Boskovits, in Richard Offner, A Critical and
vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Mikls Boskovits, Ada Labriola,
and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 1721.
Giottino e la pittura di filiazione giottesca intorno alla met del Trecento,
Prospettiva 101 (2001): 3437.



TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES



PROVENANCE




EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
73, fig. 51.



1:no. 107, repro.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10.


Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.



92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
149.
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.
1(1991):400.


1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.


Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.


Puccio di Simone
Allegretto Nuzi
Saint Venantius [right panel]

1354
tempera on panel
painted surface: 89.2 x 33 cm (35 1/8 x 13 in.)
overall (with cradle): 91 34.2 2.5 cm (35 13/16 13 7/16 1 in.)
framed: 123.8 x 43.2 x 8.3 cm (48 3/4 x 17 x 3 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on Saint Venantius's halo: .S[AN]C[TU]S . VENANCIVS . M[A]RTIRI (Saint Venantius Martyr)
ENTRY
The triptych comprised of this panel, Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel], and
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle
panel] is in some respects unusual, even unique, in fourteenth-century painting in
central Italy. First, it is unusual for an altarpiece of this kind to be characterized by
such a disparity both in the distribution and in the proportions of the figures:
numerous and small in the center, large in the lateralseven larger in scale than
the Madonna enthroned in the main panel. Second, another very rare feature is
that one of the saints, Anthony Abbot, appears twice, once in the central panel and
again in the left lateral.[1] Third, and uniquely, a practically identical version (only
slightly larger in size) exists in the Duomo of Macerata, though with a provenance
from the church of SantAntonio Abate in that town.[2] It is dated 1369, and the fact
that, at an interval of fifteen years, both triptychs were commissioned and their


patron.[3]
above his head.









COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Mellon Collection



Mellon Collection
NOTES



vols. (Macerata, 1834), 1:8990.









Fabriano.
ed. (New York, 1909), 131132.







no. 111 (1959): 910.




the great master.




2001), 476482, 595596.







TECHNICAL SUMMARY
TECHNICAL NOTES



PROVENANCE
Sothebys, London, 25 July 1916, no. 137, as Attributed to Allegretto Nuzi da
Fabriano); purchased by Walter Dowdeswell[4] for (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London,
New York, and Paris); Carl W. Hamilton [1886-1967], New York, in the early 1920s;
(Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris), by 1929;[5] sold 15
gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The church, recorded for the first time in 1313, was officiated by
the regular canons of Saint Augustine of Saint-Antoine de Vienne, a Hospitaler
company founded by Gaston de Dauphin in 1095 and transformed by Pope
Boniface VIII into a religious order in 1297. It enjoyed a very rapid diffusion
throughout Europe (see Italo Ruffino, Canonici regolari di S. Agostino di S. Antonio
di Vienne, in Dizionario degli istituti di Perfezione 2 [1973]: 134-141; Adalbert
Mischlewski, Grundzge der Geschichte des Antoniterordens bis zur Ausgang des
15. Jahrhunderts, Bonn, 1976). Romualdo Sassi (Le chiese di Fabriano. Brevi cenni





EXHIBITION HISTORY
BIBLIOGRAPHY

(1922): 296 (repro.), 297-309.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):395; 5(1925):150.
New York, 1927: 143.
136, 138, 146.
1939: 25(1935):86.
1929 Serra, Luigi. Larte nelle Marche. Vol. 1, Dalle origini cristiane alla fine
del gotico. Pesaro, 1929: 280-281, 286, 287, 288, 293, fig. 462.
73, fig. 51.


1:no. 107, repro.
159, pl. 112.
1947: 141, 144, 145, 148, 149, 150, 179184, pls. XXXVII(13).
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:1779.
35-37, 47-48, fig. 6.
Princeton, 1951: 53, 137 n. 20.
New York, 1958: 4, 228.
Paragone 10, no. 111 (1959): 9-10.



Paragone 16 (1965): 13.
Trieste, 1968: 219 n. 57.
(1971): 58 n. 2.
1(1972):80; 9(1975):260.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 4, 128, 316, 370, 453, 645.
39 n. 97.
1400. Florence, 1975: 197-198 nn. 71-72.



92, fig. 181.
Florence, 1984: 78 n. 305.
1984: 73, no. 17, color repro., as by Master of teh Fabriano Altarpiece
and Allegretto Nuzi.
149.
1989-1994: 4(1993):465.
53.



1(1991):400.
1:136, 137; 2:punch chart 6.1.
Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):252.
York and London, 1996: 23:323; 25:691.
133.
2001: 18 n. 43, 21, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 357, 361, 370,
383, 391-402, 415, 455, 475, 483, 501, 521, 595.
12-14 (repro.), 34, 36.
2004: 22.



Siena, 2008: 218.
Florence, 2008: 37.
2009: 1:12, 172, 175.
Milan, 2009: 2:226.


Simone Martini
Also known as
Simone di Martino
Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344
BIOGRAPHY
Probably born in Siena, perhaps in 1284 according to uncertain information

transmitted by Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574),[1] Simone must already have
been a famous artist when he was commissioned to paint the Maest fresco in the
Sienese seat of government, the Palazzo Pubblico. Signed and dated 1315, it is the
earliest surviving of his ascertained works. Even then his fame must have spread
well beyond the borders of his homeland: the Anjevin court in Naples ordered from
him the panel Saint Louis of Toulouse Crowning His Brother Robert of Anjou, King
of Naples (now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, from the church of San
Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples), probably executed immediately after the saints
canonization in 1317. Soon after, the artist was called to Assisi to fresco the chapel
of Saint Martin in the basilica of San Francesco. Between 1319 and 1320, he painted
the polyptych for the church of Santa Caterina in Pisa (now in the Museo Nazionale
in that city). Dating to 1321 or the immediately ensuing years (the date in Roman
script is perhaps fragmentary) is the polyptych for San Domenico in Orvieto, now in
the Museo Civico of that city, along with other paintings made for Orvieto, including
a Madonna in the same museum and a polyptych now in the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston.
In 1324, Simone married Giovanna, daughter of the painter Memmo di Filippuccio

and sister of Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347), who had probably already
become Simones partner and with whom he would sign the polyptych of the
Annunciation, two saints, and four prophets for the altar of SantAnsano in Siena
Cathedral in 1333 (now in the Uffizi, Florence). In the intervening years he painted
various documented but now lost paintings, while in 1328 or shortly thereafter he
produced the famous equestrian portrait in fresco of the condottiere Guidoriccio
da Fogliano in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. In 1335, at the height of his fame,
Simone was called to the papal court at Avignon, where he produced frescoes,
now much ruined, in the church of Notre-Dame des Doms, and also a lost portrait
of Laura, Petrarchs love. Also at the poets request he painted the frontispiece of a
Simone Martini 1316


codex of Virgil (now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan), a work that, like the
portrait, would inspire Petrarchs lavish praise of the master on more than one
occasion.[2] In 1342, Simone signed and dated the small panel Christ Returning to
His Parents from the Doctors in the Temple (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). He
made his will on June 30, 1344, and died in Avignon shortly after.
As shown by his fresco of the Maest (which we now know was begun at least one
year before 1315, and reworked in 1321)[3] and some other works probably of
earlier date,[4] by that time Simone had already emerged as a fully independent
and highly innovative artist who had broken away from the prevailing Duccesque
manner of painting in Siena. An attentive observer of the courtly refinement of
masterpieces of the transalpine Gothic, especially miniatures and goldsmiths work,
and also of the sinuous arabesques of Sienese sculptors such as Lorenzo
Maitani,[5] Simone was also influenced by the pictorial realism cultivated by Giotto
(Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) and his school in Florence and Assisi.[6] After a
continuous qualitative growth, testified by his successive works, he arrived at a
style charged with sentiment and enriched with acute realistic observations of
detail, as exemplified by the signed quadriptych executed for a member of the
Orsini family and now divided among the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten
in Antwerp, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, and the Louvre in Paris. In this and
other late works Simone created an ideal of style admired and imitated not only by
Sienese masters but also by some of the major painters active in the French courts
in the second half of the fourteenth century.
[1] Giorgio Vasari concluded his biography of Simone in both editions of his Vite by
transcribing the epitaph that he claims to have read above the artists tomb:
SIMONI MEMMIO PICTORUM OMNIS AETATIS CELEBERRIMO VIX AN. LX. MEN. II
D. III; see Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori
nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols.
(Florence, 19661987), 2(1967):200. The epitaph attests that the painter died at the
age of sixty; since the date of his death in 1344 is documented, that would mean he
was born in 1284. But the fact that the inscription (as well as Vasari) cites the
patronymic derived from the artists brother-in-law rather than the correct
patronymic Martini casts doubt on its reliability.
[2] In two of his sonnets (nos. 77 and 78), the great poet praises the art of Simone;
Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere, ed. Marco Santagata (Milan, 1996), 400, 404.
Moreover, on the frontispiece of the codex in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana containing
works of Virgil with commentary by Servius (also called Servius Honoratus; Ms. A
Simone Martini 1317


79 inf.), a manuscript that Petrarch himself had owned, the poet added the
following hexameters: Mantua Virgilium qui talia carmina finxit/Sena tulit Symonem
digito qui talia pinxit.
[3] On the time frame for the execution of the work, cf. Alessandro Bagnoli, La
Maest di Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999), 4765.
[4] Of the various, often fanciful proposals made in the attempt to reconstruct the
still evanescent profile of the young Simone, the most convincing attributions are
the Madonna and Child no. 583 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena and the
designs for the stained-glass windows in the chapel of Saint Martin in the lower
church of the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi. The latter work probably was
completed even before the frescoes in the same chapel were begun.
[5] Usually the art of Simone is placed in relation to sculptors like Giovanni Pisano
and Agostino di Giovanni or Tino di Camaino; cf. Antje Middeldorf Kosegarten,
Simone Martini e la scultura senese contemporanea, in Simone Martini: Atti del
convegno, Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 193
202; and Gert Kreytenberg, Tino di Camaino e Simone Martini, in Simone Martini:
Atti del convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988),
203209. The most exquisitely Gothic of Sienese sculptors and capomastro of
Orvieto Cathedral, Lorenzo Maitani is mentioned more rarely in the literature on
Simone and only in relation to the masters work in Orvieto; cf. Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 188. However, it is possible that the
acquaintance between the painter and the sculptor-architect had been established
far earlier than this, both because Maitani too was Sienese and also through the
intermediary of Giovanni di Bonino, the glassmaker from Assisi who is documented
as having worked on the building site of Orvieto Cathedral and probably had been
involved in the execution of the stained glass in the lower church of the basilica of
Assisi; cf. Mikls Boskovits, Da Duccio a Simone Martini, in Medioevo: La chiesa
e il palazzo; Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, September 2024,
2005, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2007), 577.
[6] The circumstance that the stained-glass windows have been attributed in the
past by Ferdinando Bologna, Novit su Giotto: Giotto al tempo della cappella
Peruzzi (Turin, 1969), 152153; Giuseppe Marchini, Corpus vitrearum Medii Aevi,
vol. 1, Le vetrate dellUmbria (Rome, 1973), 118129; Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e
il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974), 102 n. 46; and the present writer, Mikls
Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth
Simone Martini 1318


Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 319321, to the
Master of Figline (alias Master of the Fogg Piet), one of the most powerfully
original disciples of Giotto, suggests the existence of rather close relations
between these artists. After some tentative proposals in the past on the role of
Simone in the execution of the stained glass in the chapel of Saint Martin,
Alessandro Conti directly attributed the work to the great Sienese artist; the more
recent literature shares his opinion. See Alessandro Conti, Le vetrate e il
problema di Giovanni di Bonino, in Il Maestro di Figline: Un pittore del Trecento,
eds. Luciano Bellosi and Alessandro Conti (Florence, 1980), 24, 25.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1936 Rinaldis, Aldo de.

Simone Martini. Rome, n. d. [1936].
1955 Paccagnini, Giovanni.

Simone Martini. Milan, 1955.
1966 Vasari, Giorgio.

La vite dei pi eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del
1550 e 1568. Edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paolo Barocchi. 8 vols.
Florence, 1966-1987: 2(1967):191-200.
1970 Contini, Gianfranco, and Maria Cristina Gozzoli.

Lopera completa di Simone Martini. Milan, 1970.
1988 Bellosi, Luciano, ed.

Simone Martini: atti del convegno; Siena, 2729 marzo 1985. Florence,
1988.
1988 Martindale, Andrew.

Simone Martini. Oxford, 1988.
1999 Bagnoli, Alessandro.

La Maest di Simone Martini. Milan, 1999.
2000 Pierini, Marco.

Simone Martini 1319


2003 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi.

2007 Boskovits, Mikls. Da Duccio a Simone Martini. In

Medioevo: la chiesa e il palazzo. Atti del convegno internazionale di
studi, Parma, 20 24 settembre 2005. Edited by Arturo Carlo
Quintavalle. Milan, 2007: 565-582.
Simone Martini 1320


Simone Martini
The Angel of the

Annunciation
c. 1330
painted surface (on recto): 29.5 x 20.5 cm (11 5/8 x 8 1/16 in.)
overall: 31 x 21.5 cm (12 3/16 x 8 7/16 in.)
painted surface (gesso ground on verso): 21 x 30.2 cm (8 1/4 x 11 7/8 in.)
framed: 54.6 x 32.9 x 4.1 cm (21 1/2 x 12 15/16 x 1 5/8 in.)
ENTRY
The painting represents the archangel Gabriel, who announces the birth of Jesus
to the Virgin Mary.[1] It clearly presupposes a complementary image of the Virgin
Annunciate in a separate panel, which in fact has always been recognized in the
Virgin Annunciate now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg [fig. 1]. The latter,
identical to the Washington panel in format and in its ornamental punched
decoration, comes from the Roman collection of Count Gregory Stroganoff
(18291910) and entered the Hermitage after the collectors death.[2] The two
halves of the diptych probably were separated in the nineteenth century, given that
the very similar state of conservation of the two panels suggests a similar fate: the
paint surface of both was ruined by drastic overcleaning, probably at the time of
their separation in the mid-nineteenth century, when they appeared on the Italian
art market.
In 1901, when it was still in the Stroganoff collection in Rome,[3] Giovanni Bernardini
recognized the Virgin Annunciate now in Russia, albeit with some uncertainty, as
an autograph work by Simone Martini. It was almost unanimously [4] recognized as
a work by the Sienese master after its display at Mostra dellantica arte senese in
the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in 1904. Lionello Venturi then identified the image of
the Angel of the Annunciation as the companion panel of the former Stroganoff
Virgin Annunciate in 1935.[5] Venturis opinion was confirmed in manuscript
opinions by Adolfo Venturi, F. Mason Perkins (both without date), Giuseppe Fiocco,
The Angel of the Annunciation 1321


and Wilhelm Suida (both dated 1938).[6] The first catalog of the National Gallery of
Art (1941) also accepted the attribution to Simone Martini, citing a written expertise
by Roberto Longhi, who confirmed Simones authorship, and the opinion of
Bernard Berenson, who rejected the attribution.[7] In the subsequent literature
opinions were divided: numerous publications accepted the attribution to
Simone,[8] even if many scholars preferred to speak of a product of the artists
shop or at any rate showed some uncertainty about its autograph status.[9] Some
even proposed alternative names for its artist.[10]
Rarely, however, has the problem of the diptych now divided between St.
Petersburg and Washington been addressed in any systematic or analytic fashion.
Art historians have mainly limited themselves to brief and categorical statements,
without carefully weighing the evidence. In my view, it is precisely this superficial
examination of the two panels, combined with the difficulties of evaluating them
because of the marked abrasion of their paint surfaces, which accounts for the
uncertainties in their attribution and date.
Almost all those who have cited the small panel in the Gallery and its companion,
irrespective of their opinion regarding the attribution of the work, have agreed in
assigning the two paintings to the years of Simones residence in Avignon. But its
Avignonese origin has been asserted rather than proved, as if the profusion of
gold, elaborate punched ornamental decoration, and refined elegance of poses
were in themselves sufficient evidence that the two paintings belonged to the final
phase in the art of Simone Martinithat is, to the period of his maximum exposure
to the tendencies of the transalpine Gothic in such a flourishing cultural center as
Avignon was at the time. Sometimes, however, pertinent observations apparently
contradicting such an interpretation have been made. Fern Rusk Shapley (1966),
for example, concluded her comment on the Gallery's painting by declaring, The
style is, in any case, very close to that of Simones Annunciation of 1333, in the
Uffizi; and Andrew Martindale (1988), one of the few scholars to dedicate a
thorough analysis to the style and form of the panels that concern us here,
observed that the immensely elegant and elongated figure of Mary had more in
common with the Virgin of the San Ansano altar (that is, the Annunciation in the
Uffizi, Florence) than with that of the Holy Family (Christ Discovered in the Temple,
dated 1342) in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and that the images [of the St.
Petersburg-Washington diptych]...lack the robustness which spans the differences
even between the Avignon frescoes, the Ambrosiana Virgil and the Liverpool Holy
Family.[11] Some objective data should also be taken into account: for example, as


Brigitte Klesse (1967) pointed out, the pattern of the brocaded robe of the angel in
the panel in the Gallery recurs in that of the corresponding figure in the Uffizi
Annunciation.[12] Also, the punches used in the diptych divided between St.
Petersburg and Washington frequently recur in the Annunciation now in Florence
and in even earlier works, paintings that date to Simones period in Orvieto, for
example, but are seldom found in works that date to his Avignon period.[13]
To these observations, which prompt a reconsideration of the usual dating of the

diptych, we can add others that similarly suggest that the two panels are indeed
earlier than usually claimed. Let us first consider the St. Petersburg panel of the
Virgin Annunciate. Of course, the elimination of the Virgins throne especially
would have been prompted by the need to press the figure of Mary, like the angel
she confronts, into the foreground and bring her as close as possible to the
spectator. But the swiveled pose of her body clearly echoes that of the Madonna of
the Annunciation in the Uffizi (apparently the model that other Sienese paintings,
such as the Virgin Annunciate formerly in the Stoclet collection, imitate)[14] and not
that of the small panel in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in
Antwerp.[15] The same may be said of the motif of the book held half-open by
Mary, her finger inserted between its pages as an improvised bookmark, and of the
proportions of the Virgin herself. Her figure is characterized by the pronounced
elongation of the bust and a smooth and placid contour formed of a succession of
long, slightly crescent lines, carefully avoiding any disturbing agitation of the hem
of her dress. A restless jagged cadence, by contrast, is a typical aspect of the
panels now divided among the museums in Antwerp, Berlin, and Paris; of the
illuminated frontispiece of the Virgil codex in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana;[16] and of
Christ Discovered in the Temple, a panel signed and dated 1342, in the Walker Art
Gallery in Liverpool.[17]
Rather similar observations can be made about the Washington panel of the
archangel Gabriel. In particular, the emphasis placed on the magnificent gold
embroidered robe, as on the proud pose of the heavenly messenger, kneeling but
only slightly bending forward as he proffers the olive branch with the tips of his
fingers to the Virgin, underlines the resemblance of the image to its counterpart in
the Uffizi. The face, with its mysterious expression accentuated by delicate slit eyes
that create the impression that the archangel is looking furtively and yet probingly
at Mary, and with his firmly clenched lips, may recall the face of the child Jesus in
the Liverpool panel; however, the fluid cadence of the draperies, their large and
sweeping folds animated only by the fluttering hem, seem to me to betray rather


different intentions than those that inspired the artist during his period in Avignon.
In the Angel of the Annunciation in Antwerp, for example, the artist no longer seeks
to dazzle the spectator with the glitter of the exotic oriental silk brocade worn by
Gabriel but prefers instead to play with the matching of delicate tones of pink and
pale purple, highlighting the mantle with the archaic medium of chrysography,
which articulates the folds and underlines the forms more distinctly than the
transparent lacquers painted on gold. These aspects, together with the
extraordinary elegance of the drawing, seem to me to confirm that the Gallery
panel and its companion panel in St. Petersburg (which, as far as it is possible to
judge from their existing state, were painted by the same hand) [18] belong to the
catalog of Simones autograph works, though to a phase preceding his journey to
Avignon. That phase can be placed between the works executed in the early 1320s
for Orvieto and the dated Uffizi Annunciation of 1333.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Simone Martini, Virgin of the Annunciation, c. 1330,

tempera on panel, The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg. The State Hermitage Museum, St.
Petersburg/Vladimir Terebinen, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri
Molodkovets
NOTES
[1] Luke 1:2638. For the iconography of the scene, cf. David M. Robb, The
Iconography of the Annunciation in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,
The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 480526; Giacomo Prampolini, Lannunciazione
nei pittori primitivi italiani (Milan, 1939); and the more recent studies by Julia
Liebrich, Die Verkndigung an Maria: Die Ikonographie der italienischen
Darstellungen von den Anfngen bis 1500 (Cologne, 1997); and Daniel
Arasse, LAnnonciation italienne: Une histoire de perspective (Paris, 1999).
Marco Pierinis comment (2000) describing the archangels mode of


presenting himself to the Virgin, with his left hand placed on his breast, as a
posa quasi indolente (almost indolent pose), is a misinterpretation of the
image. This gesture is in fact far from rare (cf. Ambrogio Lorenzettis Angel
of the Annunciation in the church of Montesiepi) and should be interpreted
as an expression of sincerity and inwardness. Cf. Marco Pierini, Simone
Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2000), 207; Daniel Arasse, LAnnonciation
italienne: Une histoire de perspective (Paris, 1999), 8081; and Franois
Garnier, Le langage de limage au Moyen Age, vol. 1, Signification et
symbolique (Paris, 1982), 184185.
[2] No. GE 284; 30.5 21.5 cm.
[3] Giovanni Bernardini (1901) wrote that the small panel was forse da attribuire
al grande artista senese (perhaps to be attributed to the great Sienese
artist), presumably echoing Stroganoffs own attribution. Giovanni
Bernardini, Alcuni dipinti della collezione del conte Stroganoff in Roma,
Rassegna darte 1 (1901): 119. The painting was then exhibited in Siena in
1904 as no. 38 in Room XXVII, under the name of Simone. Mostra
dellantica arte senese: Catalogo generale (Siena, 1904), no. 38. The
attribution was accepted by F. Mason Perkins (1904), Adolfo Venturi (1907),
Robert Langton Douglas (1908), Bernard Berenson (1909), and others. See F.
Mason Perkins, La pittura alla mostra darte antica a Siena, Rassegna
darte 4 (1904): 146; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dellarte italiana, vol. 5, La pittura
del Trecento e le sue origini (Milan, 1907), 629; Robert Langton Douglas, in
A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century,
vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian Schools, by Joseph Archer
Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle (London, 1908), 69 n. 2; Bernard
Berenson, The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (New
York, 1909), 252.
[4] George Martin Richter (1929) at first proposed the name of Paolo di Giovanni
Fei for the panel now in St. Petersburg but later changed his mind (1941),
attributing the painting instead to a close follower of Simone, perhaps to
be identified with Donato Martini. Thereafter the two leaves of the diptych
were mainly discussed together. Cf. George Martin Richter, Simone Martini
Problems, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 54 (1929): 171173;
George Martin Richter, The New National Gallery in Washington, The
[5] Manuscript expertise dated July 2, 1935 (copy in NGA curatorial files).
[6] Copies of the opinions of Fiocco, Perkins, Suida, and Adolfo Venturi are in

Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 184185. Copies of the opinions of
Bernard Berenson and Roberto Longhi are in NGA curatorial files.
[8] Michel Laclotte, De Giotto Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les muses de


France (Paris, 1956), 28; Michel Laclotte, Lcole dAvignon: La peinture en

Provence aux XIVe et XVe sicles (Paris, 1960), 32; Michel Laclotte and
Dominique Thibaut, Lcole dAvignon (Paris, 1983), 118 n. 10; Franois
Enaud, Les fresques de Simone Martini Avignon, Les monuments
historiques de la France 9 (1963): 163, 177 n. 161; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Century (London, 1966), 48; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the
1968), 2:405 (but since this is a posthumous edition of Italian Pictures, the
opinion might be that of the editors and not of Berenson); Burton B.
Hendrik W. van Os and Marjan Rinkleff-Reinders, De reconstructie van
Simone Martinis zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie, Nederlands kunsthistorisch
jaarboek 23 (1972): 9; Simone Martini o di Martino, in Dizionario
enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli incisori italiani: Dall XI al XX secolo,
ed. Alberto Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi, 11 vols. (Turin, 1975), 10:325;
Antonio Caleca, Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, unipotesi sul Barna e la
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 2, Critica darte 42 (1977): 73; Dillian Gordon, A
Sienese verre eglomis and Its Setting, The Burlington Magazine 123 (1981):
150; Svetlana Nikolaevna Vsevoloskaja, Ermitage: Italienische Malerei, 13.
bis 18. Jahrhundert, trans. N. Gerassimowa (Leningrad, 1982), 264; Boris
Piotrovsky and Irene Linnik, Western European Painting in the Hermitage
(Leningrad, 1984), no. 1; Colin T. Eisler, I dipinti dellErmitage (Udine, 1991),
163; Martini, Simone, in Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano, 6 vols. (Turin, 1992), 3:526; Tatiana K.
Kustodieva, Italian Painting: Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, Catalogue of
Western European Painting/The Hermitage (Florence, 1994), 265; Andrew
Martindale, Martini, Simone, in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34
vols. (New York, 1996), 20:509; Marco Pierini, Martini, Simone,
in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:250; Marco
Pierini, Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2000) 206208, 242 nn.
30, 32; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332, 333;
Michela Becchis, Martini, Simone, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani
(Rome, 2008), 71:259; and of course the various Gallery catalogs.
[9] Giovanni Paccagnini, Simone Martini (Milan, 1955), 168169; Enrico

Castelnuovo, Un pittore italiano alla corte di Avignone: Matteo Giovannetti
e la pittura in Provenza nel secolo XIV (Turin, 1962), 8596; Wolfgang
Kermer, Studien zum Diptychon in der sakralen Malerei: Von den Anfngen
bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (PhD diss., Eberhardt-Karls-
Universitt, Tbingen, 1967), 2:30; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der
italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 244; Hendrik W. van
Os, Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei:
13001450 (The Hague, 1969), 47 n. 39; Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in Lopera


completa di Simone Martini, by Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina

Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 106; Mikls Boskovits, A Dismembered Polyptych,
Lippo Vanni and Simone Martini, The Burlington Magazine 116 (1974): 367
n. 9; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Unsettling Evidence in Some Panel Paintings
of Simone Martini, in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo dellanalisi
tecnica alla storia dellarte, ed. Hendrik W. van Os and J.R.J. van Asperen
de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 216, 236; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched
Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998),
118, 247, 261, 298, 324, 333, 355, 377, 388, 446, 464; Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Problemi martiniani avignonesi: Il Maestro degli angeli ribelli, i due
Ceccarelli ed altro, in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March
2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 225226; Pierluigi Leone
De Castris, Simone Martini: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989),
130131; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 6061, 214215;
Piero Torriti, Simone Martini (Florence, 1991), 47; Ada Labriola, Simone
Martini e la pittura gotica a Siena: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Memmo di
Filippuccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ugolino di Nerio, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lippo
Memmi, Matteo Giovanetti, Naddo Ceccarelli, Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccol
di ser Sozzo (Florence, 2008), 82.
[10] George Martin Richter (1941) proposed an attribution to Donato Martini,

brother of Simone (a virtually unknown artist, from whom no works have
survived). Carlo Volpe (1955) wondered whether the painting, which he
called a documento mirabile, might not have been an early work by the
young Matteo Giovannetti, the painter who seems to have become the
leading master at the papal court in Avignon following Simone Martinis
death. Subsequently, Cristina De Benedictis (1976, 1979) revived Richters
thesis and once again attributed the Washington Archangel to Donato, the
author, in her view, of works hitherto grouped under the conventional name
of Master of the Straus Madonna; cf. Monica Leoncini, Maestro della
Madonna StrausDonato Martini, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il
Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:609610. Enzo
Carli (1981) and Grazia Neri (1997) accepted this proposal, and it was not
excluded by Pierluigi Leone de Castris (1988, 1989), who in more recent
years (2003) seems indeed to have wholly embraced it. See George Martin
Richter, The New National Gallery in Washington, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177; Carlo Volpe, Un libro su Simone
Martini, Review of Simone Martini by Giovanni Paccagnini, Paragone 6,
no. 63 (1955): 52; Cristina De Benedictis, Il Polittico della Passione di
Simone Martini e una proposta per Donato, Antichit viva 15, no. 6 (1976):
5, 11 n. 20; Cristina De Benedictis, La pittura senese 13301370 (Florence,
1979), 29; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 125;
Grazia Neri, Maestro della Madonna Straus, in Enciclopedia dellarte
medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:101; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Problemi
martiniani avignonesi: Il Maestro degli angeli ribelli, i due Ceccarelli ed


altro, in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed.
Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 225226; Pierluigi Leone De Castris,
Simone Martini: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), 130131;
Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332333.
[11] Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian
Schools, XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 48; Andrew Martindale, Simone
Martini (Oxford, 1988), 214.

Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 244.
[13] According to the important (though unfortunately not always sufficiently

precise) repertoire of Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late
Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), the punches that
decorate the panels of the Annunciation now divided between the
Hermitage and the National Gallery of Art (namely, the motifs Frinta
classified as Da 10 a, J 26 b, and Jb 59) seldom recur in the Orsini
quadriptych, a work often assigned to the artists final phase. On the other
hand, the same punches used in the Annunciation appear with some
frequency in works executed by Simone for Orvieto (Da 10 a, Fea 19, Gh
8, I 86 c, I 129a, J26 b, and Jb 59) presumably during the third
decade; and often also in such paintings as the altarpiece of the Blessed
Agostino Novello, now in the Pinacoteca in Siena, usually dated to the
second half of the 1320s or after, or the Annunciation in the Uffizi, Florence,
of 1333 (Da 10 a, Fea 19, Gh 8, I 86 c, I 129 a, J 26 b, and Ka 30
b). Erling Skaug, who at my request very kindly examined the punch marks
of the Saint Petersburg-Washington diptych, wrote in a letter of September
16, 2006, Most likely the many punches in the diptych that were not used in
the Orvieto polyptych means that the diptych is laterperhaps only a little
later, adding, your suggestion of dating the diptych around 1330 seems
just fine from the sphragiogical point of view.
[14] George Martin Richter, Simone Martini Problems, The Burlington

Magazine for Connoisseurs 54 (1929): 166173, published the small former
Stoclet painting (25 17 cm), now in a private collection in the United States,
as a work by Simone, but art historians generally rejected the proposal,
restated in more recent years in the album Collection Adolphe Stoclet, vol. 1,
Choix doeuvres appartenant Madame Feron-Stoclet: Prface de Georges
A. Salles,...Avant-propos de Daisy Lion-Goldschmidt (Brussels, 1956),
8688. In my view, the small panel, rarely cited in monographs on Simone
(although cf. Contini and Gozzoli 1970, where it is considered as belonging
alla cerchia di Simone in senso lato [in the circle of Simone in the broadest
sense]), and sometimes referred to Naddo Ceccarelli (De Benedictis 1974),
could be a product of the shop of Andrea di Vanni (Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413);
in any case, it suggests that Sienese artists were familiar with the
Hermitage-Gallery diptych. See Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina


Gozzoli, Lopera completa di Simone Martini (Milan, 1970), 106; Cristina De

Benedictis, Naddo Ceccarelli, Commentari 25 (1974): 139140.
[15] The panel in question is one of six small panels now divided among the
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp (Angel of the
Annunciation and The Descent from the Cross, originally on the back of the
same panel; Virgin Annunciate and Crucifixion, originally on the back of the
same panel); the Louvre, Paris (The Carrying of the Cross to Calvary); and
the Gemldegalerie in Berlin (The Entombment). They were components of
a folding altarpiece that bore the signature of Simone and the coats of arms
of the Orsini family; cf. Hendrik W. van Os and Marjan Rinkleff-Reinders, De
reconstructie van Simone Martinis zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie,
Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 23 (1972): 1326. Most scholars have
considered this quadriptych a late work, executed c. 13351340, even
though some have proposed a dating to the third decade or even earlier,
such as Marco Pierini, Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2000),
206208, 242 nn. 30, 32, and others; see Joseph Polzer, Simone Martinis
Orsini Folding Polyptych: Place of Origin and Date and Its Relation to the
1333 Uffizi Annunciation, 1, Arte cristiana 98, no. 860 (2010): 321330; and
Joseph Polzer, Simone Martinis Orsini Folding Polyptych: Place of Origin
and Date and Its Relation to the 1333 Uffizi Annunciation, 2, Arte cristiana
98, no. 861 (2010): 401408. As far as I am able to see, however, stylistic
evidence decisively contradicts this hypothesis.
[16] The title page of ms. A 79 inf. in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan was
commissioned by Petrarch, as attested by an autograph note on the back,
following the recovery in 1338 of the manuscript that had been stolen from
him. Cf. Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der italienischen
Zeichnungen 13001450, 8 vols. (Berlin, 19801990), 2, pt. 2:319331;
Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 364.
[17] No. 2787. Cf. Julian Gardner, The Back of the Panel of Christ Discovered in
the Temple by Simone Martini, Arte cristiana 78 (1990): 389398; Pierluigi
Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 364365.
[18] On the occasion of the opening of the National Gallery of Art, Richard Offner
expressed a withering judgment of the painting in a review he wrote for Art
News, but the magazine preferred not to publish it (copy of the proofs in
NGA curatorial files). Offner described a superannuated pigment streaked
over the outlines...[which] disfigures the fourteenth century original. The
remaining surface seems to have been subjected to successive abrasions....
Hence, partly through modern additions, partly because they never were
there, the shapes and the rhythms of Simone are nowhere in evidence. Of
course, these lines reflect the panels state in 1941, and we dont know what
Offner thought after its cleaning in 1955 or whether his reservations about
the Angel of the Annunciation also applied to the Virgin Annunciate in the
Hermitage. Some art historians in more recent years have tried to identify


stylistic differences between these two panels, such as Maria Cristina

Gozzoli in Lopera completa di Simone Martini, by Gianfranco Contini and
Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 106, who placed the Russian panel in
Simones catalog but believed the Washington panel a workshop product,
detecting in it un notevole scarto di qualit rispetto alle opere certe di
Simone...tale da far pensare a unesecuzione integralmente di bottega (a
notable drop in quality with respect to the certain works of Simone,
sufficient to suggest its complete execution by the workshop).
Subsequently, however, it seems that no other author has been able to
identifyand the present writer decidedly rejectsany such disparity in
quality between the two leaves of the diptych. Moreover, recent attempts to
discriminate between autograph and workshop parts of the execution are
disqualified from the start by the heavily abraded state of the surface of
both panels. Cf. Grazia Neri, Maestro della Madonna Straus, in
Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1997), 8:101; Pierluigi
Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 332333, 365. Such a
discrimination or division of hands is in any case implausible in the case of
these small paintings for private devotion, which, to judge from their
sumptuous executionlavish in gold leafmust have been destined for
high-ranking patrons.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support is a single, vertically grained poplar panel [1] on which fine fabric has
been applied on both sides. Both the obverse and the reverse were prepared with
a gesso ground on which a thin layer of red bole was laid; this in turn was overlaid
on the obverse by gold leaf. The main lines of the figure were incised in the gesso
preparation. The designs of the brocade were realized with sgraffito technique; the
halo and the decorative borders were punched. The paint, with the exception of
the flesh, was laid over the gold leaf.[2] The feathers of the angels wings were
articulated with incised lines. The flesh tones were applied over a green
underlayer. The reverse, also decorated by punch marks [fig. 1], was originally
gilded with silver.[3] The panel exhibits a very slight convex warp and is damaged
by a crack running downward from the center of the top edge for approximately 10
cm. The engaged frame of the panel is lost, and the part of the wooden support it
covered is exposed on all sides. There are small losses in the gold ground and in
the painted surface along the edges. The paint and glazes are generally very
abraded. Inpainting can be noted in the angels right hand, in his face, and in the
red floor. The painting is said to have been cleaned, restored slightly and


varnished by Stephen Pichetto in 1936.[4] Photographs made between 1937 and

1955 show it, however, in heavily repainted state [fig. 2]. Mario Modestini removed
the overpaint and restored the panel again in 1955.[5]


fig. 1 Reverse, Simone Martini, The Angel of the

Annunciation, c. 1330, tempera on poplar, National Gallery fig. 2 Archival photograph, 1945, old state, Simone Martini,
of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection The Angel of the Annunciation, c. 1330, tempera on
poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H.
Kress Collection
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The NGA scientific research department identified the wood as poplar (see
report dated September 16, 1988, in NGA conservation files).
[2] The restorer of the Uffizi Annunciation, executed in 1333 for Siena Cathedral
in collaboration with Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347), observed a
similar technical procedure; see Alfio Del Serra, Il restauro, in Simone
Martini e lAnnunciazione degli Uffizi, ed. Alessandro Cecchi (Cinisello
Balsamo, Milan, 2001), 77114, in particular 81 and fig. 5. On the use of


sgraffito technique in Sienese Trecento painting, see Norman E. Muller,

The Development of Sgraffito in Sienese Painting in Simone Martini, in
Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, 2729 marzo 1985, ed. Luciano
Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 147150, according to whom this technique became
common only in the second half of the century.
[3] The NGA scientific research department analyzed the reverse of the
painting using x-ray fluorescence spectometry (XRF). Strong peaks for silver
were found (see report dated February 29, 2012, in NGA conservation files).
DC, 1979), 1:431 n. 6.
[5] The information on Pichettos treatment seems to have been confirmed by

Lionello Venturis letter to the restorer, dated February 1936 (copy in NGA
curatorial files), reporting the discovery of the panel discussed here.
Evidently, soon afterward it was handed over to Pichetto for putting in
order. The Condition and Restoration Records of the Samuel H. Kress
Collection (copy in NGA curatorial files) also mention some restoration
carried out by Pichetto, adding, 1955 . . . M. Modestini removed the varnish
and all of the overpaints. . . . The cleaning disclosed that considerable
original paint had been overcleaned several centuries ago. For the
testimony of such an acute observer as Richard Offner on the paintings
state at the time of its arrival in the National Gallery of Art, see Entry note 18.
PROVENANCE
Charles John Canning, 2nd Viscount Canning and later 1st Earl Canning [1812-
1862]; by bequest to his sister, Harriet Canning de Burgh [1804-1876], Marchioness
of Clanricarde; by inheritance to her daughter, Margaret Anne de Burgh Beaumont
[1831-1888]; probably by inheritance to her son, Wentworth Canning Blackett
Beaumont, 1st Viscount Allendale [1860-1923];[1] said to have been in the collection
of Henry George Charles Lascelles, 6th earl of Harewood [1882-1947], Harewood
House, Leeds, Yorkshire;[2] Lionello Venturi [1895-1961], New York;[3] sold 1936 to
the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1939 to NGA. [1] The back of the
painting bears a paper label printed with a coat of arms with three Moors heads in
profile and the coronet of a viscount above. Underneath is painted the name
CANNING. As Ellis Waterhouses note of 1980 (in NGA curatorial files) informed the
Gallery, this can only refer to Charles John Canning; on Canning see also Bernard
Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of
the British Empire, 24th ed., London, 1862: 171. The paper label also is inscribed


with the handwritten name of Lady Margaret Beaumont and the number 32.
According to Waterhouses note, this can only be Margaret Anne de Burgh,
daughter of Ulick John de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde, and of Harriet
Canning, sister and heir of Charles John Canning. Margaret Anne married
Wentworth Blackett Beaumont (1829-1907) in 1856. The painting probably was
inherited by their son, Wentworth Canning Blackett Beaumont. [2] Lascelles is
named in Lionello Venturis February 1936 letter to the restorer Stephen Pichetto
(copy in NGA curatorial files) as the person from whom about two years ago, i.e.,
in c. 1934, the painting was acquired by the unnamed person (Venturi) who owned
it in February 1936. Lascelles was a grandson of Lady Elizabeth Joanna de Burgh (a
sister of Margaret Anne de Burgh Beaumont), who had married Henry Thynne
Lascelles, 4th earl Harewood, who became the heir of Elizabeths and Margarets
unmarried brother, Herbert George de Burgh-Canning, 2nd (and last) marquess of
Clanricarde. However, according to Ellis Waterhouse (see note 1) the Washington
panel didnt belong ever to the Earl of Harewood (it was one of the few
Clanricarde pictures which didnt). Indeed, the panel is not included in Tancred
Borenius catalogue of the Harewood collection; the introduction indicates that the
2nd marquess of Clanricarde bequeathed to Lascelles mainly pictures by English
eighteenth-century masters; see Tancred Borenius, Catalogue of the pictures and
drawings at Harewood House and elswhere in the collection of the Earl of
Harewood, Oxford, 1936: vii. [3] Fern Rusk Shapley (Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:431) states that Venturi sold the panel
to Samuel H. Kress in 1936.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
274.
National Gallery." Art News 40 (15-31 March 1941): repro. 16.
(repro.), 240.
Art, Washington, 1941: 184-185, no. 327.
repro. 189.


1955 Paccagnini, Giovanni. Simone Martini. Milan, 1955: 168 (repro.), 169.
1955 Volpe, Carlo. "Un libro su Simone Martini, Review of Simone Martini by
Giovanni Paccagnini." Paragone 6, no. 63 (1955): 52.
1960 Becchis, Michela. "Martini, Simone." In Dizionario biografico degli
71(2008):259.
1960 Laclotte, Michel. Lcole dAvignon: la peinture en Provence aux XIVe et
XVe sicles. Paris, 1960: 32.
1962 Castelnuovo, Enrico. Un pittore italiano alla corte di Avignone. Matteo
Giovannetti e la pittura in Provenza nel secolo XIV. Turin, 1962: 85-96.
1963 Enaud, Franois. "Les fresques de Simone Martini Avignon." Les
monuments historiques de la France 9 (1963): 163, 177 n. 161.
1967 Kermer, Wolfgang. "Studien zum Diptych in der sakralen Malerei von
den Anfngen bis zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts." 2 vols.
Ph.D. dissertation, Eberhardt-Karls-Universitt, Tbingen, 1967: 1:173;
2:fig. 29.
sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 47 n. 39.
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1972 Os, Hendrik W. van, and Marjan Rinkleff-Reinders. "De reconstructie van
Simone Martinis zgn. Polyptiek van de Passie." Nederlands
kunsthistorisch jaarboek 23 (1972): 9.
1972 "Simone Martini o di Martino." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei
pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dallXI al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto
Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols. Turin, 1972-1976: 10(1975):325.
1974 Boskovits, Mikls. "A Dismembered Polyptych, Lippo Vanni and Simone


Martini." The Burlington Magazine 116 (1974): 367 n. 9.

1974 De Benedictis, Cristina. "Naddo Ceccarelli." Commentari 25 (1974): 140.
1976 De Benedictis, Cristina. "Il Polittico della Passione di Simone Martini e
una proposta per Donato." Antichit viva 15, no. 6 (1976): 5 fig. 3, 11 n.
20.
1976 Levinson-Lessing, Vladimir F., Elena Kozhina, and Musee de lErmitage
Leningrad, eds. Zapadnoevropejskaja ivopis: katalog. Vol. 1 (of 2),
Italija, Ispanija, Francija, Svejcarija (Peinture de lEurope Occidentale:
catalogue. Vol. 1 (of 2), Italie, Espagne, France, Suisse). Leningrad, 1976:
112.
bottega di Simone e Lippo, 2." Critica darte 42 (1977): 73.
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of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:430-431; 2:pl. 309, 309A.
1981 Gordon, Dillian. "A Sienese verre eglomis and Its Setting." The
1982 Vsevoloskaja, Svetlana Nikolaevna. Ermitage: italienische Malerei, 13.
bis 18. Jahrhundert. Translated by N. Gerassimowa. Leningrad, 1982:
264.
1983 Frinta, Mojmir Svatopluk. "Unsettling Evidence in Some Panel Paintings
of Simone Martini." In La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo
dellanalisi tecnica alla storia dellarte. Edited by Hendrik W. van Os and
J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer. Bologna, 1983: 216, 236, fig. 27.
1983 Laclotte, Michel, and Dominique Thibaut. Lcole dAvignon. Paris,
1983: 118 n. 10.
1983 Laclotte, Michel. "Les peintres siennois Avignon." in LArt gothique
siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfvrerie, sculpture. Exh. cat. Musee du
Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 99.
1984 Piotrovsky, Boris, and Irene Linnik. Western European Painting in the
Hermitage. Leningrad, 1984: n.p., no. 1.
1988 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. "Problemi martiniani avignonesi: il Maestro
degli Angeli Ribelli, i due Ceccarelli ed altro." In Simone Martini: atti del
convegno; Siena, March 27-29, 1985. Edited by Luciano Bellosi.
Florence, 1988: 225, 226 fig. 2.
1988 Martindale, Andrew. Simone Martini. Oxford, 1988: 60-61, 214-215, figs.
126, 127.
1988 Polzer, Joseph. "Symon Martini et Lippus Memmi me pinxerunt." In


Simone Martini: atti del convegno; Siena, March 27-29, 1985. Edited by
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1989 Kustodieva, Tatiana K., ed. Italjanskaja ivopis XIII-XV vekov: katalog
vystavki. Leningrad, 1989: 122.
1989 Leone De Castris, Pierluigi. Simone Martini: catalogo completo dei
dipinti. Florence, 1989: 130, repro. 131.
1989 "Martini, Simone." In Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori. Edited by
Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-1994:
3(1992):526.
1991 Eisler, Colin T. I dipinti dellErmitage. Udine, 1991: 163.
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1991 Torriti, Piero. Simone Martini. Florence, 1991: 47.
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1994: 265.
1996 Martindale, Andrew. "Martini, Simone." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by
Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 20:509.
1997 Neri, Grazia. "Maestro della Madonna Straus." in Enciclopedia dellarte
1991-2002: 8(1997):101.
Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 118, 247, 261, 298, 324, 333, 355, 377,
388, 446, 464.
2000 Pierini, Marco. Simone Martini. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2000: 206
(repro.), 207, 208 (repro.), 242 nn. 30, 32.
2002 Kustodieva, Tatiana K., ed. Sny gotiki i Renessansa: sienskaia zhivopis
XIV-pervoi poloviny XVI veka, katalog vystavki. Exh. cat.
Gosudarstvennyi Ermitazh, Saint Petersburg, 2002: 18.
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61.
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(repro.), 332-333, 340 n. 60, 341 n. 62, 365.
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2007: 206.



