Saint Catherine of Alexandria

c. 1335/1340

Bartolomeo Bulgarini

Painter, Italian, c. 1300 - 1378

Shown from the waist up, a woman wearing a garnet-red robe rests a book and a palm frond against a spiked wheel, all against a gold background in this arched, vertical painting. The woman’s light skin is tinged with pale green, and her cheeks are faint pink. Her shoulders face us, and she slightly looks up and off to our right with gray eyes under curved brows. She has a long, straight nose, and her small, full, bow-shaped lips are closed. Her wavy blond hair is parted down the middle and pulled back at the base of her head. Her red robe has a pattern of delicate diamond shapes and the underside is white, visible where it turns over around the neck. The robe is fastened with a round, gold disk the size of a DVD. Letters there read, “S.K.A.T.E.R.I.N.A.” around the perimeter of a four-lobed, red, blue, and gold geometric design at the center of the brooch. The sky-blue garment beneath her robe has a marine-blue collar. She clasps the palm frond in her left hand, to our right. The hand rests on the book, which is propped against the wheel in front of her, so the frond reaches beyond and above that shoulder, nearly to the edge of the painting. The wheel is edged with short, curving spikes like talons. The woman’s gold crown and round halo blend into the shimmering gold background, which is visibly cracked in some areas. The top of the panel curves up as if into an arch but is cut across the panel over her halo.

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The inscription around the elaborate gold clasp holding her cloak gives her name, but 14th-century viewers would have immediately recognized Saint Catherine of Alexandria by the book she holds and the spiked wheel before her. Legends of the fourth-century Egyptian martyr made her one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. A beautiful girl from a royal family, she was baptized following a dream in which the infant Jesus gave her a ring. As the bride of Christ, she rejected a temporal marriage to the Roman emperor Maxentius and protested his persecution of Christians. When famous philosophers were sent to convince her of the errors of her faith, she confounded them with her knowledge, but she was still sentenced to be torn apart between spiked wheels. When the moment came, miraculously, the wheels burst into flames, but she was beheaded anyway. Catherine was considered an especially potent intercessor for human prayers, protector of the dying, and patron of students.

This painting was once part of an altarpiece that stood in the church of San Cerbone, in the Tuscan town of Lucca (see Reconstruction). It is the work of Bartolomeo Bulgarini, one of the most renowned painters in mid-14th century Siena, less than one hundred miles from Lucca, where other panels from this altarpiece survive. His style reflects two great Sienese artists of the earlier generation: the decorative brilliance of Duccio and the simple, heavier figures and tender humanity of Pietro Lorenzetti.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 3


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    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.)

  • Accession

    1943.4.20

More About this Artwork


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Monastery of San Cerbone, near Lucca, by 1706 until no later than 1845;[1] possibly Carlo Lasinio [1759–1838] 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 Böhler, 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;[7] 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 nell’arte, 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 più 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,” L’Arte 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 collector’s 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 Brauer’s 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 26–28, 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 Böhler as purchaser of the painting. Inventory card no. 164-32, in the Records of Julius Böhler Munich, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (copy in NGA curatorial files), documents instead the 1932 purchase by Böhler 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 “è 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 Böhler’s in Munich, the possible new owner was presumably the circus tycoon John Ringling (1866-1936), who is known to have used Böhler’s services in building up his art collection (now the Ringling Museum) in Sarasota, Florida, since the late 1920s. By 1930-1931, however, Ringling’s 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: ix–xiii). 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 Péter (“Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro d'Ovile,” Rivista d'Arte 13 (1931): 2-44) also cites it as being with Böhler’s, whereas its two companion pieces were still in a private collection, presumably one of Sterbini’s 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 Böhler 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. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1812.
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Associated Names

Bibliography

1706

  • Brandeglio, Antonio di. Vita di S. Cerbone vescovo di Popolonia e confessore. Lucca, 1706: 221-222, 300.

1845

  • Ridolfi, Michele. "Sopra i tre più antichi dipintori lucchesi dei quali si conoscono le opere: cenni storici e critici." Atti dell’Accademia lucchese di scienze, lettere ed arti 13 (1845): 374.

1901

  • Venturi, Adolfo. Storia dell’arte italiana. 11 vols. Milan, 1901-1940: 5(1907):696 n. 1.

1905

  • Perkins, F. Mason. "Arte senese nella Quadreria Sterbini a Roma." Rassegna d’arte senese 1, no. 4 (1905): 148-149, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.

  • Venturi, Adolfo. "La quadreria Sterbini in Roma." L’Arte 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 Gemäldegalerie zu Siena. Strasbourg, 1907: 41 n. 1.

  • Vollmer, Hans. "Meister der Ovile - Madonna." In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 37(1950):260.

1908

  • Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 3 vols. Edited by Edward Hutton. Vol. 2, Sienese School of the Fourteenth 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.

  • Perkins, F. Mason. "Pitture senesi poco conosciute." La Diana 6 (1931): 28.

  • Péter, Andrea. "Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro di Ovile." Rivista d’arte 13 (1931): 22-33, figs. 13-14.

1932

  • Campetti, Placido. "Annuari." Bollettino storico lucchese 4 (1932): 159.

  • Edgell, George Harold. A History of Sienese Painting. New York, 1932: 114.

  • 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.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 111, no. 521, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.

