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Provenance

Church and convent of Cestello (later Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi), Florence, c. 1503-after 1630.[1] Rodolphe Kann [1844/1845-1905], Paris, before 1907;[2] purchased 1907 with the entire Kann collection by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[3] purchased 3 April 1916 by Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, as Florentine, fifteenth century;[4] inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, after purchase by funds of the Estate; gift 1942 to NGA.

[1] The provenance from the church of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi in Florence, first published in the Kann Collection catalogue in 1907, is confirmed by both documents and stylistic evidence. A record of February 1503 in the archive from that church in the Archivio di Stato, Florence, indicates that a priest called Ser Giovanni di Domenico "de vreti" ("of the stained glass windows") was due payment for "two windows made in the choir with figures" (Luchs, Alison, "Origins of the Widener Annunciation Windows," Studies in the History of Art 7 [1975]: especially 89, doc. 5; Florence, Archivio di Stato Compagnie Religiose Soppresse, C.XVIII 502, no. 357, fol. 205.) It indicates Giovanni was to be paid at the same time for a window for the Riccialbani chapel in the church. The Riccialbani window, still in situ and bearing a simple coat of arms of that family in a roundel, has borders whose fruit-cluster and floral designs perfectly match those of the National Gallery windows. The windows were removed and reinstalled in a new chapter house between 1628 and 1630; the date and circumstances of their removal from this location are unknown. Since the windows next appeared in a French collection, they may have been removed during Napoleon's Italian campaign, when several altarpieces from the church were taken to France. See Everett P. Fahy, Jr., "Les cadres d'origine de retables florentins du Louvre," Revue du Louvre 26, no. 1 (1976), 6-14.

[2] Kann catalogue 1907, 1:15, no. 22.

[3] In a letter of 1 March 1916 to Joseph Widener, Joseph Duveen writes that Duveen Brothers "possess only a two-thirds share" in this window and NGA 1942.9.312; the dealer having the other third appears to have been Wildenstein's (Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: Series II.I. Collectors' files, 1901-1965; Joseph E. Widener, box 523, folder 6, reel 378; copy in NGA curatorial files).

[4] Date on a Widener collection card, now in NGA curatorial files. For an undated photograph of the windows installed in the Raphael Room at Lynnewood Hall, see David Alan Brown, Berenson and the Connoisseurship of Italian Painting, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 20, fig. 33.

Technical Summary

The window is in good condition. Its first recorded restoration was in 1629, when it waw cleaned, the leading renewed, and "pieces of the fields that were missing" were restored.[1] Its most recent cleaning, by the National Gallery's object conservators, took place in 1982. The window had suffered several losses of the shading painted on pale or nearly clear glass areas such as the Virgin's hands and neck. No losses were evident in the Virgin's face, which is shaded with a delicate sfumato effect that differs from the heavier painting on surviving shaded areas of the angel's face (see note 1).

There is a fine crack in the Virgin's halo. A record of 7 December 1942 in the NGA files indicates two broken panes were to be repaired by Mr. Boertlein (not otherwise identified) on the following day, mostly with the use of original glass.[2]

The backs of some border pieces with floral and fruit designs bear painted arabic numerals, in no apparent order. They may reflect a practice recorded later in Vasari's instructions to stained-glass artists to mark each piece of glass with a number "in order to find it easily"; this could be rubbed off after assembly.[3] The numbers on the Washington window, however, is applied in a durable, strongly adhering pigment, possibly fired on. They may be related to a restoration or, more probably to the original process of assembling the border.

[1] Luchs 1975, 83, doc. 1. The restored pieces have not been identified. Differences in color and painting technique have raised suspicions about the cornice atop the base of the Virgin's lectern. The rendering of her face and neck in five separate pieces shaded in varying methods, compared with a single piece for the corresponding area on the angel, raises questions about possible repairs to the Virgin window. At press time the backs of the windows were not accessible for the examination that might resolve these issues.

It has been suggested that the Virgin's face is modern (Giuseppe Marchini, letter, 26 October 1959, in NGA curatorial files; undated note in file quoting "Dr. Finkl"). While the face is on an unusually flat piece of glass, and differs in shading technique from her hands and from the angel, the drawing style of details matches the angel well. Mary's pale visage could represent an original, iconographically motivated distinction, giving her face a brightness that responds to the depicted light in the left window, whose rays would fall directly on her face.[2] The memo does not indicate which window was broken, how the damage occurred, or the location of the panes except to mention that the less severely damaged area included "a floral design," and thus must have involved a border piece.[3] See Giorgio Vasari, Vasari on Technique, ed. G. Baldwin Brown, trans. Louisa S. Maclehose (1907; reprint New York, 1960), 168-169; I owe this reference to Shelley G. Sturman.

Bibliography

1907
Catalogue de la collection Rodolphe Kann; objets d'art. 2 vols. (Objets d'art by Jules Mannheim) Paris, 1907: 1:15, no. 22, as early sixteenth century, after Lorenzo di Credi.
1935
Inventory of the Objects d'Art at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, The Estate of the Late P.A.B. Widener. Philadelphia, 1935: 49, as Italian (Florence), fifteenth century, probably designed by Lorenzo di Credi.
1942
Works of Art from the Widener Collection. Foreword by David Finley and John Walker. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 11, as Florentine 15th Century.
1952
Christensen, Erwin O. Objects of Medieval Art from the Widener Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1952: 18.
1965
Marchini, Giuseppe. "Vetri italiani in America." Arte in Europa: Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Edoardo Arslan. 2 vols. Pavia, 1965-1966: 1:431-436.
1975
Luchs, Alison. "Origins of the Widener Annunciation Windows." Studies in the History of Art 7 (1975): 81-89, color repro.
1977
Luchs, Alison. Cestello; a Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance. New York, 1977: 28, 117-119, figs. 88a, b.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 34, color repro. 35.
1985
Luchs, Alison. "Stained Glass Above Renaissance Altars; Figural Windows in Italian Church Architecture from Brunelleschi to Bramante." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 48 (1985): 200-204, fig. 24.
1987
Stained Glass before 1700 in American Collections; Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern Seaboard States. Corpus Vitrearum Checklist II. Studies in the History of Art 23, monograph ser. I (1987): color repro. 6, 12, 34.
1991
Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 196, color repro.
1993
Distelberger, Rudolf, Alison Luchs, Philippe Verdier, and Timonthy H. Wilson. Western Decorative Arts, Part I: Medieval, Renaissance, and Historicizing Styles including Metalwork, Enamels, and Ceramics. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1993: 62-67, color repro. 63.
2000
National Gallery of Art Special Issue. Connaissance des Arts. Paris, 2000:62.
2019
Vignon, Charlotte. Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880-1940. New York, 2019: 232 fig. 86, 277 n. 853.

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