Siena, 2008: 48, 49.
2008 Labriola, Ada. Simone Martini e la pittura gotica a Siena: Duccio di
Buoninsegna, Memmo di Filippuccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ugolino di Nerio,
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lippo Memmi, Matteo Giovanetti, Naddo
Ceccarelli, Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccol di Ser Sozzo. I Grandi Maestri
dell'arte 19. Florence, 2008: 82.


Simone Martini
Saint James Major

c. 1315/1320
tempera on panel
painted surface: 26 x 20 cm (10 1/4 x 7 7/8 in.)
overall: 30.7 x 23 cm (12 1/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
framed: 44.4 x 60 cm (17 1/2 x 23 5/8 in.)
Inscription: on the left side of the Saint: .SA[NC]TVS.; on the right side of the Saint:
YACOBVS.
ENTRY
This panel and its three companions at the GallerySaint Matthew, Saint Simon,
and Saint Judas Thaddeustogether with six other busts of apostles [fig. 1] [fig. 2]
[fig. 3] [fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8] [fig. 9] [fig. 10],[1] originally formed part of a
polyptych. The ten panels, acquired as a group by Johann Anton Ramboux in the
early nineteenth century, remained together until the 1920s, when they were
deaccessioned by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and dispersed.
The horizontal graining of the wood of the support in all ten panels suggests they
are fragments of a predella.[2] The type of predella formed of busts of saints
placed below round arches is rather archaic: in fact, it appears in Sienese painting
no later than the years around 1320. Subsequently, preference was given instead
to the insertion of narrative scenes in the predella; if busts of saints were included
in the program, they were usually inserted in circular or mixtilinear medallions
surrounded by painted ornamental motifs.[3] The absence from this series of busts
of two of the most venerated apostles, Peter and John, may suggest that these
panels were already lost at the time of Rambouxs acquisition of the panels,
together with a bust of Christ (or Christ on the Cross) that normally formed the
central image of predellas decorated with busts of saints.[4] But it is more likely
that the series of apostles in the predella was originally incomplete and that the
images of Peter and John were separated from the rest and incorporated in the
main register of the altarpiece, as was the case, for example, in Duccios Maest
.[5] As for the sequence of the individual figures, it seems probable that the


apostles Andrew and James Major would have been placed closer to the center
(and hence in a position of particular emphasis), and that the images of Matthew,
Thomas, Simon, and Thaddeus would have been placed closer to the two ends.[6]
As for the painter of these busts of apostles, an attribution to the Sienese master
Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) was supported by Ramboux in the catalog
of his collection (1862).[7] This was endorsed by the older studies, beginning with
Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle (1864) and ending with
Louis Gielly (1926).[8] It was only when the ten panels reentered the art market that
the more prestigious name of Simone Martini was proposed by Robert Lehman
(1928) and then by others.[9] Art historians generally accepted the attribution to
Simone, though more often than not with the qualifier shop of or school of
Simone.[10] The catalog of the National Gallery of Art also cited the four panels
presented by the Kress Collection as works of Simone Martini and assistants. The
attribution to Lippo Memmi, however, was never wholly discarded and has more
recently been revived.[11] Proposed dates vary between c. 1320 and 1333.[12]
The attempts in recent decades to unite the catalogs of paintings previously

assembled respectively under the names of Lippo Memmi and Barna da Siena, as
well as under the nebulous formulae Companions of Simone, Lippo and
Tederico Memmi, or shop of Memmi have complicated the matter of
distinguishing among the paintings executed within the orbits of Simone Martini
and Lippo Memmi and have made Lippos artistic development difficult to
understand.[13] Inextricably linked to this issue, the chronology of the series of
apostles discussed here remains equally problematic. To judge from the works
signed and dated[14] by Lippo in the years between c. 1323 and 1333, the insertion
in his oeuvre of the four busts of apostles in the Gallery seems far from convincing.
The softness of the modeling and the spontaneous naturalness of the saints
gestures recall more readily the manner of his brother-in-law (Simone Martini) than
the solemn poses, polished forms, and metallic sheen that often distinguish the
works of Lippo himself.
Of the series of apostles of which the four panels in the Gallery form part, the Saint
Andrew now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [fig. 11] has close
affinities, both in physiognomic type and in his rather surly expression, with the
apostle, presumably Saint Andrew as well, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,
unanimously recognized as Simones work.[15] The Saint Judas Thaddeus [fig.
12] in the Gallery similarly invites comparison with the image of the same saint in
Simones polyptych in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa.[16] In both


images the apostle is presented as a beardless youth who turns towards the arch
of the frame with a slight Gothic bend, his head bowed to one side in an attitude of
meditation. It cannot be said categorically, however, that the version painted for
the polyptych of Pisa around 13191320 was the model for the painting in the
Gallery, given that the contours of the figure and the drapery folds in the latter are
far less agitated, following the stylistic models of previous works by Simone that
still fall into the second decade of the century.[17] Comparison with the
corresponding figures in the Pisa polyptych remains telling, however, and can also
be extended to the representations of Saints Matthew and Simon. Simon is
represented as still a young man, with a short, dark beard, while Matthew is a man
of middle age in frontal position, with a long, forked beard. Matthew is shown in
both paintings in the process of writing his Gospel. Less closely resembling his
counterpart in the Washington panel is the Saint James Major of the Pisa
polyptych, where we may observe the tendency, absent in the panels discussed
here, to present the apostles in movement, to envelop their bodies in voluminous
mantles that cast deep folds, and to place sharply foreshortened books in their
hands. In the Pisa polyptych the books are in general more voluminous and open,
and represented in such a way that some lines of calligraphy are visible. The saints,
moreover, often seem to be conversing with one another, accompanying or
enforcing their remarks with raised hand or exhibiting an object that not
infrequently interrupts the outer contour of the figure, set against the gold ground,
as if backlit.
Might the reduced emphasis on agitated rhythms and elegant gestures in the busts
of apostles in the Gallery and in their companion panels imply a dating for them
prior to the Pisa polyptych? Unfortunately, objective data deriving from the use of
punch marks help us little in this case, since according to Mojmir S. Frintas survey
(1998), the punched motifs present in the panels now divided between the
Metropolitan Museum of Art [fig. 11] [fig. 13] [fig. 14] [fig. 15] and the Gallery recur
virtually throughout the entire oeuvre of Simone Martini, from the San Gimignano
polyptych to the Annunciation in the Uffizi, Florence (1333), and beyond.[18] It might
be more fruitful to concentrate attention instead on another aspect, namely the fact
that Simone, as far as we are able to judge today, generally avoided the use of the
round arch in his altarpieces. This motif appears for the last time in the youthful
polyptych from San Gimignano, while in later works the arch, if it is not Gothic, is
enriched with small trefoil arches on the inside, as in the Pisa polyptych. Not only is
the framing of the National Gallery of Art panels very similar to that of the
components of the predella of the Saint Louis of Toulouse in Naples (painted in


c. 1317, the year of the saints canonization), but also their stylistic character is
consistent with that of the works realized in the years of rapid development
between the Maest in the Palazzo Pubblico (1315) and the Pisan polyptych of
13191320.
These considerations raise the question of identifying the altarpiece of which the
ten busts of apostles formed part. Michael Mallory (1974) argued that the four
Washington panels, together with their six companion panels in other collections,
were in origin the predella of the polyptych by Lippo Memmi of which Saint John
the Baptist in the Gallery also formed part.[19] The proposal has not met with
acceptance in the art historical literature, but no alternative hypotheses have yet
been formulated. A possible candidate for the lost central panel of the polyptych of
which the series of busts of apostles formed part could be, in the present writers
opinion, the Madonna and Child from the church of Santa Maria Maddalena at
Castiglion dOrcia, now in the Museo Civico e Diocesano at Montalcino (80 61
cm).[20] The width of the panel is not very different from that of the images placed
at the center of Simones polyptychs executed for churches in Pisa, Orvieto, or San
Gimignano, and its height is also close to that from San Gimignano, now deprived
of its original frame. So there is nothing to prevent us from imagining the
Montalcino Madonna at the center of a similar polyptych and with a series of
apostles in its predella. Our panels share with it not only a similar date but also the
external profile terminating in a round arch.
In conclusion, the ten panels of the apostles can, I believe, be firmly attributed to
Simone Martini. In the past scholars have generally undervalued these panels, not
as a consequence of any intrinsic mediocrity but because of the loss of the pictorial
finishes in some of them, flattening the modeling of the figures, and the unhappy
result of successive restorations that have obscured many of the more exquisite
touches of the pictorial technique, especially in the busts of Saints Bartholomew,
Matthias, and Thomas now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, the
better-preserved passages in our panels, in particular in the faces of Saints
Thaddeus and James Major, still retain qualities that, in the view of the present
writer, seem fully worthy of the hand of Simone.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone

Martini, Saint Judas Thaddeus, c. 1315/1320, tempera on fig. 2 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone
panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Martini, Saint Simon, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel,
Kress Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress
Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin



Martini, Saint Andrew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The fig. 4 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Martini, Saint Bartholomew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on
Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943. Image: panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Galerie van Diemen, Berlin Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F.
Griggs, 1943. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin


fig. 5 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone fig. 6 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone
Martini, Saint Matthew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, Martini, Saint Thomas, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F.
Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943.
Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin



Martini, Saint James Major, c. 1315/1320, tempera on fig. 8 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone
panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Martini, Saint Philip, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel,
Kress Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin location unknown. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin



Martini, Saint James Minor, c. 1315/1320, tempera on fig. 10 Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone
panel, Salini collection, Castello di Gallico, Asciano, Siena. Martini, Saint Matthias, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel,
Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F.
Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943.


fig. 12 Detail, Simone Martini, Saint Judas Thaddeus, c.

fig. 11 Simone Martini, Saint Andrew, c. 1315/1320, tempera

Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F.
Griggs, 1943


fig. 13 Simone Martini, Saint Bartholomew, c. 1315/1320, fig. 14 Simone Martini, Saint Matthias, c. 1315/1320,
tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F.
Griggs, 1943 Griggs, 1943


fig. 15 Simone Martini, Saint Thomas, c. 1315/1320,

tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F.
Griggs, 1943
NOTES
[1] In 1924, Maitland Fuller Griggs, acquired four panels of the seriesSaints
Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthias, and Andrewthrough Edward Hutton, and
these entered the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1943. The bust of
Saint James Minor (fig. 9) belonged to the Stoclet Collection in Brussels at
least since 1927, and since 2005 it has belonged to the Salini collection at
Castello di Gallico (Asciano). Philip Lehman purchased the image of Saint
Philip (fig. 8) along with the four panels discussed here before 1928. The
Saint Philip was sold at auction at Christies in New York on January 11, 1991
(lot 12). It was purchased by Carlo de Carlo (Florence), in whose collection it
remained until 1999; its present whereabouts are unknown.


[2] The predella, especially in large-size altarpieces in Tuscany, was almost

always painted on a single timber with grain running horizontally, separated
from the wooden support of the main panels. The top tier of images above
the main register, on the other hand, was frequently painted on the same
vertically grained panel as the main register itself. See John White, Duccio:
Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 8991; Christoph
Merzenich, Vom Schreinerwerk zum Gemlde: Florentiner Altarwerke der
ersten Hlfte des Quattrocento (Berlin, 2001), 55. The following scholars
maintained that the panels formed part of the predella of a polyptych:
Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 76; George
McCall, Masterpieces of Art: Catalogue of European Paintings and
Sculpture from 13001800, ed. Wilhelm R. Valentiner (New York, 1939),
116117; Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi
Reconsidered, Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19; Michel
Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte (Paris, 1978), 19; Fern Rusk
1:332, 333 n. 7; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 35 n. 18;
Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi in Encyclopedia dellarte medievale,
Rome, 1996, 7:732. De Benedictis (1974) initially argued, as Federico Zeri
(1980) did, that they belonged instead to the upper register of a polyptych.
Gertrude Coor (1956) thought that both solutions were possible, as did
Sabina Spannocchi (2009). See Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un
libro su Buffalmacco, Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Federico Zeri
and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian
Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art (New York, 1980), 95; Gertrude Coor, TrecentoGemlde aus der
Sammlung Ramboux, WallrafRichartzJahrbuch 18 (1956): 118; and Sabina
Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli
XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:135.
[3] Examples of the predella type with busts of saints set in round-arched
frames are Simone Martinis polyptych now in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa
(13191320); that of Ugolino di Nerio in the Museo Nazionale in Lucca,
datable to c. 1320; and that of Meo da Siena, also dating to around
13151320, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Perugia. Cf. James H.
1979), 2: fig. 375; and Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dellUmbria,
1969), 5859. Predellas with medallions surrounded by floriated motifs, by
contrast, were used by Giotto in his polyptychs in the Baroncelli Chapel in
Santa Croce in Florence and in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna in the
years 13251335, and, among Sienese artists, by Ugolino di Nerio in the


predella now in the Muse des Beaux-Arts at Besanon (see Stubblebine

1979, fig. 465), and by Bartolomeo Bulgarini in the predella of his polyptych
formerly in Santa Croce, now in the storerooms of the Gallerie Fiorentine;
see Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting,
vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), fig. 72.
Sometimes, as in Simone Martinis altarpiece of Saint Louis of Toulouse in
the Museo di Capodimonte at Naples (1317), the round arches of the predella
contain not the busts of saints but small narrative scenes. Perhaps the
practice of adding a predella containing busts of saints to small devotional
paintings originated in the shops of Simone and Lippo (cf. the Madonna in
the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, no. P. 30 w 8, or the
Crucifixion no. 156 of the Pinacoteca Vaticana). It seems to reflect a type of
altarpiece similar to that of Simone in Naples: paintings, that is, with a single
scene (instead of several panels with figures of saints) in the main register.
[4] However, sometimes, as in the above-cited predella of Meo da Sienas

polyptych, Christ does not appear among the apostles, and the center of the
sequence of busts of apostles is occupied instead by Saints Peter and Paul.
[5] In Duccios masterpiece, the large scene representing the Madonna and
Child flanked by saints and angels is surmounted by a horizontal second
register of half-length saints (from left to right): the busts of Saints Thaddeus,
Simon, Philip, James Major, Andrew, Matthew, James Minor, Bartholomew,
Thomas, and Matthias. The apostles Peter and Paul, and John the
Evangelist, on the other hand, are represented, together with the Baptist, as
full-length figures flanking the throne of the Madonna.
[6] In his analysis of the problem of the sequence of busts, Giovanni Previtali
(1987) proposed the following order, from left to right: Matthias, Thomas,
Bartholomew, James (Minor or Major), Matthew, Andrew, James[?], Philip,
Simon, and Thaddeus, observing that this would be the exact reverse of the
order followed by Duccio in representing the ten apostles in the Maest and
by Simone Martini in the predella of the Pisa polyptych, in which Peter and
Paul are naturally added to the ten, in a central position (John the Evangelist
appears here among the saints in the main register). See Giovanni Previtali,
Problems in the Workshop of Simone Martini, Center/National Gallery of
Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 8384. But the
sequence represented in the works of Duccio and Simone Martini is not the
only possible one. For example, Simone represented the apostles in the
Maest he frescoed in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in the order of:
Bartholomew, Philip, Matthew, Thomas, James Minor, James Major,
Matthias, Andrew, Thaddeus, and Simon (with Paul, John the Evangelist,
John the Baptist, and Peter placed in the foreground); for the identification
of the apostles, cf. Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone
Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999), 155157. Different again is the
sequence of apostles adopted by Giotto in the Last Judgment of the


Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and in the Stefaneschi polyptych in the

Pinacoteca Vaticana; cf. Margrit Lisner, Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in
Kunstgeschichte 53 (1990): 309375; and Margrit Lisner, Giotto und die
Auftrge des Kardinals Jacopo Stefaneschi fr Alt-St. Peter: 2; der
Stefaneschi-Altar; Giotto und seine Werkstatt in Rom; das Altarwerk und der
verlorene Christuszyklus in der Petersapsis, Rmisches Jahrbuch der
Bibliotheca Hertziana 30 (1995): 59133. Only the central position of Peter,
Paul, and John (if they form part of the series), as well as James Major and
Andrew, holds good as a general rule.
[7] Katalog der Gemlde Alter italienischer Meister (12211640) in der

Sammlung des Conservator J.A. Ramboux (Cologne, 1862), 15, no. 75.
18641866), 2:105; Louis Gielly, Les primitifs siennois (Paris, 1926), 111.
[9] At least as regards the panels that entered the Griggs collection in New
York through Edward Hutton, the attribution to Simone presumably had
been made by the dealer/amateur Hutton himself. The Saint James Minor
also seems to have entered the Stoclet collection in Brussels with an
attribution to Simone; cf. Pierre Bautier, I primitivi italiani della collezione
Stoclet a Bruxelles, Cronache darte 4 (1927): 315. August L. Mayer (1930)
further accepted Simone Martinis authorship for the panels then in the
Lehman collection, as did George McCall and William Valentiner. August L.
Mayer, Die Sammlung Philip Lehman, Pantheon 5 (1930): 113; George
116117.
[10] Perhaps having been asked by Maitland Fuller Griggs in 1926 for his
expertise, Richard Offner orally ascribed the four panels acquired for that
collection as school of Simone Martini, while in 1926 Raimond van Marle,
in a manuscript opinion, attributed the paintings to an immediate follower
of Simone Martini. See Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian
Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the
Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 96.
Intervening in 1932 and then in 1936, and in the posthumous edition of 1968,
Bernard Berenson (who in 1925 had conjectured the authorship of the
young Lippo Vanni; for his expertise, see Zeri and Gardner 1980, 96)
defined the image of Saint Matthew as at least in part by Simone, but
classified the other four panels of the series in the Lehman collection as
works of the artists shop. F. Mason Perkins (1937) thought the Lehman
panels in large part executed by Simones assistants. The participation of
the artists assistants was also detected in the paintings by Gertrude Coor


(1956), in Exposition de la collection Lehman 1957, by Fern Rusk Shapley

(1966), by Joseph Polzer (1971), by Burton B. Fredericksen and Zeri (1972), by
Zeri and Gardner (1980), by Giovanni Previtali (1987), by Mojmir S. Frinta
(1998), by Hiltrud Kier and Frank Gnter Zehnder (1998), and by Alessandro
Bagnoli (1999). Even the recent catalog entry by Sabina Spannocchi (in
Bellosi 2009), although citing the series of apostles under Simones name,
considered it executed in part by assistants under the surveillance of the
master. See Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of
the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932),
534; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei
principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio
Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 459; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the
1968), 1:404; F. Mason Perkins, Simone di Martino (Simone Martini),
in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis zur
(Leipzig, 1937), 31:67; Gertrude Coor, TrecentoGemlde aus der
Sammlung Ramboux, WallrafRichartzJahrbuch 18 (1956): 118; Exposition
de la Collection Lehman de New York (Paris, 1957), 43; Fern Rusk
XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 4849; Joseph Polzer, Observations on
Known Paintings and a New Altarpiece by Francesco Traini, Pantheon 29
(1971): 386; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-
Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public
Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 122; Federico Zeri, in Italian Paintings:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner
(New York, 1980), 95; Giovanni Previtali, Problems in the Workshop of
Simone Martini, Center/National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study
in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 8384; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched
118, 189, 205, 311, 321, 400, 444, 453; Hiltrud Kier and Frank Gnter
Zehnder, ed., Lust und Verlust, vol. 2, CorpusBand zu Klner
Gemldesammlungen 18001860 (Cologne, 1998), 551552; Alessandro
Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999) 156
n. 24, 179; and Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e
oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence,
2009), 1:132141.
[11] Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933) revived the attribution to Lippo Memmi,
followed by Pietro Toesca (1951), Maria Cristina Gozzoli (in Contini and
Gozzoli 1970), Cristina De Benedictis (1974, 1979, 1996), Michael Mallory
(1974), Michel Laclotte (1978), and Andrew Martindale (1988). The present
writer (1988) limited himself to rejecting the ascription of the panels to Lippo
Memmi, without offering any alternative attribution. See Lionello


Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), nos. 6061; Lionello

Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: nos. 7677; Pietro
Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dellarte classica e italiana 3; Storia dellarte
italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 551 n. 75; Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in Lopera completa
di Simone Martini, ed. Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan,
1970), 105 n. 53; Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su
Buffalmacco, Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Cristina De
Benedictis, La pittura senese 13301370 (Florence, 1979), 93; Cristina De
Benedictis, Lippo Memmi, in Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols.
(Rome, 1996), 7:732; Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi
Reconsidered, Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201, n. 19; Michel
Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte (Paris, 1978), 19; Andrew
Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 35 n. 18; Mikls Boskovits,
ed., Frhe italienische Malerei: Gemldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der
Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 75.
[12] Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, 1979) and Giovanni Previtali (1987) proposed the
date c. 1320; Cristina De Benedictis (1974), 1325i.e., the date of the lost
polyptych by Lippo Memmi for San Paolo a Ripa dArno in Pisaor, more
cautiously (De Benedictis 1996), after 1323, the presumable date of
the Triumph of Saint Thomas in San Domenico at Pisa. Michael Mallory
(1974) dated the series c. 1330; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth Gardner (1980),
to the period between c. 1320 and 1333. Sabina Spannocchi (2009)
suggested the date of execution as c. 1317. See Fern Rusk
XIIIXV Century (London, 1966), 4849; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of
the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:332, 333 n. 7;
Giovanni Previtali, Problems in the Workshop of Simone Martini, Center/
(1987): 8384; Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su
Reconsidered, Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19; Federico
Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian
Art (New York, 1980), 95; Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti,
sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols.
(Florence, 2009), 1:139.
[13] After the publications by Gordon Moran (1976), who was the first to cast
doubt on whether a painter called Barna da Siena had ever existed
according to him, the name was an erroneous transcription of Bartolo di


Frediand that of Antonino Caleca (1976, 1977), who argued that the works
formerly attributed to Barna should be reassigned to the catalog of Lippo
Memmi, art historians have gone their separate ways in trying to identify the
masters of the paintings left orphans after Barnas demise. Luciano Bellosi
(1977) wrote of the Famiglia Memmi as a kind of family concern, while
Carlo Volpe (1982) considered probable Morans hypothesis attributing the
paintings to Federico Memmi, brother of Lippo. Giovanna Damiani (1985)
maintained that la firma di Lippo Memmi corrisponda...ad una sorta di
etichetta che indica anzich lattivit di una personalit artistica, quella di
una bottega comprendente Lippo e Federico Memmi e che doveva avere al
suo attivo anche personalit minori (Lippo Memmis signature corresponds
to a kind of label that indicates not the activity of an artistic personality but
the activity of a workshop comprising Lippo and Federico Memmi and that
must have included minor figures as well). Returning to the question, Bellosi
(1985) thought it right to riconsiderare unitariamente tutta la produzione
che fa capo al prestigioso atelier familiare di Simone Martini, ivi comprese le
opere attribuite a Lippo e a Barna (reconsider integrally the entire
production of the prestigious family workshop headed by Simone Martini,
including the works attributed to Lippo and Barna). Previtali (1988) went
further, affirming that lo stile che siamo soliti chiamare Barna...sta a
Simone un po come lo stile dei manieristi sta a quello di Michelangiolo (the
style that we are accustomed to calling Barna is to Simone a bit as the style
of the mannerists is to Michelangelo). Previtali also proposed, albeit with
caution, that some works usually attributed to Lippo be reassigned to
Simone himself. To Leone de Castris (1988), a distinzione puntuale fra le
opere di Barna (precise distinction between the works of Barna)in his
view probably executed by a presumed Tederico Memmiand those of the
Maestro della Madonna Straus, another anonymous Simonesque painter,
seemed to be operazione assai difficoltosa (a rather difficult task). Mikls
Boskovits (2008) and Ada Labriola (2008) insisted on the necessity of
restoring to Lippo Memmi the paintings attributed to Barna, but Sabina
Spannocchi (2009) still preferred to speak of the cosidetto Barna (the so-
called Barna). See Gordan Moran, Is the Name Barna an Incorrect
Transcription of the Name Bartolo? Paragone 27 (1976): 7680; Antonio
2, Critica darte 42 (1977): 5580; Luciano Bellosi, Moda e cronologia: B)
per la pittura di primo Trecento, Prospettiva 11 (1977): 21; Carlo Volpe, in Il
gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti dart (Florence, 1982),
186187; Giovanna Damiani, in Simone Martini e chompagni, ed.
Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 8285; Luciano