  • National Gallery of Art. Book of Illustrations. Washington, 1941: 133 (repro.), 244.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 250, repro. 135, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.

  • Shoolman, Regina, and Charles E. Slatkin. Enjoyment of Art in America: A Survey of the Permanent Collections of Paintings, Sculpture, Ceramics & Decorative Arts in American and Canadian Museums: Being an Introduction to the Masterpieces of Art from Prehistoric to Modern Times. Philadelphia and New York, 1942: 284, pl. 253.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 20, repro., as by Pietro Lorenzetti.

  • "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. Washington, 1951: 25 n. 1, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.

  • Galetti, Ugo, and Ettore Camesasca. Enciclopedia della pittura italiana. 3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:2482.

  • Toesca, Pietro. Il Trecento. Storia dell’arte italiana, 2. Turin, 1951: 572 n. 92, 574 n. 93.

1953

  • Belli, Isa. Guida di Lucca. Lucca, 1953: 123-124.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 29, repro., as by Pietro Lorenzetti.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. .National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 77.

1966

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 53-54, fig. 145.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 68, repro.

  • Bertolini Campetti, Licia, and Silvia Meloni Trkulja, eds. Museo di Villa Guinigi, Lucca: la villa e le collezioni. Lucca, 1968: 142.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 2:347, pl. 67.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 133, 381, 646, 664.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 200, repro.

1977

  • Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. I Dipinti dal XII al XV secolo. Genoa, 1977: 136.

1978

  • Bruno, Raffaele. Roma: Pinacoteca Capitolina. Bologna, 1978: 3.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:270-271; 2:pl. 186.

  • De Benedictis, Cristina. La pittura senese 1330-1370. Florence, 1979: 85, 86.

1981

  • Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese del Trecento. 1st ed. Milan, 1981: 221

1982

  • Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’arte. Exh. cat. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 250, 457.

1983

  • Baracchini, Clara, ed. Il secolo di Castruccio: Fonti e documenti di storia lucchese. Exh. cat. Chiesa Monumentale di S. Cristoforo. Lucca, 1983: 199.

  • L’Art gothique siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture. Exh. cat. Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 242.

  • Skaug, Erling S. "Punch Marks. What Are They Worth? Problems of Tuscan Workshop Interrelationships in the Mid-Fourteenth Century." In La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte. Edited by Hendrik W. van Os and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer. Bologna, 1983: 263.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 233, repro.

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): 628, n. 91.

  • Castelnuovo, Enrico, ed. La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. 2 vols. Essays by Antonio Caleca and Monica Leoncini. Milan, 1986: 1:254; 2:560.

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, Miklós, and Serena Padovani. Early Italian Painting 1290-1470. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. London, 1990: 36, 37 n.13.

  • Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: i dipinti. 3rd ed. Genoa, 1990: 90.

1991

  • Steinhoff, Judith B. Bartolomeo Bulgarini and Sienese Painting of the Mid-Fourteenth Century. 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1990. Ann Arbor, MI, 1991: 1:134, 135, 176, 192, 193, 215; 2:388-392.

  • Baracchini, Clara. "Lucca. Scultura, Pittura e Miniatura." In Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 8(1997):21.

1992

  • Labriola, Ada. "Bulgarini Bartolomeo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 15(1997):109.

1993

  • Steinhoff, Judith B. "A Trecento Altarpiece Rediscovered: Bartolommeo Bulgarini’s Polyptych for San Gimignano." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 56 (1993): 107, 110, 111.

  • Tazartes, Maurizia. "Profilo della pittura lucchese del Trecento." Ricerche di storia dell’arte 50 (1993): 90-91.

1994

  • Skaug, Erling S. 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: 1:250; 2:punch chart 7.12.

1996

  • Steinhoff, Judith B. "Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 5:164.

1998

  • Filieri, Maria Teresa, ed. Sumptuosa tabula picta: pittori a Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento. Exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca. Livorno, 1998: 45.

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. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 2004: 83 n. 4.

2005

  • Mori, Francesco. “Un polittico di Bartolomeo Bulgarini per la chiesa domenicana di San Gimignano.” In Capolavori ritrovati in terra di Siena: itinerari d’autunno nei musei senesi. Edited by Luciano Bellosi, Gabriele Fattorini, and Antonio Paolucci. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2005: 86.

2007

  • Steinhoff, Judith. Sienese Painting after the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art Market. Cambridge, 2007: 49, 183-185, 189, figs. 77-79

  • De Floriani, Anna. "Pittura del Trecento fra Genova e Avignone: osservazioni in merito ad alcuni studi recenti e un’ipotesi ligure per il trittico di Angers." Studi di storia dell’arte 18 (2007): 41 n.15.

2009

  • Boskovits, Miklós, ed. The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings from the 13th to 15th Century. Florence, 2009: 43, 46, 47 n. 13.

  • Bellosi, Luciano, et al., eds. La collezione Salini: dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 4 vols. Florence, 2009, 2015: 1(2009):113.

2011

  • Casu, Stefano G. The Pittas Collection: Early Italian Painting (1200-1530). Florence, 2011: 30 n. 9.

2016

  • Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 28-37, color repro.

2017

  • Brilliant, Virginia. Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings in the Ringling Museum of Art. Sarasota, FL, and New York, 2017: xix.

Inscriptions

on the gilded brooch of the saint's mantle: S.K.A.T.E.R.I.N.A

Wikidata ID

Q20173125


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