National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene [left panel]
  • Overview
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

Pietro Vannucci, called Perugino after the city in which he often lived, collaborated with other celebrated painters in one of the most prestigious commissions of the late fifteenth century -- the decoration of the walls of the Sistine Chapel in 1481-1482. He headed active workshops in Perugia and Florence, where he would eventually be overshadowed by his greatest pupil, Raphael.

Perugino's Crucifixion with Saints, painted for a chapel in the Dominican church in San Gimignano near Siena, shows Christ hanging on the cross with Mary and Saint John the Evangelist at his feet. In the two side panels, Saint Jerome with his lion, and Mary Magdalene gaze up at the figure of Christ. However, the work does not attempt to depict the actual event or place, but is a visual meditation on the theme of the Crucifixion. The serene mood is reflected in the landscape, which also reveals the influence of Flemish painting which had recently been introduced into Florence.

From the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century Perugino's Crucifixion was thought to be the work of his pupil Raphael. When it was discovered that the donor of the triptych died in 1497, when Raphael would have been only fourteen, Perugino's authorship once again became clear.

Inscription

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Marks and Labels

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Provenance

Probably commissioned by Bartolommeo Bartoli (or di Bartolo), Bishop of Cagli [d. 1497];[1] by gift from him to the church of San Domenico, San Gimignano; seized 1796/1797 by Napoleonic troops; acquired 1796/1797 by Dr. Buzzi, and sold soon thereafter to Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Galitzin [1772-1821], Russian ambassador to Rome; by inheritance to his son, Theodore Alexandrovich Galitzin [d. 1848], Palazzo Galitzin, Rome; by inheritance to his nephew, Sergei Mikhailovich Galitzin [1843-1915], Moscow; displayed from 1865 at the Museum of Western European Painting of Prince S.M. Galitzin, Moscow;[2] purchased 1886 with the Galitzin collection by the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, Saint Petersburg; purchased April 1931 through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London and New York; and M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London) by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 5 June 1931 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] The frame on the painting is modern and thus the coats-of-arms decorating it have no bearing on the provenance.

[2] A.A. Vasilchikoff, "The Artworks of Raphael in Russsia," Viestnik iziashnych iskusstv [Fine Arts Herald] I, no. 3 (1883): 390-393, provides this history of ownership. He also notes that Buzzi had the French artist Baron François Xavier Fabre treat the picture, and that after Theodore Galitzin's death, the painting languished in a storage closet of his palace until 1862. According to Brüiningk and Somov (E. Brüiningk and Andrei Ivanovich Somov, Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la Galerie des Tableaux. Les Écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne, Saint Petersburg, 1891: 134), a Livornese painter named Gazzarini offered a somewhat different account of the pre-Galitzin ownership of the picture, which cannot today be substantiated. See also R.P. Gray, "The Golitsyn and Kushelev-Bezborodko Collections and their Role in the Evolution of Public Art Collections in Russia," Oxford Slavonic Papers n.s. 31 (1998): 54-57 [51-67].

[3] Mellon purchase date and date deeded to Mellon Trust are according to Mellon collection files in NGA curatorial records and David Finley's notebook (donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives).

Exhibition History

1983
Raphael and America, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1983, no. 52, pl. 7.
2002
The Flowering of Florence, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2002, no. 4, repro.
2004
Golitzyn Museum in Volkhonka Street, State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 2004.

Bibliography

1935
Bertini-Casosso, Achille. "Perugino." In Enciclopedia Italiana. 36 vols. Rome, 1929-1939. Rome, 1935: 26:pl.219
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 148-149.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 239, repro. 164.
1949
Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 25, repro.
1951
Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 54-57, repro.
1952
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 36, color repro.
1957
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 23
1959
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Early Italian Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Three in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 32, color repro., as The Crucifixion with Saints.
1960
The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 24.
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 88, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 100
1966
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:122, color repro.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 88, repro.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 262, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: I:360-361, II:pl. 259
1979
Watson, Ross. National Gallery of Art. London, 1979: 32, pl. 15,color repro.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 106, no. 77, color repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 302, repro.
1991
Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 91, 92, color repro.
1992
National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 23, repro.
1997
Neverov, Oleg and Mikhail Piotrovsky. The Hermitage: Essays on the History of the Collection, St. Petersburg, 1997, p. 166, repro.
1998
Christiansen, Keith. "The View From Italy." In From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Edited by Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998. New York, 1998: 41-43, fig. 22.
2003
Boskovits, Miklós, David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2003: 552-556, color repro.
2004
Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 34-35, no. 24, color repro.
2004
Neverov, Oleg Yakovlevich. Great Private Collections of Imperial Russia. New York and St. Petersburg, 2004: 42-43, ill. 41.
2006
Hartt, Frederick and David G. Wilkins. History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, 2006: 377-378, color fig. 14.19.
2011
Fiedler, Susanne and Torsten Knuth. "Vexierbilder einer Biographie: Dr. Heinz Mansfeld (1899-1959)." Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 126 (2011):308.

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