Saint James Minor
c. 1272
Artist, Umbrian, active third quarter 13th century

Saint James Minor is one of the more elusive of Jesus’s disciples. He is usually identified—as in the inscription running along the arch here—as the son of Alphaeus, and by his attribute, a fuller's club. James was said to have been the first bishop of Jerusalem and to have been killed by a mob wielding the wooden club used to soften cloth. In this case, the pose of Saint James with his right arm wrapped in a swath of drapery was inspired by figures adorning an early Christian sarcophagus formerly kept in the same church as the painting.
The name of the man who painted it may be unknown to us, but he must be counted among the leading artists of his time. The Master of Saint Francis is noted for rapid, energetic drawing and just this way of communicating through vivid gesture. He received other important commissions, including a fresco cycle in the mother church of the Franciscan order at Assisi, where papal interest (and largesse) insured the highest level of work. The artist may very well have been a Franciscan friar himself.
This panel and another in the National Gallery of Art depicting John the Evangelist originally were part of an altarpiece more than 11 feet long—one of the most important altarpieces made in Italy during the third quarter of the 13th century (see Reconstructions). The altarpiece was located in the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia. The Gallery's two panels plus those of Saint Francis and the remaining ten apostles (four panels survive in other museums; the rest are lost) probably flanked a central image of the Virgin and Child (also lost).

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 1
Artwork overview
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Medium
tempera on panel
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
painted surface: 48.3 × 22.5 cm (19 × 8 7/8 in.)
overall size: 49.8 × 24.2 cm (19 5/8 × 9 1/2 in.)
framed: 63.5 × 38.1 × 9.21 cm (25 × 15 × 3 5/8 in.) -
Accession
1952.5.15
Associated Artworks