160161; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Problemi martiniani avignonesi: Il
Maestro degli angeli ribelli, i due Ceccarelli ed altro, in Simone Martini: Atti
del convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence,
1988), 230 n. 10; Mikls Boskovits, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-
Museum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena,
2008), 26; Ada Labriola, Simone Martini e la pittura gotica a Siena: Duccio
di Buoninsegna, Memmo di Filippuccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ugolino di Nerio,
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lippo Memmi, Matteo Giovanetti, Naddo Ceccarelli,
Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccol di ser Sozzo (Florence, 2008), 5658; and
Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:141.
[14] The Madonna della Misericordia in Orvieto Cathedral, signed Lippus de

Sena natus nos pinxit amena, is not dated but in general is thought to have
been executed around 1320. Cf. Giovanni Previtali, Introduzione ai
156; Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi, in Enciclopedia dellarte
medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; and Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 176177. The Madonna and Child in
the Lindenaum-Museum in Altenburg is usually dated slightly later; see
Joseph Polzer, Symon Martini et Lippus Memmi me pinxerunt, in Simone
Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi
(Florence, 1988), 168; De Benedictis (1996, 7:732); Pierluigi Leone De
Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 217 n. 41; and Johannes Tripps,
in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls
Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 49. For the diptych divided
between the Gemldegalerie in Berlin and a private collection that bears the
date 1333, see Millard Meiss, Notes on a Dated Diptych by Lippo Memmi,
in Scritti di storia dellarte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi
Dupr Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, 2 vols. (Milan, 1977), 1:137139;
Katalog der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 76.
[15] No. 51.2397; Laurence B. Kanter, Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, vol. 1, 13th15th Century (Boston, 1994), 84, accepted the
dating of the work shared by most art historians, to the early 1320s.
Boskovits had already proposed in 1990 a comparison between the two
images of the saint. Mikls Boskovits, Review of Simone Martini by Andrew
Martindale, Kunstchronik 43 (1990): 595601.
[16] The date of the altarpiece is variously indicated as 1319 or 1320. Both dates
are derived from the same source: the sixteenth-century Annali of the
Dominican convent in Pisa, which record the placing of the polyptych over


the high altar of the church of Santa Caterina in 1320. But this date, if
calculated according to the Pisan style in use at the time the polyptych was
painted, could be equivalent to 1319 in the modern calendar. Cf. Pierluigi
[17] Art historians in recent decades generally have agreed on dating the
frescoes with half-length figures of saints in the northern transept of the
lower church of San Francesco in Assisi to the years 13151320. Cf. Maria
Cristina Gozzoli, in Lopera completa di Simone Martini, ed. Gianfranco
Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 9495; Luciano Bellosi, La
barba di San Francesco: Nuove proposte per il problema di
Assisi, Prospettiva 22 (1980): 1314; and Carlo Volpe, in Il Gotico a Siena:
Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 179. A similar
dating is proposed for the polyptych formerly in SantAgostino at San
Gimignano; cf. Cristina De Benedictis, Pittura e miniatura del Duecento e
del Trecento in terra di Siena, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il
Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:337339; Andrew
Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 200202 n. 23; Pierluigi Leone
De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 349. The polyptych now divided
between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (no. 41.100.23,
Lehman Collection, no. 1975.1. 12 and 13), the Thyssen-Bornemisza
Museum in Madrid, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (no.
82.PB.72) is usually dated to the 1320s, but the present writer prefers an
earlier dating, towards the mid-1310s; cf. Mikls Boskovits, Da Duccio a
Simone Martini, in Medioevo: La chiesa e il palazzo; Atti del convegno
[18] The punch marks in the four Washington panels are registered as follows by
Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and
Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998): Da10a (present in works by Simone
Martini from the San Gimignano polyptych to the late Orsini quadriptych and
in various works of Lippo Memmi), 117119; Ea1 (present in paintings by
Simone with a presumable provenance from Orvieto, in the Orsini
quadriptych, and in works by Lippo), 189; Fd14a (used in a similar way as
the preceding punches); I16a (used in Simones polyptych divided among
the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Uffizi Annunciation, and in panels
attributed to Lippo), 205; I70 (present in paintings between the Orvieto
phase and the Uffizi Annunciation, and in works by Lippo), 321; Jb59
(present in works of Simones Orvieto phase and in the Orsini quadriptych,
but not found in authenticated paintings by Lippo), 388; Jc15 (present in
paintings of Simones Orvieto phase, the Uffizi Annunciation, and in works
by Lippo), 400401; Ka27a (again present in paintings of Simones Orvieto
phase, the Uffizi Annunciation, and in various works by Lippo), 444; and


Ka63 (used in a similar way as the previous punch), 453454.
[19] Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi

Reconsidered, Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19.
[20] The Madonna formerly at Castiglion dOrcia was not necessarily painted for
that town and was variously attributed in the past. Serena Padovani (1979)
attributed it to Simone, and Alessandro Bagnoli (1997) accepted the
attribution, whereas Leone de Castris (2003) thought it was painted in
buona parte by studio assistants of Simone and dated it to the early 1320s.
With regard to the dating of the painting, it should be borne in mind that
Frinta (1998) found in it a punch mark present in various works by Simone
executed during his period in Orvieto, as well as in the Pisa polyptych of
13191320, and in the San Gimignano polyptych. See Serena Padovani,
Una tavola di Castiglione dOrcia restaurata di recente, Prospettiva 17
(1979): 8288; Alessandro Bagnoli, Museo civico e diocesano darte sacra
di Montalcino (Siena, 1997), 33, 35; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone
Martini (Milan, 2003), 209, 354; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched
428.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting and its three companions, Saint Matthew, Saint Simon, and Saint
Judas Thaddeus, were executed on panels apparently made of a single piece of
wood with horizontal grain, which has been thinned to 2.5 cm thick, backed, and
cradled. Stephen Pichetto applied the backings and cradles in 1944, at which time
he may also have thinned the panels and added the wooden strips that are
currently affixed to all sides of each. The inner molding of the arch as well as the
capitals and bases of the engaged frame surrounding the painted surface of each
panel are original. Before the painting process, the panels were covered with a
fabric interleaf, on which a layer of gesso ground was applied. The areas to be
gilded were prepared with red bole and the halos decorated with punch
marksthose in Saint Matthew and Saint Simon extend onto the top arches of the
engaged frames. Incised lines were used to demarcate the figures; a green
underpainting was laid in beneath the flesh tones; and the paint was applied with
fine, unblended brushstrokes. Infrared reflectography at 1.2 to 5 microns shows a
linear underdrawing in the figures hands but not in their clothing, except in Saint
Judas Thaddeus, in which all the folds in the saints cloak were delineated in a
liquid medium.[1] Mordant gilding was used for embellishing the borders of the


saints robes and the bosses and clasps of their books. The books are further
decorated with punch marks, and a black material, which might have been silver,
has been applied over the gilded clasps and bosses.
The painted surfaces of all four panels are slightly worn but in fair state apart from
a number of small, scattered losses largely associated with the damages to the
supports and the removal of parts of the original engaged frames and moldings
along the borders. Two small repairs are visible in the gold ground in Saint
Matthew, and retouchings around the saints throat, chest, and shoulders have
discolored. Retouching in Saint Simon mostly affects the saints right cheek and left
shoulder. Vertical and diagonal cracks, with attendant minor paint loss, are more
prominent along the bottom edge of Saint James Major, while retouching in Saint
Judas Thaddeus is largely confined to the saints face and book. The lettering of
the inscriptions in all four panels has been reinforced. When he applied the cradles
in 1944, Stephen Pichetto also cleaned, restored, and varnished the paintings.
Robert Lehman (1928) mentioned an earlier cleaning, probably in the early
1920s.[2]
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] Infrared reflectography was performed using a Mitsubishi M600 focal plane
array PtSi camera.
[2] Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), n.p.,
stated that the panels were covered by an old varnish which has lately
been removed. For the intervention in 1944, see Fern Rusk
1:433.
PROVENANCE
Acquired between 1832 and 1842 by Johann Anton Ramboux [1790-1866],

Cologne, together with six other components of the same series, presumably in
Siena;[1] (his estate sale, J.M. Heberle, Cologne, 23 May 1867, no. 75 [all ten
panels], as by Lippo Memmi);[2] the whole series purchased by the Wallraf-
Richartz-Museum, Cologne, which deaccessioned it in 1922-1923;[3] the four NGA
panels, 1952.5.23-.26, purchased together with a fifth panel of the same series, by


Philip Lehman [1861-1947], New York, by 1928;[4] the four NGA panels sold June
1943 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1952 to the NGA. [1]
Ramboux built up his huge collection of early Italian pictures essentially in the
above-mentioned years of his second period of residence in Italy; see Christoph
Merzenich,"Di dilettanza per un artista - Der Sammler Antonio Giovanni Ramboux
in der Toskana," in Lust und Verlust, edited by Hiltrud Kier and Frank Gnter
Zehnder, 2 vols., Cologne, 1995-1998: 1(1995): 303-314. [2] Without quoting their
provenance, the sale catalogue entry states only that the ten busts . . . stimmen
im Ausdruck wie in der brigen Technik mit den Wandmalereien im Stadthause zu
Sangeminiano berein. [3] See Kier and Zehnder 1995-1998, 2(1998): 550-552. [4]
The four panels in Washington and a fifth, representing Saint Philip, are included in
the catalogue of the Lehman collection (Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman
Collection, New York, Paris, 1928: nos. xix-xxiii). Possibly, Philip Lehman acquired
them through Edward Hutton in London, who also handled the panels of the series
now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. [5] The bill of sale for the
Kress Foundations purchase of fifteen paintings from the Lehman collection,
including NGA 1952.5.23-.26, is dated 11 June 1943; payment was made four days
later (copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale all
indicate that Philip Lehmans son Robert Lehman (1892-1963) was owner of the
EXHIBITION HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1862 Katalog der Gemlde Alter italienischer Meister (1221-1640) in der

Sammlung des Conservator J. A. Ramboux. Cologne, 1862: 15, no. 75.
1864 Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle. A New History
of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 3 vols.
London, 1864-1866: 2(1864):105.


1867 Heberle, J. M. Catalog der nachgelassenen Kunst-Sammlungen des

Herrn Johann Anton Ramboux. Cologne, 23 May 1867: 17, no. 75.
1869 Niessen, Johannes. Verzeichniss der Gemlde-Sammlung des Museums
Wallraf-Richartz in Kln. Cologne, 1869: 137.
New York, 1897: 148.
1914: 3(1908):76, 76-77 n. 5.
1907 Perkins, Frederick Mason. "Simone di Martino (Simone Martini)." In
1907-1950: 31(1937):67.
le sue origini. Milan, 1907: 666-667 n. 1.
ed. New York, 1909: 202.
Paris, 1928: no. XXII, repro.
534.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):258 n.
1:no. 77, repro.
1939 McCall, George. Masterpieces of Art. Catalogue of European Paintings
and Sculpture from 1300-1800. Edited by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Exh. cat.
Worlds Fair, New York, 1939: 116-117.
75.
1956 Coor, Gertrude. "Trecento-Gemlde aus der Sammlung Ramboux."
Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 18 (1956): 118.



Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 33, repro., as by Simone Martini and
Assistants.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 123, as by Simone Martini and
Assistants.
Washington, 1968: 110, repro., as by Simone Martini and Assistants.
Simone Martini. Milan, 1970: 105 no. 53, repro.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 403, 646, 665.
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13.
Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19.
of Art, Washington, 1975: 326, repro., as by Simone Martini and
Assistants
Paris, 1978: 19.
1979 De Benedictis, Cristina. La pittura senese 1330-1370. Florence, 1979: 93.
Poldi Pezzoli. Vol. 1, Dipinti. Milan, 1982: 145.
1987 Previtali, Giovanni. "Problems in the Workshop of Simone Martini."
Arts 7 (1987): 83-84, repro.



Katalog der Gemlde. Translated by Erich Schleier. Berlin, 1988: 75.
1988 Martindale, Andrew. Simone Martini. Oxford, 1988: 35 n. 18.
Edited by Luciano Bellosi. Florence, 1988: 166 n. 23
1990 Boskovits, Mikls. "Review of Simone Martino by Andrew Martindale."
Kunstchronik 43 (1990): 600.
1991 Christie, Manson & Woods. Important Paintings by Old Masters. New
York, 11 January 1991: 28.
1991-2002: 7(1996):732.
42.
1998 Kier, Hiltrud, and Frank Gnter Zehnder, eds. Lust und Verlust. Vol. 2 (of
2), Corpus-Band zu Klner Gemldesammlungen 1800-1860. Cologne,
1998: 551, repro.
(Milan), 1999: 156 n. 24, 179.
secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 2 vols. Florence, 2009: 1:135, repro. 138.


Simone Martini
Saint Judas Thaddeus

c. 1315/1320
tempera on panel
overall: 30.7 x 23.3 cm (12 1/16 x 9 3/16 in.)
framed: 44.4 x 60 cm (17 1/2 x 23 5/8 in.)
Inscription: on the left of the Saint: .SAN[C]TVS.; on the right of the Saint:
TAD[D]EVs.
ENTRY
This panel and its three companions at the GallerySaint Matthew, Saint Simon,
and Saint James Majortogether with six other busts of apostles [fig. 1] [fig. 2] [fig.
3] [fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8] [fig. 9] [fig. 10],[1] originally formed part of a
polyptych. The ten panels, acquired as a group by Johann Anton Ramboux in the
early nineteenth century, remained together until the 1920s, when they were
deaccessioned by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and dispersed.
Saint Judas Thaddeus 1366



signed and dated[14] by Lippo in the years between c. 1323 and 1333, the insertion


as if backlit.


13191320.


COMPARATIVE FIGURES
















Griggs, 1943





Griggs, 1943
NOTES











116117.



2009), 1:132141.



(Florence, 2009), 1:139.











428.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting and its three companions, Saint Matthew, Saint Simon, and Saint
James Major, were executed on panels apparently made of a single piece of wood
with horizontal grain, which has been thinned to 2.5 cm thick, backed, and cradled.
Stephen Pichetto applied the backings and cradles in 1944, at which time he may
also have thinned the panels and added the wooden strips that are currently
affixed to all sides of each. The inner molding of the arch as well as the capitals
and bases of the engaged frame surrounding the painted surface of each panel
are original. Before the painting process, the panels were covered with a fabric
interleaf, on which a layer of gesso ground was applied. The areas to be gilded
were prepared with red bole and the halos decorated with punch marksthose in
Saint Matthew and Saint Simon extend onto the top arches of the engaged frames.
Incised lines were used to demarcate the figures; a green underpainting was laid in
beneath the flesh tones; and the paint was applied with fine, unblended
brushstrokes. Infrared reflectography at 1.2 to 5 microns shows a linear
underdrawing in the figures hands but not in their clothing, except in Saint Judas
Thaddeus, in which all the folds in the saints cloak were delineated in a liquid
medium.[1] Mordant gilding was used for embellishing the borders of the saints


robes and the bosses and clasps of their books. The books are further decorated
with punch marks, and a black material, which might have been silver, has been
applied over the gilded clasps and bosses.
1920s.[2]
TECHNICAL NOTES
array PtSi camera.
1:433.
PROVENANCE



Zehnder, 2 vols., Cologne, 1995-1998: 1(1995): 303314. [2] Without quoting their
EXHIBITION HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

London, 1864-1866: 2(1864):105.



New York, 1897: 148.
1914: 3(1908):76, 76-77 n. 5.
1907-1950: 31(1937):67.
ed. New York, 1909: 202.
Paris, 1928: no. XIX, repro.
534.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):258 n.
1:no. 77, repro.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 17, repro., as by Simone
Martini and Assistants.


75.
Assistants.
Assistants.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 451, 646, 665.
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13.
Assistants.
Paris, 1978: 19.
1979 De Benedictis, Cristina. La pittura senese 1330-1370. Florence, 1979: 93
(as James Minor)



Arts 7 (1987): 83-84, repro.
1991-2002: 7(1996):732.
42.
1998: 552, repro.
(Milan), 1999: 156 n. 24, 179.


Simone Martini
Saint Matthew
c. 1315/1320
tempera on panel
overall: 30.8 x 23.2 cm (12 1/8 x 9 1/8 in.)
framed: 44.4 x 60 cm (17 1/2 x 23 5/8 in.)
Inscription: on the left side of the Saint: .SCS.; on the right side of the Saint:
MAThEVs.
ENTRY
This panel and its three companions at the GallerySaint Simon, Saint James
Major, and Saint Judas Thaddeustogether with six other busts of apostles [fig.
1] [fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8] [fig. 9] [fig. 10],[1] originally formed
part of a polyptych. The ten panels, acquired as a group by Johann Anton
Ramboux in the early nineteenth century, remained together until the 1920s, when
they were deaccessioned by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and
dispersed.
Saint Matthew 1392



signed and dated [14] by Lippo in the years between c. 1323 and 1333, the insertion
Saint Matthew 1393



as if backlit.
Saint Matthew 1394



13191320.
Saint Matthew 1395


COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Saint Matthew 1396



Saint Matthew 1397


Saint Matthew 1398



Saint Matthew 1399



Saint Matthew 1400




Griggs, 1943
Saint Matthew 1401


Saint Matthew 1402



Griggs, 1943
NOTES
Saint Matthew 1403



116117; Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,
Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19; Michel Laclotte, in
Retables italiens du XIIIe au XVe sicle, ed. Claude Ressort, Sylvia Beguin,
and Michel Laclotte (Paris, 1978), 19; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the
Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:332, 333 n. 7; Andrew
Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 35 n. 18; Cristina De Benedictis,
Lippo Memmi in Encyclopedia dellarte medievale, Rome, 1996, 7:732. De
Benedictis (1974) initially argued, as Federico Zeri (1980) did, that they
belonged instead to the upper register of a polyptych. Gertrude Coor (1956)
thought that both solutions were possible, as did Sabina Spannocchi (2009).
See Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco,
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E.
Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue
of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 95;
Gertrude Coor, TrecentoGemlde aus der Sammlung Ramboux, Wallraf
RichartzJahrbuch 18 (1956): 118; and Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione
Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:135.
Saint Matthew 1404




of the apostles, cf. Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone Martini
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999), 155157. Different again is the sequence of
apostles adopted by Giotto in the Last Judgment of the Scrovegni Chapel in
Saint Matthew 1405


Padua, and in the Stefaneschi polyptych in the Pinacoteca Vaticana; cf.

Margrit Lisner, Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in Giottos Arenafresken:
Farbgebung und Farbikonographie mit Notizen zu lteren
Aposteldarstellungen in Florenz, Assisi und Rom, Zeitschrift fr

116117.
young Lippo Vanni (Sienese, active 1344 - 1376); for his expertise, see Zeri
and Gardner 1980, 96) defined the image of Saint Matthew as at least in part
by Simone, but classified the other four panels of the series in the Lehman
collection as works of the artists shop. F. Mason Perkins (1937) thought the
Lehman panels in large part executed by Simones assistants. The
participation of the artists assistants was also detected in the paintings by
Saint Matthew 1406


Gertrude Coor (1956), in Exposition de la collection Lehman 1957, by Fern

Rusk Shapley (1966), by Joseph Polzer (1971), by Burton B. Fredericksen and
Zeri (1972), by Zeri and Gardner (1980), by Giovanni Previtali (1987), by
Mojmir S. Frinta (1998), by Hiltrud Kier and Frank Gnter Zehnder (1998), and
by Alessandro Bagnoli (1999). Even the recent catalog entry by Sabina
Spannocchi (in Bellosi 2009), although citing the series of apostles under
Simones name, considered it executed in part by assistants under the
surveillance of the master. See Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the
Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of
Places (Oxford, 1932), 534; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del
rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice
dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 459; Bernard Berenson, Italian
vols. (London, 1968), 1:404; F. Mason Perkins, Simone di Martino (Simone
Martini), in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Knstler von der Antike bis
zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols.
de la Collection Lehman de New York (Paris, 1957), 43; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Century (London, 1966), 4849; Joseph Polzer, Observations on Known
Paintings and a New Altarpiece by Francesco Traini, Pantheon 29 (1971):
386; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-
MA, 1972), 122; Federico Zeri, in Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central
Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, ed. Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner (New York, 1980), 95;
(1987): 8384; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late
Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 118, 189, 205, 311,
321, 400, 444, 453; Hiltrud Kier and Frank Gnter Zehnder, ed., Lust und
Verlust, vol. 2, CorpusBand zu Klner Gemldesammlungen 18001860
(Cologne, 1998), 551552; Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maest di Simone Martini
(Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999) 156 n. 24, 179; and Sabina Spannocchi, in La
ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:132141.
Memmi, without offering any alternative attribution. See Lionello Venturi,
Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), nos. 6061; Lionello Venturi, Italian
Saint Matthew 1407



3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: nos. 7677; Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento,
Storia dellarte classica e italiana 3; Storia dellarte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951),
551 n. 75; Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in Lopera completa di Simone Martini, ed.
Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 105 n. 53;
Cristina De Benedictis, A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco, Antichit
viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Cristina De Benedictis, La pittura senese
13301370 (Florence, 1979), 93; Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi, in
Enciclopedia dellarte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; Michael
Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered, Metropolitan
Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201, n. 19; Michel Laclotte, in Retables italiens du
XIIIe au XVe sicle, ed. Claude Ressort, Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte
(Paris, 1978), 19; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 35 n. 18;
cautiously (De Benedictis 1996), after 1323, the presumable date of the
Triumph of Saint Thomas in San Domenico at Pisa. Michael Mallory (1974)
dated the series c. 1330; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth Gardner (1980), to the
period between c. 1320 and 1333. Sabina Spannocchi (2009) suggested the
date of execution as c. 1317. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the
4849; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols.
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:332, 333 n. 7; Giovanni Previtali, Problems in the
Workshop of Simone Martini, Center/National Gallery of Art, Center for
Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 8384; Cristina De Benedictis,
A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco, Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10
n. 13; Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi, in Enciclopedia dellarte
medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by
Lippo Memmi Reconsidered, Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201
n. 19; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and
Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 95; Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione
Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:139.
Saint Matthew 1408


