Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]
probably 1340
Artist, Sienese, active 1306 - 1345

Pietro Lorenzetti of Siena painted me in 1340. This inscription is the signature of the Sienese painter Pietro Lorenzetti, which survives on a fragment of the original frame (now incorporated in a modern support and located beneath the image of Madonna and Child). While Pietro and his brother Ambrogio are often noted for the inventive ways in which they defined three-dimensional space and incorporated details from everyday life to expand the realism of their figures and settings, they also painted icon-like devotional pictures, such as these. During this period, Pietro seems to have been especially influenced by Giotto, as seen in the quiet solemnity of the composition, in which a massive figures fill nearly the entire panel. The figures' clothing also typifies Giotto's style: heavy fabrics fall perpendicularly in a few simplified or pointed folds to emphasize the figures' solidity.
The central group of Madonna and Child proposes an unusual variant of the Hodegetria Madonna type, which can be found in a number of the Galleries paintings of this period (the Byzantine Enthroned Madonna and Child and Lippo Memmi’s Madonna and Child with Donor are just two). The Christ child is supported on his mother’s left arm and looks directly at the observer, but Mary does not point to her son with her right hand, as is typical, and instead offers him cherries. It is thought that this painting may have been commissioned for a church not in Siena but in Pisa, where apparently the motif of the Christ child eating cherries was then popular.
Artwork overview
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Medium
tempera on panel transferred to canvas
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Credit Line
Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix M. Warburg
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Accession
1941.5.1.a-c
Associated Artworks

Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel]
Pietro Lorenzetti
1340

Madonna and Child, with the Blessing Christ [middle panel]
Pietro Lorenzetti
1340

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right panel]
Pietro Lorenzetti
1340
More About this Artwork
Artwork history & notes
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 Miklós Boskovits, to Pietro’s 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 Pietro’s bottega only.” Miklós 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 (Warburg’s 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.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
1939
Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, 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.
1930
Cecchi, Emilio. Pietro Lorenzetti. Milan, 1930: 37, pl. 104.
1932
Marle, Raimond van. Le scuole della pittura italiana. 2 vols. The Hague and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):361.
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places. Oxford, 1932: 293.
1933
Sinibaldi, Giulia. I Lorenzetti. Siena, 1933: 175.
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: 252.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 251, repro. 135.
1951
Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 25 n. 1.
1960
Becchis, Michela. "Lorenzetti, Pietro." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 82+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 65(2005):809.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 77.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 68, repro.
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 2:221.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 109, 312, 429, 646.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 198, repro.
1976
Frinta, Mojmir Svatopluk. "Deletions from the Oeuvre of Pietro Lorenzetti and Related Works by the Master of the Beata Umilità, Mino Parcis da Siena and Iacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20 (1976): 290.
Laclotte, Michel. "Un ‘Saint Evêque’ de Pietro Lorenzetti." Paragone 27 (1976): 18 n. 7.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:269-270; 2:pl. 185.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 232, repro.
1989
Volpe, Carlo. Pietro Lorenzetti. Edited by Mauro Lucco. Milan, 1989: 195-196, fig. 175.
1991
De Benedictis, Cristina. "Lorenzetti, Pietro." In Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 7(1996):884, 892.
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: 1:226, 228; 2:punch chart 7.5.
1998
Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and 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 Delaroche’s Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti." Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, 19.
2004
Hiller von Gaertringen, Rudolf. Italienische Gemälde im Städel 1300-1550: Toskana und Umbrien. Kataloge der Gemälde im Städelschen 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.
2008
Boskovits, Miklós, and Johannes Tripps, eds. Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg. Exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, 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.
2016
Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 224-232, color repro.
Inscriptions
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]
Wikidata ID
Q46624155