Saint John the Evangelist
Master of Saint Francis
1272
More About this Artwork
Artwork history & notes
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 [1837–1917], Rome;[3] probably (Paolo Paolini, Rome), by 1921;[4] Philip Lehman [1861–1947], New York, by 1928; sold June 1943 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 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. CXII–CXIII), 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. Jürgen 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 dell’Umbria. Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d’arte di età romanica e gotica, Rome, 1969: 28). Probably, as in various other cases (see for example Miklós 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) und 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 Pietà 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 Foundation’s purchase of fifteen paintings from the Lehman collection, including 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 Lehman’s son Robert Lehman (1892–1963) 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 Kanter’s e-mail of 6 May 2011, about ownership of the Lehman collection, in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1831.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
1946
Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 810.
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. 6/4, repro., as The Apostle Saint James Minor (shown only in New York in 1999).
2024
The Enigma of the Master of Saint Francis. The Stil Novo in Thirteenth-Century Umbria, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia, 2024, no. 3.2f, repro..
Bibliography
1907
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1924
Vitzthum, Georg Graf, and Wolgang Fritz Volbach. Die Malerei und Plastik des Mittelalters in Italien. Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft 1. Wildpark-Potsdam, 1924: 251.
1928
Lehman, Robert. The Philip Lehman Collection, New York: Paintings. Paris, 1928: no. LXI, repro.
1929
Marle, Raimond van. "Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth Century in the Collection of Monsieur Adolph Stoclet in Brussels." Pantheon 4 (1929): 316.
1930
Mayer, August L. "Die Sammlung Philip Lehman." Pantheon 5 (1930): 115.
1932
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1935
D’Ancona, Paolo. Les primitifs italiens du XIe au XIIIe siècle. Paris, 1935: 76.
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: 281.
1945
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1946
Frankfurter, Alfred M. Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1946: 14, repro.
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1949
Garrison, Edward B. Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index. Florence, 1949: 27, 162-163, repro.
1951
Galetti, Ugo, and Ettore Camesasca. Enciclopedia della pittura italiana. 3 vols. Milan, 1951: 2:1486.
1956
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1957
Exposition de la Collection Lehman de New York. Exh. cat. Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 1957: 30.
1959
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1961
Schultze, Jürgen. "Ein Duecento-Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 10 (1961): 60, 61, 63, 64.
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 108-109, repro.
Schultze, Jürgen. "Zur Kunst des ‘Franziskusmeisters.’" Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 141, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 86.
1966
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 4-5, fig. 2.
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1967
Schultze, Jürgen. "Die Fresken in der Unterkirche von San Francesco zu Assisi und andere Werke des ‘Franziskusmeisters.’" Raggi 7, no. 2 (1967): 51-52, repro. 53.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 76, repro.
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:255, 256.
1969
Santi, Francesco, ed. Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d’arte di età romanica e gotica. Rome, 1969: 27, 29, 30-31 (misidentified as James Major).
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 128, 405, 646, 665.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 224, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:324-325; 2:pl. 234.
1980
Scarpellini, Pietro. "Le pitture." In Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi. Edited by Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto. Assisi, 1980: 43-44.
1982
Christiansen, Keith. "Fourteenth-Century Italian Altarpieces." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 40 (1982): 14, repro. 16.
Pietralunga, Fra Ludovico da, and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.). Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi. Treviso, 1982: 175.
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.
1983
Esser, Saskia. "Die Ausmalung der Unterkirche von San Francesco in Assisi durch den Franziskusmeister." Ph.D. dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, 1983: 136 n. 4.
Poeschke, Joachim. "Der ‘Franziskusmeister’ und die Anfänge der Ausmalung von S. Francesco in Assisi." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 27 (1983): 157 (repro.), 162, 163.
1984
Os, Hendrik W. van. Sienese Altarpieces 1215-1460. Form, Content, Function. 2 vols. Groningen, 1984-1990: 1(1984):19, repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 257, repro.
Poeschke, Joachim. Die Kirche San Francesco in Assisi und ihre Wandmalereien. Munich, 1985: 67.
1986
Castelnuovo, Enrico, ed. La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. Essays by Filippo Todini and Elvio Lunghi. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:376, 624.
1987
Pope-Hennessy, John, and Laurence B. Kanter. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987: 78, 80, repro. 286.
Marques, Luiz. La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale. Paris, 1987: 61, 285.
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.
Todini, Filippo. La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento. 2 vols. Milan, 1989: 1:185, 2:repro. 29.
1990
Neri Lusanna, Enrica, and Cristina De Benedictis. "Miniatura umbra del Duecento: diffusione e Influenze a Roma e nell’Italia meridionale." Studi di storia dell’arte 1 (1990): 11.
1991
Solberg, Gail E. "Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and Work." Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1991. Ann Arbor, MI, 1994: 634.
Romano, Serena. "Maestro di S. Francesco." In Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 8(1997):119.
1992
Boskovits, Miklós. "Appunti per una storia della tavola d’altare: le origini." Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 430, repro. 433.
Krüger, Klaus. Der frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien: Gestalt- und Funktionswandel des Tafelbildes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1992: 26, 165, fig. 316.
Solberg, Gail E. "A Reconstruction of Taddeo di Bartolo’s 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 dell’Umbria: 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.
Romano, Serena. "Master of St Francis." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 20:761.
1997
Martin, Frank, and Gerhard Ruf. Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien. Regensburg, 1997: 53-55.
1998
Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 157, 166.
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1999
Cannon, Joanna. "The Stoclet ‘Man of Sorrows’: A Thirteenth-Century Italian Diptych Reunited." The Burlington Magazine 141 (1999): 110 n. 30.
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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.
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.
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2002
Giorgi, Silvia. "Maestro di San Francesco." In La pittura in Europa. Il Dizionario dei pittori. Edited by Carlo Pirovano. 3 vols. Milan, 2002: 2:549.
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2006
Bisogni, Fabio, and Enrico Menestò, eds. Iacopone da Todi e l’arte in Umbria nel Duecento. Exh. cat. Museo Comunale, Todi. Milan, 2006: 168, 170, 172.
2016
Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 288-300, color repro.
Inscriptions
on the arch: SANCTVS JACOB [A]LPHEI Q[VI] COGNOMINAT[VS] E[ST] IV[STVS] [1]
Wikidata ID
Q20172942