Saint Matthew 1409



medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; and Pierluigi Leone De Castris,
Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 176177. The Madonna and Child in the
Lindenaum-Museum in Altenburg is usually dated slightly later; see Joseph
Polzer, Symon Martini et Lippus Memmi me pinxerunt, in Simone Martini:
Atti del convegno; Siena, March 2729, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence,
1988), 168; De Benedictis (1996, 7:732); Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone
Martini (Milan, 2003), 217 n. 41; and Johannes Tripps, in Maestri senesi e
toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, ed. Mikls Boskovits and
Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 49. For the diptych divided between the
Gemldegalerie in Berlin and a private collection that bears the date 1333,
see Millard Meiss, Notes on a Dated Diptych by Lippo Memmi, in Scritti di
storia dellarte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupr Dal
Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, 2 vols. (Milan, 1977), 1:137139; Mikls
der Gemlde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 76.
Saint Matthew 1410


barba di San Francesco: Nuove proposte per il problema di Assisi,
Prospettiva 22 (1980): 1314; and Carlo Volpe, in Il Gotico a Siena: Miniature,
pitture, oreficerie, oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 179. A similar dating is
proposed for the polyptych formerly in SantAgostino at San Gimignano; cf.
Cristina De Benedictis, Pittura e miniatura del Duecento e del Trecento in
terra di Siena, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:337339; Andrew Martindale, Simone
Martini (Oxford, 1988), 200202 n. 23; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone
Martini (Milan, 2003), 349. The polyptych now divided between the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (no. 41.100.23, Lehman Collection,
no. 1975.1. 12 and 13), the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, and the J.
Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (no. 82.PB.72) is usually dated to the
1320s, but the present writer prefers an earlier dating, towards the mid-
1310s; cf. Mikls Boskovits, Da Duccio a Simone Martini, in Medioevo: La
chiesa e il palazzo; Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma,
September 2024, 2005, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2007), 577.
[19] Michael Mallory, An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,

Saint Matthew 1411


428.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting and its three companions, Saint Simon, Saint James Major, and Saint
Judas Thaddeus, were executed on panels apparently made of a single piece of
wood with horizontal grain, which has been thinned to 2.5 cm thick, backed, and
cradled. Stephen Pichetto applied the backings and cradles in 1944, at which time
he may also have thinned the panels and added the wooden strips that are
currently affixed to all sides of each. The inner molding of the arch as well as the
capitals and bases of the engaged frame surrounding the painted surface of each
panel are original. Before the painting process, the panels were covered with a
fabric interleaf, on which a layer of gesso ground was applied. The areas to be
Saint Matthew 1412


1920s.[2]
TECHNICAL NOTES
array PtSi camera.
been removed. For the intervention in 1944, see Fern Rusk Shapley,
PROVENANCE

Saint Matthew 1413


EXHIBITION HISTORY

New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 239.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

London, 1864-1866: 2(1864):105.
Saint Matthew 1414



New York, 1897: 148.
1914: 3(1908):76, 76-77 n. 5.
1907-1950: 31(1937):67.
ed. New York, 1909: 202.
Paris, 1928: no. XXIII, repro.
534.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):258 n.
1:no. 76, repro.
Worlds Fair, New York, 1939: 116-117, no. 239.
Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 17, repro., as by Simone
Martini and Assistants.
75.
Saint Matthew 1415



Assistants.
Assistants.
1971 Polzer, Joseph. "Observations on Known Paintings and a New Altarpiece
by Francesco Traini." Pantheon 29 (1971): 386.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 432, 646, 665.
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8 (repro.), 10 n. 13.
Assistants.
Paris, 1978: 19.
Saint Matthew 1416



Arts 7 (1987): 83-84.
1991-2002: 7(1996):735.
42.
1998: 551, repro.
(Milan), 1999: 156 n. 24, 179.
Saint Matthew 1417


Simone Martini
Saint Simon
c. 1315/1320
tempera on panel
overall: 30.7 x 23.5 cm (12 1/16 x 9 1/4 in.)
framed: 44.4 x 60 cm (17 1/2 x 23 5/8 in.)
Inscription: on the left side of the Saint: SAN[C]TUS; on the right side of the Saint:
SYMON
ENTRY
This panel and its three companions at the GallerySaint Matthew, Saint James
Major, and Saint Judas Thaddeustogether with six other busts of apostles [fig.
1] [fig. 2] [fig. 3] [fig. 4] [fig. 5] [fig. 6] [fig. 7] [fig. 8] [fig. 9] [fig. 10],[1] originally formed
part of a polyptych. The ten panels, acquired as a group by Johann Anton
Ramboux in the early nineteenth century, remained together until the 1920s, when
they were deaccessioned by the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and
dispersed.
Saint Simon 1418



signed and dated [14] by Lippo in the years between c. 1323 and 1333, the insertion
Saint Simon 1419



as if backlit.
Saint Simon 1420



13191320.
Saint Simon 1421


COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Saint Simon 1422



Saint Simon 1423


Saint Simon 1424



Saint Simon 1425



Saint Simon 1426




Griggs, 1943
Saint Simon 1427


Saint Simon 1428



Griggs, 1943
NOTES
Saint Simon 1429



Saint Simon 1430




Saint Simon 1431




116117.
Saint Simon 1432



2009), 1:132141.
Saint Simon 1433



(Florence, 2009), 1:139.
Saint Simon 1434


Saint Simon 1435




Saint Simon 1436


Saint Simon 1437



428.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This painting and its three companions, Saint Matthew, Saint James Major, and
Saint Judas Thaddeus, were executed on panels apparently made of a single
piece of wood with horizontal grain, which has been thinned to 2.5 cm thick,
backed, and cradled. Stephen Pichetto applied the backings and cradles in 1944, at
which time he may also have thinned the panels and added the wooden strips that
are currently affixed to all sides of each. The inner molding of the arch as well as
the capitals and bases of the engaged frame surrounding the painted surface of
each panel are original. Before the painting process, the panels were covered with
a fabric interleaf, on which a layer of gesso ground was applied. The areas to be
Saint Simon 1438


1920s.[2]
TECHNICAL NOTES
array PtSi camera.
1:433.
PROVENANCE

Saint Simon 1439


EXHIBITION HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

London, 1864-1866: 2(1864):105.
Saint Simon 1440



New York, 1897: 148.
1914: 3(1908):76, 76-77 n. 5.
1907-1950: 31(1937):67.
ed. New York, 1909: 202.
Paris, 1928: no. XX, repro.
534.
and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):258 n.
1:no. 76, repro.
75.
Saint Simon 1441



Assistants.
Assistants.
Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 122, 450, 646, 665.
Antichit viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8 (repro.), 10 n. 13.
Assistants.
Paris, 1978: 19.
Saint Simon 1442


Arts 7 (1987): 83-84.
1991-2002: 7(1996):732.
42.
1998: 551, repro.
(Milan), 1999: 156 n. 24, 179.
Saint Simon 1443


Tuscan 13th Century

BIOGRAPHY
Unsigned works of art, especially those that are hundreds of years old, are difficult
to assign to a particular artist. Works attributed to Tuscan 13th Century are
characterized by stylistic elements common in Tuscany during the 13th century.
Tuscan 13th Century 1444


Tuscan 13th Century

Saint John the Baptist,
Saint Peter, and Two
Angels
c. 1290
tempera on panel
painted surface (original panel including painted frame): 34.3 24.7 cm (13 1/2 9
3/4 in.)
overall (including added wooden strips): 36 26 cm (14 3/16 10 1/4 in.)
Inscription: on the scroll held by Saint John the Baptist: E[C]CE / AGNU[S] /
DEI:[ECCE] / [Q]UI [TOLLIT PECCATUM MUNDI] (from John 1:29)
ENTRY
The enthroned Madonna supports her son, seated on her left knee, with both
hands. The child, in a frontal position, blesses with his right hand, holding a roll of
parchment in his left. The composition is a variant of the type of the Hodegetria
Virgin; in the present case, she does not point towards her son, as in the
Byzantine prototype, but instead presents him to the spectator.[1] Her affectionate
maternal pose is thus given precedence over her more ritual and impersonal role.
But Marys pose perhaps has another sense: she seems to be rearranging her
sons small legs to conform them to the cross-legged position considered suitable
for judges and sovereigns in the Middle Ages.[2]
The panel is painted in a rapid, even cursory manner. The artist omits the form of
the thrones backrest, which remains hidden by the cloth of honor, supported by
angels and decorated with bold motifs of popular taste (an interlocking pattern of
quatrefoils and octagons). He designs the form of the throne itself in an
incongruous manner, apparently semicircular at the seat and rectangular at the
base. According to a convention widespread in Tuscany in the second half of the
thirteenth century, the painter presents the seat of the Madonna as if it were seen
Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Saint Peter, and Two Angels 1445

not frontally but from the left.[3] This is suggested not only by the position of the
step but also by the fact that while the figure of the Baptist is seen in its entirety,
that of Saint Peter to the right is partially hidden by the throne. That the patron
must have been a person of modest means is suggested both by the cursory
execution and by the eschewal of gilding on the frame; instead, the artist adopts
the unusual expedient of painting it red and decorating it with a frieze of daisies.[4]
Carlo Lasinios attribution of the painting to Cimabue, accepted in the sale catalog
of 1835, remained ignored in the art historical literature until the panel reappeared
at Patterdale Hall in the Lake District in 1934, and even then it did not meet with
approval.[5] Following the panels purchase by the Florentine dealer and collector
Alessandro Contini-Bonacossi, however, several connoisseurs of late medieval
Italian art concurred with the Cimabuesque authorship of the work in their
correspondence with its then owner.[6] Roberto Longhi, on publishing the painting
in 1948, confirmed this view, dedicating a brief but penetrating comment to the
painting; in his opinion the image was a product of Cimabues first period of
residence in Pisa.[7] Luigi Coletti, in 1941, took a different view and argued that the
panel was better placed in the circle of the Magdalen Master.[8] Subsequently,
once the Madonna had entered the Kress Collection in 1948, the attribution to
Cimabue would continue to be supported,[9] but most scholars preferred to leave
it in anonymity or ascribed it to Cimabues shop.[10] The present writer (1976)
tentatively associated the panel with the group of paintings that he had gathered
around the name of Gaddo Gaddi,[11] and Luciano Bellosi (1998) suggested an
attribution to the Florentine Azzo di Mazzetto;[12] no certain works by either of
these painters have come down to us. It is worth pointing out, in this regard, that
documents record a painter by the name of Azzo who worked for the comune of
San Gimignano in the years between 1288 and 1293 and who painted cameram
novi palatii comunis (the room of the new municipal palace) in that town in 1291.[13]
The subject of his paintings is not recorded, but it seems plausible to link his name
with the frescoes in the Palazzo del Popolo that commemorate the privileges
granted to San Gimignano by Charles of Anjou and bear an inscription with the
date 1292. The massive, fleshy figures in these frescoes, often hesitant in
movement, only vaguely recall the style of the delicate little panel in the National
Gallery of Art.[14]
The attribution of the work to Gaddo Gaddi was based on a tradition handed down
by Vasari, according to whom this master was responsible for the mosaic of the
Coronation of the Virgin on the inner faade of the cathedral of Santa Maria del

Fiore in Florence. The authenticity of this tradition was accepted down to recent
times, until art historians gradually began to perceive that the figurative style of the
mosaic appears not to have been that of an artist of the generation of Giotto
(Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337), as Gaddo Gaddi would have been, according to the
evidence of documents, but that of a somewhat older master. In recent times, in
fact, the identification of Gaddo with the Giottesque Master of Saint Cecilia has
been proposed, while the Coronation of the Virgin on the inner faade of the
Duomo has been either cited with the traditional attribution or attributed to
Francesco Pisano, an artist belonging to Cimabues generation, or given to the so-
called Penultimate Master of the mosaics in the baptistery in Florence.
Some of the paintings formerly associated with the name of Gaddo still seem to me
stylistically homogeneous, even if not easy to refer to a particular artist. It is with
this group of works that the panel now in Washington should, I believe, be most
profitably compared. The agile, nervous figures, with their jerky movements,
flashing eyes, and beaklike noses, which Longhi described so brilliantly, invite
comparison both with the figures painted in the portable cross in the Fogg
Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with those in the large painted crucifix
in Santo Stefano a Paterno in Florence.[15] In this latter painting, in particular, the
grieving Madonna [fig. 1] recalls the protagonist of the painting in the Gallery [fig. 2],
while the severe and ascetic blessing Christ in the cimasa is comparable to the
Baptist in the panel in Washington, bearing in mind, of course, the differences in
pictorial technique deriving from their very different dimensions. Drapery forms in
these paintings, enlivened by sudden darting highlights and furrowed by sharp,
deeply undercut folds so that they seem made of twisted sheet metal instead of
fabric, also compare closely. A further observation may be made about the
presence of the rare frieze of daisies on the hem of the Madonnas cloak in a
painting now in the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio (inv. no. 1945.9).
Generally referred to an anonymous follower of Duccio or of Cimabue, recently
(Boskovits 2007) it was attributed to the Master of the Cortona-Loeser
Crucifixes.[16] That artists use of the same motif decorating the frame of the
Washington Madonna suggests that he too belonged to the ambience of the
painter of our panel. Unfortunately, the comparisons listed here do not help us to
establish the date of the Gallery's panel, but they do, more generally, permit its
insertion into the context of Florentine painting at the close of the thirteenth
century.[17]

The Pisan provenance of the panel, small and easily transportable, does not imply
that it was executed in that city. The master who painted it must have been trained
under the influence of Cimabue, and probably at the time of his fresco decoration
of the upper church of San Francesco in Assisi. In particular some figures of angels
that populate the right transept of that church, with their tense, frowning faces and
ruffled garments, suggest that the execution of the panel in the National Gallery of
Art should be placed around 1290.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Detail of Mourning Madonna, Penultimate Master of

the Baptistery, Painted Crucifix, 12801290, tempera on
panel, Church of Santo Stefano a Paterno, Bagno a Ripoli,
Florence. Edizioni Brogi photograph, National Gallery of fig. 2 Detail of Madonna, Tuscan thirteenth century,
Art, George Martin Richter Archive, vol. 3, folder 3, sheet Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Saint
17 Peter, and Two Angels, c. 1290, tempera on panel,
Collection
NOTES
[1] Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval, Liconografia della Madonna col bambino nella

pittura italiana del Dugento (Siena, 1934), 4548, classified this subtype as
the seconda modificazione del tipo Odigitria (second modification of the
Hodegetria type). On the iconography of the Hodegetria (a term translatable
as indicator of the way), cf. the exhaustive treatment by Gregor Martin
Lechner, Maria, in Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst, ed. Klaus Wessel,
7 vols. (Stuttgart, 2005), 6:5871. The variants of the protagonists poses in
this iconographic type are understood as attempts to augment the realistic
effect of the image, i.e., expressions of vivacity and of the affection between
mother and child.

[2] That, at any rate, is how I think Marys gesture should be interpreted. On the
significance of the pose of crossed legs in medieval iconography, cf. Johan
Jakob Tikkanen, Die Beinstellungen in der Kunstgeschichte: Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der knstlerischen Motive (Helsingfors, 1912), 153, while Franois
Garnier, Le langage de limage au Moyen Age, vol. 2, Grammaire des
gestes (Paris, 1989), 158159, added that cette attitude est par
excellence celle des personagges qui remplit les fonctions du Juge (this is
a pose par excellence of people who perform the duties of a judge).
[3] In a study on the types of thrones in thirteenth-century paintings, James

Stubblebine (19541957) distinguished four types, of which the third,
exemplified by such works as Guido da Sienas Maest in San Domenico in
Siena and Duccios Madonna Rucellai, commissioned in 1285 and now in
the Uffizi, Florence, is a structure conceived as a three-dimensional block
and represented so that the front and back are parallel to the picture plane,
while the sides run diagonally. This typology common to paintings dating to
the last quarter of the Duecento naturally implies some indication of the
chronological position of the panel discussed here. See James H.
Stubblebine, The Development of the Throne in Dugento Tuscan Painting,
Marsyas 7 (19541957): 2539.
[4] It seems to me that the flowers cursorily painted on the frame can be
identified as daisies or marguerites (leucanthemum vulgare), symbols,
according to Mirella Levi DAncona, of the blessed souls in heaven as well
as of the incarnation of Christ. See Mirella Levi DAncona, The Garden of
the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence, 1977),
124126. The decoration of the frame discussed here vaguely recalls that of
the panel with Saint Catherine and stories of her legend, no. 1583 in the
Museo Nazionale in Pisa; cf. Lorenzo Carletti, in Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura
pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi and
Antonino Caleca (Pisa, 2005), 193.
[5] In the 1934 sale, the painting was classified as Italian school. Byam Shaw,
in his 1963 letter (see Provenance note 4), noted that the inscription on the
label affixed to the back of the panel confirmed Lasinios ascription to
Cimabue, adding, not the highest quality, but undoubtedly a genuine Pisan
work of the time.
[6] Copies of the expertises by Roberto Longhi, Evelyn Sandberg-Vaval,

Wilhelm Suida, Raimond van Marle, and Adolfo Venturi are preserved in the
NGA curatorial files: they were unanimous in confirming the authorship of
Cimabue for the painting. Of these experts, only Longhi provided a
chronological indication, maintaining that the panel must antedate
Cimabues Madonna (no. 8343) now in the Uffizi, Florence.
[7] La Madonna come un falchetto inciprignito, Roberto Longhi wrote in 1948,

il Bambino con aria di censore prepotente...gli angeli che impugnano,

quasi manovelle di timone, le cocche del drappo...i due santi collerici...che

sbuffano ai lati del trono. In un tema puramente sacramentale ce n
abbastanza per alludere ai drammi imminenti del transetto di Assisi (The
Madonna like an irritated bird of prey, the child with the air of an
overbearing censor, the angels who grab the corners of the cloth like the
handle of a boats tiller, the two irascible saints snorting at the sides of the
throne. In a purely sacramental theme there is enough to foreshadow the
imminent drama of the transept at Assisi). Longhi referred, of course, to the
frescoes in the upper church of San Francesco in Assisi, which he dated to
the years between the end of the eighth and the first half of the ninth
decade of the thirteenth century. See Roberto Longhi, Giudizio sul
Duecento, Proporzioni 2 (1948): 16.
[8] Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 3334.
[9] Supporting Cimabues authorship were Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca,
Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951), 1:672; Ferdinando
Bologna, Un capolavoro giovanile di Duccio, Paragone 11, no. 125 (1960):
910, who proposed its execution before 1280; Luiz Marques, La peinture
du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 282, who thought that the panel
was painted c. 12701275; Adam S. Labuda, in Opus sacrum: Catalogue of
the Exhibition from the Collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, ed. Jzef
Grabski (Vienna, 1990), 30; Nicholas H. J. Hall, ed., Colnaghi in America: A
Survey to Commemorate the First Decade of Colnaghi, New York (New
York, 1992), 134; and Enzo Carli, La pittura a Pisa dalle origini alla Bella
Maniera (Pisa, 1994), 23, who placed its execution after the Maest in the
Louvre, Paris, a work that, like the Washington Madonna, also comes from
the church of San Francesco in Pisa.
[10] The painting was classified as attributed to Cimabue in National Gallery of

Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection (Washington, DC,
1956), 5051; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European
Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 28; Fern Rusk Shapley,
Century (London, 1966), 56; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian
Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:133134; Dorothy Lygon and
Russell Francis, Tuscan Primitives in London Sales: 18011837, The
Burlington Magazine 122 (1980): 113, 116; and National Gallery of Art,
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 89.
Scholars who doubted the attribution, although without formulating any
alternative proposals, include Sergio Samek Ludovici, Cimabue (Milan,
1956), 24, 32; Roberto Salvini, Cimabue, in Enciclopedia Universale
dellArte, ed. Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 15 vols. (Florence,
19581967), 3 (1960): 472; Mikls Boskovits, Cenni di Pepe (Pepo), detto
Cimabue, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1979), 23: 542; and
Angelo Tartuferi, Un libro e alcune considerazioni sulla pittura del

Duecento in Italia centrale, Arte cristiana 76 (1988): 434, 440 n. 26. Those
who believed that it was produced in the artists workshop or by his
immediate following include John Pope-Hennessy, Review of Proporzioni ii
by Roberto Longhi, The Burlington Magazine 90 (1948): 360; Bernard
Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols.
(London, 1963), 1:50; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of
Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public
Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 54. The painting was defined as the
work of an anonymous late thirteenth-century Florentine master by Edward
B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index
(Florence, 1949), 18, 100; Cesare Brandi, Duccio (Florence, 1951), 135 n. 13;
Carlo Volpe, Preistoria di Duccio, Paragone 5, no. 49 (1954): 18; Carlo
Ludovico Ragghianti, Pittura del Dugento a Firenze (Florence, 1955), 124,
pregiottesco (Milan, 1975), 117, 118; and Angelo Tartuferi, Pittura fiorentina
del Duecento, in La Pittura in Italia: Le origini, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo
(Milan, 1985), 236, 240 n. 43. Roberto Salvini, Postilla a Cimabue, Rivista
darte 26 (1950): 54; and Enzo Carli, Pittura medievale pisana (Milan, 1958),
64, thought it the work of an anonymous Pisan master. Also, Jens T.
Wollesen, Hasten to My Aid and Counsel: The Answers of the Pictures;
Private Devotional Panel Painting in Italy around 1300 (New York, 2005),
8788, 182183, classified is as Cimabuesque, of c. 12501300.
[11] Mikls Boskovits, Cimabue e i precursori di Giotto: Affreschi, mosaici e

tavole (Florence, 1976), n.p. [9], no. 22, pointed out that the style of the
Gallery's panel was close to that of the group of works he himself had
referred to Gaddo Gaddi. His reconstruction of Gaddos oeuvre consisted of
the fragmentary Madonna in the church of San Remigio in Florence; the
crucifix no. 1345 in the Galleria dellAccademia in Florence; another painted
crucifix in the church of Santo Stefano a Paterno (Bagno a Ripoli, Florence);
and a small portable cross in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge,
Massachusetts (no. 1929.250), in addition to the mosaic of the Coronation of
the Virgin on the inner faade of the Duomo in Florence. Vasari cited the
latter as a work by Gaddo Gaddi in his vita of that master, together with part
of the mosaic on the faade of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (in general
ascribed by the art historical literature to Filippo Rusuti); the mosaic
Assumption in the apse of the transept of Pisa Cathedral, in actual fact
executed on the basis of a design by Simone Martini (Sienese, active from
1315; died 1344); and some other works, which today appear stylistically
incongruous or are lost. See Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei pi eccellenti pittori,
scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence, 18781885),
1(1878):346347. In more recent times, Marco Ciatti and Cecelia Frosinini
(1993) and Ada Labriola (1998) cited the panel now in the National Gallery of
Art as a work by Gaddi. Cf. Marco Ciatti and Cecilia Frosinini, ed., La
Madonna di San Giorgio alla Costa di Giotto: Studi e restauro, Problemi di

conservazione e restauro (Florence, 1995), 36; Ada Labriola, Gaddi,

Gaddo, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1998), 51:155.
[12] Accepting Alessandro Bagnolis suggestion, Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed.

Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 267, thought that the master of the
frescoes of the Sala di Dante in the Palazzo Pubblico of San Gimignano
might be identified with Azzo di Mazzetto, an artist documented in Florence
in 1282. He attributed to the same hand a painted crucifix in the Museo
Civico in San Gimignano and the present panel of the National Gallery of
Art. Silvia Giorgi accepted this proposal in Azzo di Mazzetto, in La pittura
in Europa: Il dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002),
1:39, and it was cited without comment by Ada Labriola, Lo stato degli studi
su Cimabue e un libro recente, Arte cristiana 88 (2000): 344; and Sonia
Chiodo, Attorno a un dipinto inedito di Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Arte cristiana
91 (2003): 16.
[13] Cf. Pio Rajna, Pittura e pittori a San Gimignano intorno allanno 1300,
Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa 18 (1920): 113.
[14] Antonino Caleca (1986) placed in doubt Vasaris claim that Gaddo was the
master of the mosaic of the Coronation in the Florentine Duomo. He argues
that the execution of the mosaic should be given instead to Francesco da
Pisa, documented author of the Christ in Majesty in the apse of Pisa
Cathedral. See Antonio Caleca, Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento a Pisa
e a Lucca, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:243; and Antonio Caleca, Francesco da
Pisa, in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico
Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:570. For my part, ever since 1984, I
have observed that the Coronation of the Virgin reveals features a good
deal more archaic than the most advanced artistic tendencies in Florence at
the close of thirteenth century and have conjectured that the work originally
was intended for a site other than Arnolfo di Cambios Duomo. Mikls
Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence,
1984), 1819 n. 31. Later (1993), I expressed my readiness to accept the
proposal of Monica Bietti (1983), who identified with Gaddo Gaddi the artist
whose oeuvre had been reconstructed under the conventional name of the
Master of Saint Cecilia. See Mikls Boskovits, A Critical and Historical
Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 1819 n. 31; Mikls Boskovits, A
Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The
Origins of Florentine Painting, 11001270 (Florence, 1993), 143 n. 314;
Monica Bietti, Gaddo Gaddi: unipotesi, Arte cristiana 71 (1983): 4952. For
their part, Annamaria Giusti (1994) and Luciano Bellosi (1998) accepted, at
least as a working hypothesis, Gaddos authorship of the Coronation mosaic
but denied that the mosaicist had any hand in the panel paintings attributed

to him; cf. Annamaria Giusti, I mosaici dei coretti, dei parapetti del
matroneo, e del tamburo della cupola, in Il Battistero di San Giovanni a
Firenze, ed. Antonio Paolucci, 2 vols. (Modena, 1994), 1:325, 327 et passim;
Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 129, 137.
For a discussion of the Gaddo = St. Cecilia Master hypothesis, see Mikls
Boskovits, Un nome per il maestro del Trittico Horne, Saggi e memorie di
storia dellarte 27 (2003): 5770. The attribution to Francesco Pisano has
been reproposed in recent times by Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino
Caleca, Pittura a Pisa da Giunto a Giotto, in Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura
pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto, ed. Mariagiulia Burresi and
Antonino Caleca (Pisa, 2005), 8284, whereas the present writer gives the
Coronation to the author of part of the mosaics of the dome of the
baptistery, called the Penultimate Master, in Mikls Boskovits, A Critical
and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 2, The Mosaics of
the Baptistery of Florence (Florence, 2007), 591594.
[15] Roberto Longhi, Giudizio sul Duecento, Proporzioni 2 (1948): 16.
[16] Mikls Boskovits, Da Duccio a Simone Martini, in Medioevo: La chiesa e il

palazzo; Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, September
2024, 2005, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2007), 566569.
[17] For a broad discussion of the chronology of this decorative enterprise, cf.
Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 162182,
278281.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
The support consists of a single wooden panel with vertical grain, which was
thinned and cradled in 1948. The frame was carved in one with the panel and
remains intact. Possible evidence of hinges on both sides is visible in the x-
radiograph, indicating that the panel may have been the center of a triptych. The
panel was prepared with a white gesso ground. Green underpaint was used under
the flesh tones, and the gold leaf was laid over a reddish orange bole. The halos
are decorated with incised foliate ornament. Paint and gold leaf losses are
scattered throughout the painted surface; some flaking damage in the gold leaf
has remained unretouched. Mauro Pelliccioli restored the painting, probably by the
mid-1930s, and Stephen Pichetto treated it again in 1948.[1] Inpainted passages are
especially evident in the cloth of honor and in the Virgins cloak, as well as in the
left side of the right-hand angels face, the left side of Saint Peters face, and the
childs hair. The figures eyes and mouths have been reinforced. Inpainting also is

evident in the frame, especially in the lower left and upper right corners.
TECHNICAL NOTES
(Washington, DC, 1979), 1:133134 n. 7. Several layers of inpainting are
visible under ultraviolet light. Pellicciolis restoration followed the acquisition
of the panel by Contini-Bonacossi. Presumably, Pichetto did not remove
Pellicciolis inpainting before adding his own in 1948.
PROVENANCE
Church of San Francesco, Pisa; Carlo Lasinio [1759-1838], Pisa;[1] possibly Francis
Douce [1757-1834], London, by 1829;[2] Mrs. Fanshaw; (sale, Christie & Manson,
London, 21 March 1835, no. 80).[3] (country sale, Patterdale Hall, Ullswater, near
Penrith, Cumbria, 8 August 1934); (P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London); sold 8 April
1935 to (Gualtiero Volterra, Florence);[4] (Count Alessandro Contini-Bonaccossi,
Florence), by 1935; sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift
1952 to NGA. [1] Wilhelm Suida (letter dated August 1935; copy in NGA curatorial
files) and Roberti Longhi (Giudizio sul Duecento, Proporzioni 2 [1948]: 16) could
still read Lasinios inscription on the back of the panel, according to which the
painting came from the Sacristy of S. Francesco at Pisa [and] is Cimabues work.
This inscription must clearly have been in Italian and written on a paper label glued
onto the wood, as usually was the case with paintings subjected to Lasinios
expertise. It would also have been accompanied by the customary wax seal of the
Pisan collector and dealer; see the back of panels 40559 and 40560 in the
Pinacoteca Vaticana (Francesco Rossi, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana. Vol. 3:
Il Trecento. Umbria, Marche, Italia del Nord, Vatican City, 1994: figs. 105, 108) and
that of no. 174 in the Museo Amedeo Lia at La Spezia (Federico Zeri and Andrea De
Marchi, La Spezia. Museo Civico Amedeo Lia. Dipinti, Milan, 1997: fig. 376). The
label of the NGA painting was lost during its restoration in 1948 (typewritten note in
the NGA curatorial files); however the examination report of the NGA Painting
Conservation Department, 21 July 1988, states that xradiographs both before
and after the cradling show a dense circular area to the right of the Virgins head,
which may be a seal or stamp on the reverse of the panel. [2] Donata Levi ("Carlo
Lasinio, curator, collector and dealer," The Burlington Magazine 135 (1993): 133-148)

points out that in 1829 Lasinio offered Francis Douce a series of paintings,
illustrated with a sketch representing fourteen panels of Italian masters. The last of
these, reproduced at the bottom right of the sheet (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms
Douce d 57, fol. 84; fig. 86 in Levis article), is identified with the caption Madonna
di Cimabue / 1200, but unfortunately in this case Lasinio failed to provide any
sketch of the composition. Dillian Gordon (National Gallery Catalogues. The
Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, London, 2003: 32-36) has identified the panel
that Lasinio attributed to Cimabue, which together with the others was presumably
sold to Douce in 1830, with a small painting, a genuine work of Cimabue acquired
by the National Gallery in London (inv. 6583). Gordons proposal is, of course, a
hypothesis based on the small dimensions of the work and Lasinios attribution to
the Florentine artist. There is, however, no evidence that the London painting was
ever in Lasinios collection and, in any case, as the same scholar remarks, the
small label on the back ( 6.15.4) strongly suggests that it was acquired in
England. Thus, the alternative identification of Lasinio's "Cimabue" with the NGA
panel also may be hypothesized. [3] A Catalogue of a Valuable Collection of
Italian, French, Flemish Dutch and English PicturesThe Property of Charles John
West etc.. Lots 75-90 in this catalogue, indicated as the property of a Lady, were,
as the archives of Christies in London advised NGA systematic catalogue author
Mikls Boskovits, the paintings from the collection of Mrs. Fanshaw. Dorothy Lygon
and Francis Russell (Tuscan Primitives in London Sales: 1801 - 1837, The
Burlington Magazine 122 [1980]: 113) identify the woman as a Miss Fanshawe,
one of three sisters who lived in Berkeley Square and knew Thomas Hope [4]
In his letter of 16 May 1963 to John Walker (in NGA curatorial files), James Byam
Shaw states that Mayer, his former partner in the Colnaghi firm, had purchased the
painting at a country sale on 8 August 1934, and then he himself resold it on 8
April of the following year to Volterra the Italian dealer, clearly a reference to
Gualtiero Volterra, Contini-Bonaccossi's agent in London. [5] As was his habit,
Contini-Bonaccossi sought advice about the painting he had acquired by
consulting the most highly respected experts of Italian painting of the day. Of
these, Wilhelm Suida's and Giuseppe Fiocco's opinions (copies in NGA curatorial
files) are dated August 1935 and were written in Florence, where the painting
evidently was located at that time. The painting was eventually taken to New York
and is one of twenty-eight works listed in the purchase offer addressed to the
count by the Kress Foundation on 7 June 1948, and accepted by him on 11 July
1948 (copies in NGA curatorial files).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1941 Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 1(1941):33-34.

pls. 19-20.
Index. Florence, 1949: 18, 100 (no. 251 A), repro.
1950 Salvini, Roberto. "Postilla a Cimabue." Rivista darte 26 (1950): 54.
1951 Brandi, Cesare. Duccio. Florence, 1951: 135 n. 13.
3 vols. Milan, 1951: 1:672.
1954 Volpe, Carlo. "Preistoria di Duccio." Paragone 5, no. 49 (1954): 18.
1955: 124, 127, fig. 191.
Washington, 1956: 50, no. 16, repro., as by Cimabue.
1956 Samek Ludovici, Sergio. Cimabue. Milan, 1956: 24, 32, pls. 8-9.
3(1960):472.
Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 15, repro., as by Cimabue.
1960 Bologna, Ferdinando. "Un capolavoro giovanile di Duccio." Paragone 11,
no. 125 (1960): 9-10, 25 n. 7, 27 n. 16.
Rome, 1960+: 23(1979):542.
1963 Battisti, Eugenio. Cimabue. Milan, 1963: 109, fig. 35.
1966 Michener, James A. Four MiraclesAnd A Masterpiece. Readers
Digest 89 (November 1966): 164.


Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 54, 311, 410, 646, 665.
1975 Sindona, Enio. Lopera completa di Cimabue e il momento figurativo
pregiottesco. Milan, 1975: 117, 118, fig. 49.
1976 Boskovits, Mikls. Cimabue e i precursori di Giotto: affreschi, mosaici e
tavole. Florence, 1976: n.p. [9], no. 22.
of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: I:133-134; 2:pl. 93
1980 Lygon, Dorothy, and Russell Francis. "Tuscan Primitives in London Sales:
1801-1837." The Burlington Magazine 122 (1980): 113, 116.
1985 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Pittura fiorentina del Duecento." In La Pittura in Italia.
Le origini. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. Milan, 1985: 236, 240 n. 43.
1986 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Pittura fiorentina del Duecento." In La Pittura in Italia.
Il Duecento e il Trecento. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan,
1986: 1:278, 282 n. 41.
1987 Marques, Luiz. La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale. Paris, 1987: 5,
107, 135, 244 n. 173, 282, pl. C.
1988 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Un libro e alcune considerazioni sulla pittura del
Duecento in Italia centrale." Arte cristiana 76 (1988): 434, 440 n. 26.
1990 Grabski, Jzef, ed. Opus Sacrum: Catalogue of the Exhibition from the
Collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson. Exh. cat. Zamek Krlewski,
Warsaw, 1990. Vienna, 1990: 30.
49, 57 no. 56, fig. 180.
1992 Hall, Nicholas H. J., ed. Colnaghi in America: A Survey to Commemorate
the First Decade of Colnaghi, New York. New York, 1992: 134.
1992 Tartuferi, Angelo. "Cimabue." In Allgemeines Knstlerlexikon: Die
1993 Levi, Donata. "Carlo Lasinio, Curator, Collector and Dealer." The
1994 Carli, Enzo. La pittura a Pisa dalle origini alla Bella Maniera. Pisa, 1994:
23.
1995 Ciatti, Marco, and Cecilia Frosinini, eds. La Madonna di San Giorgio alla
Costa di Giotto: studi e restauro. Problemi di conservazione e restauro
3. Florence, 1995: 36.
1998: 163-164, 241 n. 41, 251, 267, 289.
1998 Labriola, Ada. "Gaddi, Gaddo." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani.


cristiana 88 (2000): 344.
2002 Giorgi, Silvia. "Azzo di Mazzetto." In La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario dei
dell'Accademia, Florence.1st ed. Florence, 2003: 227.
2004 Tartuferi, Angelo, and Mario Scalini, eds. Larte a Firenze nellet di
Dante (1250-1300). Exh. cat. Galleria dellAccademia, Florence, 2004:
116.
2005 Wollesen, Jens T. Hasten to My Aid and Counsel: The Answers of the
Pictures. Private Devotional Panel Painting in Italy around 1300. New
York, 2005: 87-88, 182-183, 257 fig. 61.
2006 Flora, Holly. Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting. New York,
2006: 38 n. 89.
Cristofani. 2 vols. Edited by Benedetta Adembri. Florence, 2006: 2:915
n. 30.
Sec. I, Vol. II: The Mosaics of the Baptistery of Florence. Florence, 2007:
214 n. 174.
2012 Evans, Lisa. "Anomaly or Sole Survivor? The Impruneta Cushion and
Early Italian 'Patchwork'." Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8 (2012): 144-
152, fig. 7.5

Vanni, Andrea di
Also known as
Andrea di Vanni d'Andrea Salvani
Vanni, Andrea
Andrea di Vanni d'Andrea
Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413
BIOGRAPHY
A bureaucrat, as well as an artist, Andrea di Vanni was a prominent member of the

Riformatori, a political faction that ruled the city of Siena from 1368 to 1385. The
extent to which this painter was occupied with governmental affairs makes it
somewhat remarkable that he was able to accept and fulfill major artistic
commissions. Elected to the General Council in December 1357, Andrea must have
already reached the age of majority, suggesting that he was born in or around
Siena sometime in the early 1330s. His political career began in earnest amid the
interfactional strife that accompanied the arrival in Siena of Emperor Charles IV in
1368. During the violence that erupted on December 13 of that year, Andrea was
elected to represent his districts military company, the Spadaforte. Two weeks
later, on December 27, he was appointed chief magistrate to the newly formed
Council of the Riformatori and for the next three months Andreas presence is
recorded among the citys most important legislative councils, indicating that he
was closely involved in subsequent political developments. In addition to serving
on various committees, Andrea undertook lengthy diplomatic missions to Rome,
Naples, and the papal court at Avignon, he served as Castellano of the fortress of
Montalcino in 1369, and in 1379 he was appointed Capitano del Popolo (Captain of
the People), head of Sienas civic militia. It was during this time that Andrea is
believed to have befriended Saint Catherine of Siena, who wrote to the painter on
at least three occasions.[1] Andrea also belonged to the important religious
confraternity of Santa Maria Vergine and served as an advisor to the Opera del
Duomo, the cathedrals board of works.
The first artistic reference to Andrea dates from July 21, 1351, when he was paid for
decorating a pair of small chests (cofanetti) in the Palazzo Pubblico, seat of Sienas
communal government.[2] Two years later, on December 3, 1353, he entered into a
partnership with the local painter Bartolo di Fredi (c. 13301410) and together they
Vanni, Andrea di 1460


contracted to rent a workshop.[3] Andrea is also known to have collaborated with

his brothers Cristofano and Francesco, who were also painters, as well as with the
Florentine-trained artist, Antonio Veneziano (active 13691419), with whom he
executed paintings for the cathedral in 1370.[4] Andrea is noted as a registered
member of the Sienese painters guild (the Arte dei Pittori) in the list of artists
appended to the 1356 statutes and his name also appears in the successive lists of
1363, 1389, 1394, and 1402.[5]
Most of the documents concerning Andrea are unrelated to his artistic career and,
as a consequence, his stylistic development remains highly problematical.[6] The
artist traveled frequently within Sienese territory and is believed to have created
paintings in Naples and Sicily.[7] Of the surviving works that can be securely dated,
the majority were executed toward the end of the painters life, such as the
polyptych (1400) he created for the church of Santo Stefano alla Lizza in Siena.[8] It
is therefore difficult to determine a chronology for the artists activity. What is
certain, however, is that Andreas works reflect the lasting impact of Simone Martini
(Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) and the Lorenzetti brothers on Sienese art;
his paintings almost invariably echo a stylistic idiom developed over the previous
fifty years.[9] For example, the Madonna and Child in the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, and the Saint Paul from the SantEugenio polyptych now in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reveal close study of Simones rich textures and
figure types, combining a comparably delicate comportment with sharply
delineated contours. At the same time, the sculpturally conceived folds of the
Fitzwilliam Madonnas drapery and the sophisticated spatial organization and
circumstantial details of the triptych at the National Gallery of Art grant Andreas
work the plastic force and rationalized pictorial space of Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese,
active 1306 - 1345). Even Andreas latest works, such as the Santo Stefano
polyptych or the Crucifixion at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (inv. no. 114), are
clearly dependent on artistic models of the previous generation.[10] Such
conservatism might best be considered not as a deficiency but as a persistent
belief in what were regarded as the most authoritative representations of the
divine.[11]
Like many of his contemporaries, Andrea worked in diverse media and his oeuvre
includes large- and small-scale panel paintings, polyptychs, frescoes, sculpture,
manuscript illuminations, and ephemera such as heraldic standards.[12] Among the
many surviving works attributed to his hand, the triptych now in the National
Gallery of Art is agreed to be the most successful. More than any other work by the


artist, this painting displays the sophisticated use of gesture, brilliantly contrasted
colors, boldly silhouetted forms, and narrative clarity that represent the best of
Sienese Trecento painting.
[1] In these letters, Catherine urges Andrea to judge others as he would judge
himself and to treat all citizens equally. Saint Catherine, Le Lettere di S. Caterina di
Siena, ed. Piero Misciattelli, 6 vols. (Siena, 19131921), 5: nos. 358, 363, 366.
Andrea is often dubiously attributed with the earliest known painting of Saint
Catherine. The fresco is located in a chapel at the Sienese church of San
Domenico and depicts Catherine holding a lily with one hand as she reaches down
with the other to touch the lips of a kneeling penitent. Early in its history, this
portrait of Saint Catherine was accredited with miraculous agency. In a letter to
his mother from February 22, 1416, Fra Giovanni Dominici claimed to have been
cured of a speech impediment when he prayed beneath the image. See B.
Giovanni Dominici, Lettere spirituali, eds. Maria Teresa Casella and G. Pozzi
(Freiburg, 1969), 227 (espistola 55). The diary of Andreas friend, Cristofano Guidini,
records another early painting of Saint Catherine in the Chapel of Saint James
Intercisus at Siena Cathedral. This painting has also been attributed to Andrea. See
Ricordi di Cristofano Guidini, Archivio storico italiano 4, pt. 1 (1843): 39 n. 40.
[2] Ettore Romagnoli, Biografia cronologica de bellartisti senesi, 12001800:

opera manoscritta in tredici volume, 13 vols. (Florence, 1976), 3: 19.
[3] They were to rent the workshop, located near the church of Santa Maria della
Misericordia, for two years. See Scipione Borghesi and Luciano Banchi, Nuovi
documenti per la storia dellarte senese (Siena, 1898), 27.
[4] Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte senese, 3 vols. (Siena,
18541856), 1(1854): 305306.
[5] See Alberto Cornice, Andrea Vanni, in Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture,
oreficerie, ed oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 286. As Laurence B. Kanter has
noted, the list added to the 1356 statutes probably dates from sometime between
1378 and 1386. Laurence B. Kanter, in Timken Museum of Art, European Works of
Art, American Paintings and Russian Icons in the Putnam Foundation Collection
(San Diego, 1996), 28. See also Pia Palladino, Art and Devotion in Siena after 1350:
Lucca di Tomm and Niccol di Buonaccorso (San Diego, 1997), 74 n. 14.
[6] Cf. Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte senese, 3 vols. (Siena,
18541856), 1(1854): 264, 275, 294307, 385386; Raimond van Marle, The


Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the
14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 432451; George Harold Edgell, A History of
Sienese Painting (New York, 1932), 170174; John Pope-Hennessy, Notes on
Andrea Vanni, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 74, no. 431 (1939): 92,
97; John Pope-Hennessy, A Madonna by Andrea Vanni, The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs 83, no. 484 (1943): 174177; Enzo Carli, La pittura
senese (Milan, 1955), 154158; Federico Zeri, Appunti nellErmitage e nel Museo
Pushkin, Bollettino darte 46, no. 3 (1961): 223226.
[7] See Scipione Borghesi and Luciano Banchi, Nuovi documenti per la storia
dellarte senese (Siena, 1898), 5455; and Ferdinando Bologna, I pittori alla corte
angioina di Napoli, 12661414, e un riesame dellarte nellet fridericiana (Rome,
1969), 325326.
[8] This date relies on the testimony of the sixteenth-century historian Sigismondo
Tizio, which is recorded in Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte
senese, 3 vols. (Siena, 18541856), 1(1854): 306.
[9] Andrea is often considered a late follower of Simone Martini and is presumed to
have been a pupil of Simones brother-in-law, Lippo Memmi, although there is no
documentary evidence to support this claim. See George Harold Edgell, A History
of Sienese Painting (New York, 1932), 170; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the
Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 1:
441; Valerie Linda Wainwright, Andrea Vanni and Bartolo di Fredi: Sienese Painters
in their Social Context (PhD diss., University of London, University College), 1978,
114157; and Alberto Cornice, Andrea Vanni, in Il gotico a Siena: miniature,
pitture, oreficerie, ed oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 286289.
[10] David Alan Brown has noted that the outlines are harder and the figures more
stiff in Andreas later works than in what are presumed to be earlier works, which,
in his opinion, appear more directly indebted to the art of Simone Martini. See
David Alan Brown, Andrea Vanni in the Corcoran Gallery, in The William A.
Corcoran Collection: An Exhibition Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Installation
of the Clark Collection at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, 1978), 36. A
similar opinion is voiced by Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian
Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague,
1924), 435.


[11] Cf. Valerie Linda Wainwright, Andrea Vanni and Bartolo di Fredi: Sienese
Painters in their Social Context (PhD diss., University of London, University College,
1978), 148149.
[12] See Alberto Cornices summation in Andrea Vanni, in Il gotico a Siena:

miniature, pitture, oreficerie, ed oggetti darte (Florence, 1982), 286289; as well
as Valerie Linda Wainwright, Andrea Vanni and Bartolo di Fredi: Sienese Painters
in their Social Context (PhD diss., University of London, University College, 1978),
145157; and G. Vailati Schoenburg Waldenburg, ed., La miniatura italiana in eta
romanica e gotica. Atti del congresso di storia della miniatura italiana, Cortona,
2628 maggio 1978 (Florence, 1979), 553574.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1966 Shapley, Fern Rusk.

Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV
Century. London, 1966: 57.


Andrea di Vanni
Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413
Scenes from the Passion of

Christ: The Agony in the
Garden [left panel]
1380s
tempera on panel
overall: 56.7 29.3 3.4 cm (22 5/16 11 9/16 1 5/16 in.)
Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection) 2014.79.711.a
ENTRY
This highly detailed panel from a triptych by the Sienese painter Andrea di Vanni is
a recent addition to the National Gallery of Art collection. One of the most
prominent works acquired from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the altarpiece consists
of three panels depicting stories from the Passion of Christ. Attached by modern
hinges, the two lateral panels can be folded over the central painting to protect it
and facilitate transportation. When opened, the triptychs panels represent, from
left to right, Christs Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, and the
Descent into Limbo. Placed against a gold ground, each scene is set on a rocky
outcropping that extends from one panel to the next, creating a formal coherence
among scenes that took place at different times and places.
The altarpieces left wing contains several episodes presented in a continuous

narrative. In the middle ground, Christ kneels in prayer above a well-tended garden
on the Mount of Olives. With his arms folded across his chest in a gesture of
humility, he gazes heavenward toward a descending angel who holds out a
chalice. The chalice here evidently refers to Christs supplication: Oh my Father, if
it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want, i.e.,
his imminent sacrifice upon the cross.[1] The anguish weighing upon Christs
countenance is physically manifested by the drops of blood that he sweats in
Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Agony in the Garden [left panel] 1465

accordance with the Gospel account.[2] In the foreground, Jesus is represented a

second time, admonishing the disciples for sleeping when he had asked them to
stay awake and pray with him. His rebuke is a slight one, however, for Christ pulls
Saint Peter up from the ground to signify his selection of that apostle to head his
church. In the background, a group of soldiers led by torch-bearers and the traitor
Judas Iscariot depart from Jerusalem to arrest Jesus. The villainy of the former
apostle Judas is clearly denoted by the black halo surrounding his head.
The central panel, which depicts the Crucifixion, reflects a growing concern among
fourteenth-century artists to historicize the Biblical narrative. To accomplish this,
the painter attempted to recreate, with the greatest possible accuracy, the details
of the events on Mount Calvary. These details, moreover, are carefully arranged to
enhance the narrative legibility of what would otherwise be a chaotic scene.
Already dead upon the cross, Christ is portrayed amid a large cast of characters
and vignettes arranged symmetrically across the picture. On either side of Jesus
are the two thieves with whom he was crucified. Groups of soldiers dressed in mail
and Pharisees with long beards crowd around these figures to witness their
demise. Like Christ, the thief on the left has passed away and his slumped body
shares a similar greenish hue. This is the penitent thief mentioned in the Gospel of
Luke (23:3943). Having confessed to Christ as he hung on the cross, the soul of
this thief (represented as an infant) is carried to heaven by angels. On the right is
the unrepentant thief who taunted Jesus. His ruddy flesh tones and pained
expression indicate that he continues to suffer the torments of execution. Only now
does he receive the coup de grace: the breaking of his legs, which will hasten his
death and relinquish his soul to the black devils that hover above him.
As in all three panels, the painted surface of the Crucifixion scene is exquisitely
worked. Each figures physiognomy and gestures are individualized so that the two
soldiers on horseback that frame Jesus, for example, respond to him in different
ways. With his hands clasped in prayer, the figure on the left leans forward as if to
see Christ more clearly. His lance identifies him as Longinus, the visually impaired
soldier who pierced Jesuss side and whose vision, according to one legend, was
miraculously restored when the blood and water flowing from Christs wound fell
upon his eyes.[3] The other equestrian is the Good Centurion who recognized
Christs divinity at his crucifixion despite his debased appearance, exclaiming:
Truly this man was the Son of God.[4] With his hand placed over his heart, this
figures gesture suggests that his belief must come from within. At the foot of the
cross, Mary Magdalene caresses Christs feet as she grieves, while next to her the

young Saint John weeps visibly as he stares adoringly at the Savior. In the left
foreground, a group of lamenting women in vibrantly colored mantles surrounds
the Virgin Mary, who has collapsed at the sight of her sons lifeless body. To the
right of these women, three soldiers grapple over Christs blue garment. The
Gospel of John states that upon discovering that Jesuss tunic was woven without
a seam (and thus expensive), the soldiers decided to choose a new owner
according to lot, rather than cut it into shares.[5] As was common in Tuscan
crucifixion scenes from this time, the soldiers draw straws rather than cast dice.[6]
Between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, Christ is said to have descended
into the realm of the dead where he liberated the Old Testament patriarchs and
prophets. This event, known as the Decent into Limbo, is represented on the right
wing of the triptych. The story is not recorded in the canonical Gospels, but comes
instead from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, the contents of which were
widely disseminated throughout medieval Europe.[7] In Andreas interpretation,
Christ the Redeemer has descended victoriously into hell, where he has
demolished the gateway and crushed the devil beneath it, visualizing the words
inscribed on the banderole held by God the Father, who floats overhead: Destruxit
quidam mortes inferni et subvertit potentias diaboli (He has destroyed the shades
of hell, and has overthrown the powers of the devil).[8] The painting also reaffirms
an article of the Apostles Creed (he descended into hell). Hereat the very edge
of the underworld (limbus patrum)the righteous who lived before Christ kneel in a
cavern. Foremost among these figures is Adam, with his long, white beard,
followed by Eve, and then King David (holding a psaltery). On the far right is Saint
John the Baptist with his scroll saying Ecce Agnus [Dei] (Behold the Lamb of
God). Having overcome death, Christ appears in a transformed state indicated not
only by his lustrous mantle and the golden rays emanating from his body, but also
by the reactions of Limbos inhabitants: several figures shade their eyes from
Christs radiance. With the standard of victory in his left hand, Jesus reaches
forward with his right to grasp hold of Adam in a gesture reminiscent of the one he
performs on the triptychs left wing, where he clutches Saint Peters hand.[9] The
formal correspondence between these scenes underscores a causal relationship
between the two events, for while Christ submitted himself to Gods will in the
garden at Gethsemane, the result of his obedience (i.e., his triumph over death) is
conveyed in the harrowing of hell.[10] In both scenes, the action of lifting up those
overcome by sorrow and regret stresses the charity of Christ.

The sophisticated compositional organization, brilliant, jewel-like colors, and

luxuriously textured patterns of Andreas paintings exemplify a skillful conflation of
elements derived from the previous generation of Sienese painters, particularly
Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) and the Lorenzetti brothers.
The exquisite miniaturist quality of execution and glowing palette recall the works
of Simone, as do some of the figure types Andrea employed in the Crucifixion
scene. The recumbent form of the Virgin Mary and her attendants, for example, are
comparable to those in the Crucifixion panel [fig. 1] of Simones Orsini Polyptych in
the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, as is the figure of Andreas Christ, whose
proportions and knobby knees also appear dependent on the prototype. Despite
that, the heavy, robust forms and simplified contours of Andreas other figures
mark a departure from the art of Simone and reveal the impact of the Lorenzetti.
The voluminous mantle and lost profile of the Magdalene, for example, resemble
the same figure in Pietro Lorenzettis small Crucifixion [fig. 2] at the Pinacoteca
Nazionale in Siena (inv. no. 147), as does the pose of Saint John the Evangelist.
Also reminiscent of Pietros art is Andreas inclusion of provocative anecdotal
details, dynamic use of space, and construction of depth. Despite the flattening
effect of the gilded background, Andrea succeeded in creating a convincing spatial
setting defined by the overlapping of figures and rocky landscape that not only
diminish in scale but also darken as they recede.[11] The result is a narrative
vivacity combined with an intimate expressive force.
The putative Neapolitan provenance of the Gallerys triptych has led several
scholars to suggest that it was produced in situ while the artist was acting as an
emissary to the city.[12] As explained in his biography, Andrea undertook lengthy
diplomatic missions to Avignon, Rome, and elsewhere on behalf of the Republic of
Siena, and he is documented in Naples between 1383 and 1385.[13] It is to this
period that scholars routinely assign the triptych.[14] And yet, Andrea is believed to
have traveled to Naples on other occasions and it is just as plausible that he
completed the altarpiece during one or several undocumented
visits.[15] Alternatively, he could have produced the work in Siena and exported it
to a distant patron. For these reasons, a definitive date of execution and place of
origin for the altarpiece have yet to be determined.
Equally problematic for the study of the panels is the question of whether they
were originally intended to form a portable altarpiece or if they were once part of a
larger, stationary polyptych. The panels clearly belong together, but technical
analysis has revealed conflicting evidence, suggesting that they may not have

always been arranged in the present configuration. The most perplexing

incongruity concerns the presence of four large dowel holes along the lateral
edges of the central panel as well as a punched decorative pattern on its reverse,
now hidden beneath a layer of gesso. Neither of the side panels contains traces of
corresponding joinery and no punchwork has been detected on their backs. These
observations present more problems than solutions, for the evidence of dowel
joints in the central panel indicates that at one time this painting might have been
immovably attached to adjacent panels or a larger framing structure. However, it is
entirely possible that the Crucifixion was painted on a reused plank that had been
prepared for another commission or that the side panels were originally wider and
included portions containing dowel joints that were subsequently cut off.[16] The
spacing of the dowel holes is also unusual, as they are not located at equal
distances from the top and bottom edges of the panel, as one would expect. In
fact, the close proximity of the upper dowel holes to the top of the panel implies
that the painting originally may have been taller and included an upper
register.[17] This could strengthen the idea that the central panel was originally part
of a different altarpiece configuration and was repurposed for this triptych. Apart
from the modern hinges, all three panels reveal additional indications of what
might be traces of an earlier means of attachment, but it remains to be determined
whether they are in fact vestiges of a previous joining mechanism.[18]
If the panels contributed to a stationary polyptych, then their rectangular shape

suggests that they were located along the ensembles lower register and
presumably with other, as of yet unidentified, paintings of Christs Passion. The
strongest evidence against this scenario lies in the presence of decoration on the
back of the central panel. In the later fourteenth century, most large, double-sided
altarpieces consisted of separate panels for the front and back.[19] If Andreas
paintings were components of such an altarpiece, they would have been installed
into a larger, thicker framework that would have concealed their reverses. It seems
more likely that the paintings contributed to an altarpiece of modest dimensions
intended for a side altar or domestic setting in which the decoration on the central
panels reverse could be admired. The precise size of this hypothetical altarpiece
and the means by which its panels were attached remain open questions.
Among the various works attributed to Vanni or his followers, Bernard Berenson
associated the Gallerys triptych with two small panels: the Resurrection, formerly in
the Ingenheim Collection, and the Ascension in the State Hermitage Museum at St.
Petersburg [fig. 3] [fig. 4].[20] As Federico Zeri first noted, the two panels share

similar dimensions, ornamental motifs, and arched formats.[21] It is safe to assume

that they were components of the same altarpiece, but one unrelated to the
Gallerys triptych. Close scrutiny has revealed that the tooled and punched designs
of the halos as well as the raised gesso or pastiglia ornaments in the pointed
arches and cusping of the ex-Ingenheim and Hermitage paintings are markedly
different from those found in the spandrels of the Gallerys panels. These
discrepancies militate against correlating the triptych with the Resurrection and
Ascension.[22]
Since it was first published, the triptych has been considered the artists only
remaining signed work.[23] Inscribed freehand on the bottom edge of central
panels engaged frame is ANDREAS VANNIS DE SENIS ME PINXIT (Andrea Vanni
of Siena painted me). Several of the letters have been repaired with new gilding
and the blue paint has been reinforced at least twice, but the signature appears
legitimate. Nevertheless, the inscription once may have contained other
information for the decorative pattern that brackets the signature has been
reworked and the location of the inscription appears decidedly off-center.
Moreover, a significant space to the right of PINXIT is filled with an unusual motif
that occurs nowhere else on the frame. Given the consistency of the frames
ornamentation, one can only speculate why this highly abstracted motif was
incorporated, but it may supplant letters that had become illegible. The space is
not large enough to have recorded the date of execution, but it may have
contained a modifier such as the supplication AMENA, which concludes the
inscription adorning the polygonal base of Lippo Memmis Madonna dei
Raccomandati at Orvieto Cathedral.[24]
What is beyond speculation is the supremely high quality of the triptych. The deep,
saturated hues of red, yellow, and blue create rhythmic alternations of color that
play against the gold backgrounds and halos to animate the scenes. Such dazzling
effects are carried over into the patterns decorating the soldiers armor and the
mantle of the Pharisee in the Crucifixion scene, as well as Christs garment in the
Descent into Limbo, which are executed in sgraffito, a technique that mimics the
effects of brocade by scraping away areas of paint laid over gold leaf and tooled
with patterned punches. The elaborate costumes join the carefully diversified facial
features and body movements to communicate the narrative in a concise but vivid
manner. Andrea di Vanni is often regarded as lacking the skill and sophistication of
his great predecessors, but the refined execution, balanced organization of
complex iconographic elements, and compelling depiction of human emotion that

characterize the Gallerys triptych should prompt a revision of his stature.

COMPARATIVE FIGURES
fig. 1 Simone Martini, Crucifixion (from the Orsini

Polyptych), c. 1335, tempera on panel, Royal Museum of
Fine Arts, Antwerp
fig. 2 Pietro Lorenzetti, Crucifixion, c. 13251326, tempera

on panel, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena

fig. 3 Andrea di Vanni, Ascension, c. 1380s, tempera on fig. 4 Andrea di Vanni, Resurrection, c. 1380s, tempera on
panel, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Gift panel, location unknown, formerly in the Ingenheim
of the heirs of Count G. S. Stroganov, 1911 collection
NOTES
[1] Matthew 26:39. Gertrud Schiller notes that the chalice was an Old
Testament symbol of divine wrath, but since it is tied to the institution of the
Eucharist at the Last Supper it may also be considered the cup of Christs

sacrifice. See Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet

Seligman, 2 vols. (Greenwich, 19711972), 2(1972): 48, 51; as well as Victor
Schmidt, unpublished article written for the Corcoran Gallery of Art,
September 11, 1995, in the NGA curatorial files.
[2] Luke 22:44: In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat
became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.
[3] Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2
vols. (Princeton, 1993), 1:184.
[4] Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39.
[5] John 19:2324. In his Tractates on the Gospel of John, Saint Augustine
interpreted the casting of lots as a positive act, for it was by way of lots, the
traditional means by which one invoked a decision from God, that the
seamless garment of Christ remained undivided. Likewise, it was by the will
of God that the Church remained undivided. Saint Augustine, Tractates on
the Gospel of John, trans. John W. Rettig, 5 vols. (Washington, DC,
19881995), 5:4243 (tractate 118). The Bible does not reveal the winner of
the garment. According to The Golden Legend, Pontius Pilate gained
possession of the seamless tunic and wore it before Tiberius to subdue the
Emperors wrath when the Emperor learned that Pilate had unjustly
condemned Jesus. See Jacopo de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans.
William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993), 1:212213. Lynette Muir has
noted several Passion plays from Northern Europe that mention Pilate as the
winner of Christs garment. See Lynette Muir, The Biblical Drama of
Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 254 n. 54. The mystery surrounding
the outcome of the event has led to the discovery of several seamless
garments over the centuries. The Holy Robe at the cathedral of Trier in
Germany is considered the most authentic; however, at least five cities claim
to possess the original. See Franz Ronig, Trier Cathedral, trans. M. Maxwell,
4th ed. (Trier, 1986), 14, 26, 2930, 32; and Friedrich Lauchert, Holy Coat,
in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (New York, 19071913), 7(1910):
400402.
[6] A few other examples include Andrea da Firenzes fresco of the Crucifixion
(13651367) in the Spanish Chapel at the Florentine church of Santa Maria
Novella, the Crucifixion fresco (c. 1340) by Barna da Siena in the collegiate
church of San Gimignano, Andrea di Bartolo (Sienese, active from 1389 -
died 1428) painting of the Crucifixion (late 14th century) at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, the Crucifixion scene (c. 1390) by Agnolo Gaddi
at the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and Jacopo di Ciones Crucifixion panel
(13691370) at the National Gallery, London.
[7] See George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York, 1954),
153154; and Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 6 vols.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 3(1971): 5666.

[8] Like the image, the phrase celebrates Christs triumph, but the particular
wording is nearly identical to one of the responses performed during
Tenebrae on Holy Saturday: Destruxit quidem claustra inferni et subvertit
potentias diaboli (He has destroyed the gates of hell and has overthrown
the powers of the devil). Tenebrae (meaning shadows or darkness) is a
ceremony performed during the last three days of Holy Week to
commemorate the death of Jesus. The structure of the ceremony is the
same on all three days, but on Good Friday the service includes a gradual
extinguishing of candles while a series of psalms and readings are chanted.
On Saturday, the ceremony is conducted entirely in darkness with the
exception of a single candle, symbolizing Christ as the Light of the World.
The incorporation of a phrase drawn from the responsorial for one of the
most important commemorative services celebrated during Holy Week
could operate as an additional means by which the artist sought to bring
sacred past into the devotional present for the viewers of his painting.
[9] A detail noted by Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for
Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 12501400 (Florence, 2005), 193.
[10] Cf. Thomas Fletcher Worthen, The Harrowing of Hell in the Art of the Italian
Renaissance (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1981), 387 n. 31.
[11] This technique was recommended by Cennino Cennini and frequently

practiced by Trecento painters. See Cennino Cennini, Il libro dellarte, ed.
Fabio Frezzato (Vicenza, 2003), chap. LXXXV, 127; and Mikls Boskovits in
this catalog, entry for Jacopo di Ciones Madonna and Child with God the
Father Blessing and Angels, note 23.
[12] According to David Alan Brown, a note in the Fototeca Berenson at the Villa
I Tatti, Florence, records that the pictures belonged to Count Carlo Zezza,
who obtained it from wife, a member of the Naples branch of the Medici
family. However, the Zezza provenance is not confirmed. See David Alan
Brown, Andrea Vanni in the Corcoran Gallery, in The William A. Corcoran
Collection: An Exhibition Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Installation of
the Clark Collection at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, 1978),
36.
[13] See Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dellarte senese, 3 vols.
(Siena, 18541856), 1(1854): 295302; and Scipione Borghesi and Luciano
Banchi, Nuovi documenti per la storia dellarte senese (Siena, 1898), 5455.
[14] A notable exception is Valerie Linda Wainwright, who dates the triptych to c.
13601370. See Valerie Linda Wainwright, Andrea Vanni and Bartolo di
Fredi: Sienese Painters in Their Social Context (PhD diss., University of
London, University College, 1978), 156.
[15] Cf. Andrea Costa, Rammemorazione istorica delleffigie di Santa Maria di

Casaluce (Naples, 1709), 172; Ferdinando Bologna, I pittori alla corte

(Rome, 1969), 325326; and Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento
(Milan, 1981), 246.
[16] Unlike the lateral panels, the central panel also has a slight concave warp
which is unusual. As Joanna Dunn has observed, if the panel was
repurposed, its former arrangment and function could have induced the
warping as well as account for the punchwork on its reverse. See Dunns
examination report dated December 21, 2015 in the NGA conservation files,
where she also mentions the possibility of each side panel originally
including two scenes of equal width.
[17] Joanna Dunn, examination report dated December 21, 2015, in the NGA
conservation files.
conservation files.
[19] See Julian Gardner, Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure, in La pittura
nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo dellanalisi tecnica alla storia dellarte,
eds. Hendrik W. van Os and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983),
297322.
North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 1:442. The current location of
the Resurrection is unknown. It was sold on July 22, 1981 at the Neumeister,
Mnchener Kunstauktionhaus, sale 203, lot 749. Other scholars who
attribute the Resurrection to Andrea di Vanni include Federico Zeri,
Appunti nellErmitage e nel Museo Pusckin, Bollettino darte 46, no. 3
(1961): repro. 221, 225; Ferdinando Bologna, I pittori alla corte angioina di
Napoli, 12661414, e un riesame dellarte nellet fridericiana (Rome, 1969),
325326; and David Alan Brown, Andrea Vanni in the Corcoran Gallery, in
The William A. Corcoran Collection: An Exhibition Marking the 50th
Anniversary of the Installation of the Clark Collection at the Corcoran
Gallery of Art (Washington, DC, 1978), 34. The Ascension once belonged to
Count Gregory Stroganoff in Rome and has been variously attributed to
Andrea, to one of his followers, and to Bartolo di Fredi. Cf. Antonio Muoz,
Pices de choix de la collection du Comte Grgoire Stroganoff Rome, 2
vols. (Rome, 1912), 2: 11; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian
Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The
Hague, 1924), 504505 n. 1; Bernard Berenson, Quadri senza casa. Il
Trecento senese, 1, Dedalo 11 (19301931): 274; Millard Meiss, Painting in
Florence and Siena After the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 31; Viktor Nikiti
Lazarev, Proischodenie italjanskogo vozrodenija, vol. 2, Iskusstvo treento
(Moscow, 1959), 289290, n. 283; Zeri (1961): repro. 221, 223226; and
Svetlana Vsevolozhskaya and Albert Kostenevich, The Hermitage: Italian
Paintings (Leningrad, 1984), 227.
[21] Federico Zeri, Appunti nellErmitage e nel Museo Pusckin, Bollettino darte

46, no. 3 (1961): 223226.
[22] Laurence Kanter has suggested that the ex-Ingenheim and Hermitage
panels are from an entirely different period in the artists career.
Communicated in an email dated October 21, 2015, in the NGA curatorial
files.
[23] F. Mason Perkins, A Triptych by Andrea Vanni, Art in America 9 (1921): 186.
[24] For the inscription on Lippos painting see Michael Mallory, Thoughts
Concerning the Master of the Glorification of St. Thomas, The Art Bulletin
57 (1975): 17 n. 26; and Bonnie Apgar Bennett, Lippo Memmi, Simone
Martinis fratello in arte: The Image Revealed by His Documented Works
(PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1977), 17, 105107, 124 n. 21.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel is the left-hand part of a triptych that also includes Scenes from the
Passion of Christ: The Descent into Limbo [right panel] and Scenes from the
Passion of Christ: The Crucifixion [middle panel]. Each panel is made from a single
board with a vertical grain. Each side panel is attached to the center panel with two
modern butt hinges. The original means of attachment is unknown, but x-
radiographs reveal holes that may be evidence of prior dowels or hinges along
both edges of The Crucifixion, the right edge of the The Agony, and the left edge
of The Descent. The x-radiographs also show four long dowel shapes in the center
panel that do not have counterparts in the side panels. These may be evidence
that the center panel was repurposed. Each of the three panels is bordered by an
engaged frame composed of wood moldings adhered to the front of the panel.
The panels were prepared with gesso, and no fabric layer is visible in the x-
radiographs. Pastiglia decoration forms a pointed arch with trefoil cusping on the
tops of The Agony and The Descent and a cusped frieze along the top of The
Crucifixion. The pastiglia, frames, and backgrounds are gilded and these gilded
areas were prepared with a red bole. Punchwork was used to decorate the
pastiglia and the figures halos, garments, and mail. The gilded areas of the
composition also bear decorative borders formed by punchwork. In addition,
Christs robe in The Descent, the robes of the two Pharisees in The Crucifixion, and
the armor and mail of the soldiers in The Crucifixion are decorated with sgraffito.
Silver gilding was used in the mail, armor, and shields of the soldiers in The
Crucifixion.[1] There is a sgraffito design in blue paint in the flat part of the frame

with punchwork in the gold portion of the design. There is a signature in the
sgraffito in the bottom of the center panel.
The painted areas of the composition were demarcated with incised lines. Infrared
examination at 1.1 to 2.5 microns[2] reveals broadly brushed washes under the
landscapes and fine lines marking the folds in the drapery of the kneeling Christ in
The Agony and the Madonna in The Crucifixion, but no other underdrawing. The
paint was applied in narrow, parallel strokes.
The backs of all three panels have been covered in white ground and painted in a
faux finish resembling woodgrain. Modern wooden moldings have been attached
to the backs of the panels to create engaged frames that resemble those on the
front. The back of the center panel has a bumpy texture, as though particles were
mixed into the ground. In contrast, the backs of the side panels are smooth. X-
radiographs show a double row of circular punches forming a border in the center
panel. These punches do not relate to the design on the front of the panels. X-ray
fluorescence also detected silver on the back of the center panel,[3] indicating that
originally it may have been silver gilt. In contrast, no punchwork or silver was found
on the backs of the side panels. This further supports the idea that the center
panel was repurposed.
There is a fairly thick layer of natural resin varnish on the front of the paintings. The
frames on the fronts are covered with a layer of shellac, as are the entire backs of
the paintings.
The Crucifixion panel has a slight concave warp, but both The Agony and The
Descent remain in plane. There is a large knot in the wood that runs through the
torchbearers and Judas in The Agony, and another in the foreground of The
Crucifixion below the figure of Mary. The paint is in good condition with a minute
craquelure pattern throughout. There are scattered, small losses and the paint has
been reinforced in some areas. At least two generations of inpainting are visible
with ultraviolet light. The most recent inpaint is very discrete, but the older inpaint
was applied less carefully and blended onto the original. The gilding in the flats of
the painting is in good condition, but in the area of the pastiglia there is a fair
amount of shell gold restoration. The frame moldings have been regilded and the
blue paint on the frames has been reinforced at least twice. Raking light also
reveals another S between DE and SENIS and possibly two other letters at
the end of the inscription. Also, the inscription is off-center and at the end of the
signature is a three-centimeter-long area where the design differs from the circular

design found in the rest of the border. It is unclear if the signature originally
extended into this area or if the design change was added to center the signature.
The varnish is somewhat glossy and has discolored slightly. It is also blanched in
the darks, especially in the silver gilt areas of The Crucifixion.
TECHNICAL NOTES
[1] The painting was analyzed while in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of
Art. Gwen Manthey, X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy Report, January
2012 in conservation department files.
[2] Infrared examination was performed with a Santa Barbara Focalplane InSb
camera fitted with H, J, and K astronomy filters.
[3] X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy was performed by the NGA scientific

research department (see forthcoming report in conservation files).
PROVENANCE
William Andrews Clark [1839-1925], New York, by 1919; bequest 1926 to the
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
1959 Loan Exhibition. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art: A Benefit

Exhibition in Honor of the Gallery's Centenary, Wildenstein, New York, 1959,
unnumbered catalogue, repro.
1978 The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
1978, fig. 27.
2002 Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran

Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001-2002, unnumbered catalogue, repro.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1921 Perkins, F. Mason, "A Triptych by Andrea di Vanni." Art in America 9, no.
5 (August 1921): 180-188, repro.
19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):443-445, repros.
New York, 1927: 78.
1932 Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of The W.A. Clark
Collection. Washington, 1932: 59, no. 2181.
172173, fig. 224.
1939 Pope-Hennessy, John. Notes on Andrea Vanni. The Burlington
Magazine for Connoisseurs. 74, no. 431 (1939): 97.
1952 Berenson, Bernard. Italian Painters of the Renaissance. 3rd edition.
Oxford, 1952: 268.
1955 Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese. Milan, 1955: 154-158.
1959 Corcoran Gallery of Art. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Washington, D.C., 1959: 8-9, repro.
1960 Francisci Osti, Ornella. Andrea Vanni. In Dizionario biografico degli
3(1961): 122124.
1966 White, John. Art and Architecture in Italy, 1250 to 1400. Baltimore, 1966:
365.
un riesame dellarte nellet fridericiana. Rome, 1969: 325-326.
1978 Brown, David Alan. Andrea Vanni in the Corcoran Gallery. In The
William A. Corcoran Collection: An Exhibition Marking the 50th
Gallery of Art. Washington, DC, 1978: 3237.
1978 Wainwright, Valerie Linda. "Andrea Vanni and Bartolo di Fredi: Sienese
Painters in their Social Context." Ph.D. dissertation. University of London,
University College, 1978: 145146.
1979 Fleming, Lee. Washington: A Guide to the Arts. Portfolio (June/July
1979): 90, repro. 91
1981 Worthen, Thomas Fletcher. "The Harrowing of Hell in the Art of the
Italian Renaissance." 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, Ames,
1981: 102-104, 386 n. 29, 387 n. 31, fig. 49.
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 287
1996 Wainwright, Valerie. Andrea (di) Vanni (dAndrea Salvani). In The
Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London,

1996: 2:21.
2001 Coyle, Laura, and Dare Myers Hartwell, eds. Antiquities to
Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Washington, DC, 2001: 53, repro.
2002 Heartney, Eleanor, ed. A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the
Corcoran Gallery of Art. London, 2002: 90.
in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 193, repro. 196, 203 n. 92.

Andrea di Vanni
Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413
Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The

Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion,
and the Descent into Limbo [entire
triptych]
1380s
tempera on panel
overall: 56.9 116.4 3.4 cm (22 3/8 45 13/16 1 5/16 in.)
Inscription: middle panel, lower center on original frame, some of the letters restored: ANDREAS UANNIS / DE SENIS / ME
PINXIT (Andreas di Vanni of Siena painted me); middle panel, above Christ: INRI; right panel, in black paint on the scroll
held by God the Father: Destruxit quidam mortes inferni / et subvertit potentias diaboli; right panel, in black paint on the
scroll held by Saint John the Baptist: ECCE.ANGIUS[AGNUS]. (Behold the Lamb)
Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection) 2014.79.711.a-c
ENTRY
This highly detailed triptych by the Sienese painter Andrea di Vanni is a recent
addition to the National Gallery of Art collection. One of the most prominent works
acquired from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the altarpiece consists of three panels
depicting stories from the Passion of Christ. Attached by modern hinges, the two
lateral panels can be folded over the central painting to protect it and facilitate
transportation. When opened, the triptychs panels represent, from left to
right, Christs Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Crucifixion, and the
Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and 1482
the Descent into Limbo [entire triptych]





elements derived from the previous generation of Sienese painters,
particularly Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) and the Lorenzetti
brothers. The exquisite miniaturist quality of execution and glowing palette recall
the works of Simone, as do some of the figure types Andrea employed in the
Crucifixion scene. The recumbent form of the Virgin Mary and her attendants, for
example, are comparable to those in the Crucifixion panel [fig. 1] of Simones Orsini
Polyptych in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, as is the figure of Andreas
Christ, whose proportions and knobby knees also appear dependent on the
prototype. Despite that, the heavy, robust forms and simplified contours of
Andreas other figures mark a departure from the art of Simone and reveal the
impact of the Lorenzetti. The voluminous mantle and lost profile of the Magdalene,
for example, resemble the same figure in Pietro Lorenzettis small Crucifixion [fig. 2]
at the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (inv. no. 147), as does the pose of Saint John
the Evangelist. Also reminiscent of Pietros art is Andreas inclusion of provocative
anecdotal details, dynamic use of space, and construction of depth. Despite the
flattening effect of the gilded background, Andrea succeeded in creating a
convincing spatial setting defined by the overlapping of figures and rocky
landscape that not only diminish in scale but also darken as they recede.[11] The
result is a narrative vivacity combined with an intimate expressive force.

completed the altarpiece during one or several undocumented visits.[15]

Alternatively, he could have produced the work in Siena and exported it to a
distant patron. For these reasons, a definitive date of execution and place of origin
for the altarpiece have yet to be determined.
that the painting originally may have been taller and included an upper register.[17]
This could strengthen the idea that the central panel was originally part of a
different altarpiece configuration and was repurposed for this triptych. Apart from
the modern hinges, all three panels reveal additional indications of what might be
traces of an earlier means of attachment, but it remains to be determined whether
they are in fact vestiges of a previous joining mechanism.[18]



Ascension.[22]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Fine Arts, Antwerp


NOTES


vols. (Princeton, 1993): 1:184.
[4] Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39.
400402.
church of San Gimignano, Andrea di Bartolos painting of the Crucifixion
(late 14th century) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
Crucifixion scene (c. 1390) by Agnolo Gaddi (Florentine, c. 1350 - 1396) at
the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and Jacopo di Ciones Crucifixion panel
(13691370) at the National Gallery, London.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 3(1971): 5666.


36.


(Milan, 1981), 246.
conservation files.
conservation files.
297322.

46, no. 3 (1961): 223226.
files.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
Each panel of this triptych is made from a single board with a vertical grain. Each
side panel is attached to the center panel with two modern butt hinges. The
original means of attachment is unknown, but x-radiographs reveal holes that may
be evidence of prior dowels or hinges along both edges of The Crucifixion, the
right edge of the The Agony, and the left edge of The Descent. The x-radiographs
also show four long dowel shapes in the center panel that do not have
counterparts in the side panels. These may be evidence that the center panel was
repurposed. Each of the three panels is bordered by an engaged frame composed
of wood moldings adhered to the front of the panel.

examination at 1.1 to 2.5 microns [2] reveals broadly brushed washes under the
the paintings..

TECHNICAL NOTES

PROVENANCE
EXHIBITION HISTORY

1978, fig. 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
5 (August 1921): 180-188, repro.


New York, 1927: 78.
172173, fig. 224.
Oxford, 1952: 268.
3(1961): 122124.
365.
Painters in their Social Context." Ph.D. dissertation, University of London,
1979): 90, repro. 91
1981: 102-104, 386 n. 29, 387 n. 31, fig. 49.
1996: 2:21.



Andrea di Vanni
Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413
Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The

Crucifixion [middle panel]
1380s
tempera on panel
overall: 56.9 57.9 3.4 cm (22 3/8 22 13/16 1 5/16 in.)
Inscription: lower center on original frame of the panel, some of the letters restored: ANDREAS UANNIS / DE SENIS / ME
PINXIT (Andreas di Vanni of Siena painted me); above Christ: INRI
Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection) 2014.79.711.b
ENTRY
This highly detailed panel from a triptych by the Sienese painter Andrea di Vanni is

Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Crucifixion [middle panel] 1499







Ascension.[22]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Fine Arts, Antwerp


NOTES


[4] Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39.
400402.
Crucifixion scene (c. 1390) by Agnolo Gaddi at the Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence, and Jacopo di Ciones Crucifixion panel (13691370) at the
National Gallery, London.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 3(1971): 5666.


36.


(Milan, 1981), 246.
conservation files.
conservation files.
297322.

46, no. 3 (1961): 223226.
files.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel is the central part of a triptych that also includes Scenes from the
Passion of Christ: The Agony in the Garden [left panel] and Scenes from the
Passion of Christ: The Descent into Limbo [right panel]. Each panel is made from a
single board with a vertical grain. Each side panel is attached to the center panel
with two modern butt hinges. The original means of attachment is unknown, but x-

examination at 1.1 to 2.5 microns [2] reveals broadly brushed washes under the
the paintings.
torchbearers and Judas in The Agony, and another in the foreground ofThe

TECHNICAL NOTES

PROVENANCE
EXHIBITION HISTORY

1978, fig. 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

5 (August 1921): 180-188, repro.
New York, 1927: 78.
172173, fig. 224.
Oxford, 1952: 268.
3(1961): 122124.
365.
1979): 90, repro. 91
1981: 102-104, 386 n. 29, 387 n. 31, fig. 49.

1996: 2:21.

Andrea di Vanni
Sienese, c. 1330 - 1413
Scenes from the Passion of

Christ: The Descent into
Limbo [right panel]
1380s
tempera on panel
overall: 56.7 29.2 3.3 cm (22 5/16 11 1/2 1 5/16 in.)
Inscription: in black paint on the scroll held by God the Father: Destruxit quidam
mortes inferni / et subvertit potentias diaboli; in black paint on the scroll held by
Saint John the Baptist: ECCE.ANGIUS[AGNUS]. (Behold the Lamb)
Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection) 2014.79.711.c
ENTRY
This highly detailed panle from a triptych by the Sienese painter Andrea di Vanni is

Scenes from the Passion of Christ: The Descent into Limbo [right panel] 1516










Ascension.[22]


COMPARATIVE FIGURES

Fine Arts, Antwerp


NOTES


[4] Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39.
400402.
Crucifixion scene (c. 1390) by Agnolo Gaddi at the Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence, and Jacopo di Ciones Crucifixion panel (13691370) at the
National Gallery, London.
(Gtersloh, 19661990), 3(1971): 5666.


36.


(Milan, 1981), 246.
conservation files.
conservation files.
297322.

46, no. 3 (1961): 223226.
files.
TECHNICAL SUMMARY
This panel is is the right-hand part of a triptych that also includes Scenes from the
Passion of Christ: The Agony in the Garden [left panel] and Scenes from the
Passion of Christ: The Crucifixion [middle panel]. Each panel is made from a single
board with a vertical grain. Each side panel is attached to the center panel with two
modern butt hinges. The original means of attachment is unknown, but x-

examination at 1.1 to 2.5 microns[2] reveals broadly brushed washes under the
the paintings.

TECHNICAL NOTES

PROVENANCE
EXHIBITION HISTORY

1978, fig. 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

5 (August 1921): 180-188, repro.
New York, 1927: 78.
172173, fig. 224.
Oxford, 1952: 268.
3(1961): 122124.
365.
1979): 90, repro. 91
1981: 102-104, 386 n. 29, 387 n. 31, fig. 49.

1996: 2:21.

Concordance of OldNew Attributions
Attributions changed since publication by the National Gallery of Art of

Catalogue of the Italian Paintings (Washington, DC, 1979).
Old Attribution Accession Number New Attribution
Ugolino Lorenzetti 1943.4.20 Bartolomeo Bulgarini
Byzantine Thirteenth Century 1949.7.1 Byzantine Thirteenth Century

(possibly from Constantinople)
Byzantine Thirteenth century 1937.1.1 Byzantine Thirteenth Century

(possibly from Constantinople)
Attributed to Bernardo Daddi 1961.9.2 Bernardo Daddi
c. 1335 c. 1320/1325
Master of the Life of Saint John the Baptist 1952.5.68 Giovanni Baronzio
Follower of Cimabue 1937.1.2.ac Grifo di Tancredi
Orcagna and Jacopo di Cione 1952.5.18 Jacopo di Cione
Attributed to Martino di Bartolomeo di Biagio 1950.11.1.a.c Martino di Bartolomeo
Follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna 1961.9.77 Master of Citt di Castello
Paolo Veneziano 1952.5.87 Master of the Washington Coronation
Workshop of Simone Martini 1952.5.23 Simone Martini
Concordance of OldNew Attributions 1533


Attributed to Cimabue 1952.5.60 Tuscan Thirteenth Century
To cite: Concordance of Old-New Attributions, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online
Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/italian-paintings-of-the-
Concordance of OldNew Attributions 1534


Concordance of OldNew Titles and Dates
Titles and / or dates changed since publication by the National Gallery of Art of
Artist* Accession Number Old Title New Title
Andrea di Bartolo 1939.1.20.a,b Madonna and Child Madonna of Humility, The Blessing
(obverse); The Crucifixion Christ, Two Angels, and a Donor
(reverse) (obverse); Christ on the Cross (reverse)
c. 1415 c. 1380/1390
Andrea di Bartolo 1939.1.41 The Presentation of the The Presentation of the Virgin in the
Virgin Temple
c. 1400 c. 1400/1405
Andrea di Bartolo 1939.1.42 c. 1400 c. 1400/1405

The Nativity of the Virgin
Andrea di Bartolo 1939.1.43 Joachim and the Beggars Joachim and Anna Giving Food to the
c. 1400 Poor and Offerings to the Temple
c. 1400/1405
Bernardo Daddi 1937.1.3 Saint Paul Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers
Bernardo Daddi 1952.5.61 1330s c. 1345

Saints and Angels
Concordance of OldNew Titles and Dates 1535


Duccio di Buoninsegna 1937.1.8 1308/1311 13081311

The Nativity with the Note: The hyphen indicates that we
Prophets Isaiah and know the painting was begun in 1308
Ezekiel and completed in 1311. The previously
used slash indicates more uncertainty
about the date of execution, that the
painting was executed sometime
between the two dates.
Duccio di Buoninsegna 1939.1.141 1308/1311 13081311

The Calling of the See note above.
Apostles Peter and
Andrew
Paolo di Giovanni Fei 1961.9.4 The Presentation of the The Presentation of the Virgin in the
Virgin Temple
c. 1400 13981399
Paolo di Giovanni Fei 1961.9.71 The Assumption of the The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts
Virgin of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin
probably c. 1385 of the Annunciation
c. 1400/1405
Agnolo Gaddi 1937.1.4.a.c Madonna Enthroned with Saint Andrew and Saint Benedict with
Saints and Angels the Archangel Gabriel [left panel];
1380/1390 Madonna and Child Enthroned with
Twelve Angels, and with the Blessing
Christ [middle panel]; Saint Bernard and
Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the
Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel]
shortly before 1387
Agnolo Gaddi 1939.1.203 The Coronation of the The Coronation of the Virgin with Six
Virgin Angels
probably c. 1370 c. 1390


Giotto 1939.1.256 (cat. 17) probably 1320/1330 c. 1310/1315

Madonna and Child
Lippo Memmi 1937.1.11 probably c. 1335 1325/1330

Donor
Pietro Lorenzetti 1941.5.1.a.c Madonna and Child with Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel
Saint Mary Magdalene and [left panel]; Madonna and Child, with
Saint Catherine the Blessing Christ [middle panel]; Saint
c. 1330/1340 Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel
[right panel]
probably 1340
Margaritone dArezzo 1952.5.12 Madonna and Child Madonna and Child Enthroned with
Enthroned Four Saints
c. 1270 c. 1240/1245
Master of the Franciscan

Crucifixes
The Mourning Madonna
Master of the Franciscan 1952.5.14 Saint John the Evangelist The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist
Crucifixes c. 1272 c. 1270/1275
Master of Saint Francis 1952.5.15 probably c. 1270/1280 c. 1272

Saint James Minor
Master of Saint Francis 1952.5.16 probably c. 1270/1280 c. 1272

Nardo di Cione 1939.1.261.a.c Madonna and Child with Saint Peter [left panel]; Madonna and
Saint Peter and Saint John Child, with the Man of Sorrows [middle
the Evangelist panel]; Saint John the Evangelist [right
probably c. 1360 panel]
c. 1360


Paolo Veneziano 1939.1.143 c. 1340 c. 1340/1345

The Crucifixion
Puccio di Simone and 1937.1.6.ac Madonna Enthroned with Saint Anthony Abbot [left panel];
Allegretto Nuzi Saints Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four
c. 1354 Saints and Eighteen Angels [middle
panel]; Saint Venantius [right panel]
1354
Simone Martini 1939.1.216 c. 1333 c. 1330

The Angel of the
Annunciation
* When title is unchanged, it is included in this column for purposes of clarity.
To cite: Concordance of Old-New Titles and Dates, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA
Online Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/italian-paintings-of-
the-thirteenth-and-fourteenth-centuries.html


Concordance of OldNew Artist Names

and Life Dates
Names and/or dates changed since publication by the National Gallery of Art of
Old Name/Dates New Name and/or Dates
Duccio di Buoninsegna c. 1250/12551318/1319
active from 1278; died 1318/1319
Paolo di Giovanni Fei c. 1335/13451411
mentioned from 1369; died 1411
Agnolo Gaddi c. 13501396
active from 1369; died 1396
Giotto c. 12651337
1266/12671337
Master of the Life of Saint John the Baptist Giovanni Baronzio
active second quarter fourteenth century active c. 13201350
Jacopo di Cione c. 1340c. 1400?
active 13681398
Pietro Lorenzetti active 13061345
active possibly 1306late 1340s; probably died 1348
Lorenzo Monaco c. 1370c. 1425
c. 13701422/1424
Concordance of OldNew Artist Names and Life Dates 1539


Margaritone dArezzo active second and third quarter thirteenth century
active second half thirteenth century
Martino di Bartolommeo Martino di Bartolomeo
active 13841434 active 1393/1434
Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes active 1260s and 1270s
Master of Saint Francis active third quarter thirteenth century
Nardo di Cione active from c. 1340; died 1365/1366
active c. 1343; died 1365/1366
Paolo Veneziano active 13331358
active 13331358
Puccio di Simone active from c. 13301360
active mid-fourteenth century
Allegretto Nuzi active from c. 1340died 1373
active from 1345; died 1373
Simone Martini active from 1315; died 1344
c. 12841344
To cite: Concordance of Old-New Artist Names and Life Dates, in Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,
NGA Online Editions (Washington, DC, 2016), http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/italian-paintings-of-
the-thirteenth-and-fourteenth-centuries.html
Concordance of OldNew Artist Names and Life Dates 1540


Bibliography
Editors note: This bibliography was compiled by Mikls Boskovits in 2011. It has
been updated by National Gallery of Art staff to include publications released
from 20112015. Publications about Andrea di Vanni, whose Scenes from the
Passion of Christ was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2014, have also
been added.
[Anonymous publications listed by date]
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Portfolio of Photographic Reproductions of Pictures in the Early Italian Art

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Collezione del Fu Comm. Antonio del Zotto e gi Giuseppe Piccoli. Venice, 1919.
Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition: Loans and Special Features. New York, 1920.
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National Gallery of Art

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS

Italian Thirteenth and Fourteenth

Italian Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Paintings

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS

01 History of the Collection

08 Notes to the Reader

14 Credits and Acknowledgments

18 In Memoriam: Mikls Boskovits

30 Christ on the Cross [reverse]

72 The Nativity of the Virgin

90 The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple

108 Bulgarini, Bartolomeo

113 Saint Catherine of Alexandria

135 Byzantine 13th Century

136 Enthroned Madonna and Child

148 Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne

175 Daddi, Bernardo

180 The Crucifixion

193 Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels

205 Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers

225 Jacopo di Cione

251 Duccio di Buoninsegna

257 The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew

294 The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS

309 Fei, Paolo di Giovanni

328 The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple

346 Gaddi, Agnolo

350 The Coronation of the Virgin with Six Angels

462 Madonna and Child

501 Baronzio, Giovanni

505 The Baptism of Christ

555 Madonna and Child with Five Angels

580 Grifo di Tancredi

583 Christ Blessing

606 Saint James Major

629 Saint Peter

652 Lippo Memmi

656 Madonna and Child with Donor

671 Saint John the Baptist

699 Lorenzetti, Pietro

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS

737 Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right panel]

754 Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel]

771 Lorenzo Monaco

776 Madonna and Child

788 Margaritone d'Arezzo

792 Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Saints

811 Martino di Bartolomeo

815 Deacon Saint, with Saint Anthony Abbot [right panel]

852 Saint Peter, with Saint James Major [left panel]

864 Master of Citt di Castello

868 Maesta (Madonna and Child with Four Angels)

892 Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes

896 The Mourning Madonna

915 The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist

934 Master of Saint Francis

938 Saint James Minor

963 Saint John the Evangelist

988 Master of the Washington Coronation

991 The Coronation of the Virgin

1016 Nardo di Cione

c. 1250/1265 Executed sometime around the period 12501265