Saint Apollonia

c. 1455/1460

Piero della Francesca

Painter, Italian, c. 1416/1417 - 1492

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman in front of a gold background wears a rose-pink cloak over a sky-blue dress and holds up a tooth in a pair of pincers in this vertical painting. Her body faces us but she looks slightly off to our left with pale brown eyes under faint, arched brows. She has a long nose and her thin, coral-pink lips are closed. Her wavy, auburn-brown hair falls closely around her neck. Her light blue dress has narrow, V-shaped neckline and the high waistline is gathered under a white belt or sash to create the impression of vertical pleats. Her deep pink cloak is fastened with a cord at the neck. It falls over her shoulders and arms, and she holds up the opposite hem with her left hand, on our right. In her right hand, on our left, she holds up a pair of iron-colored pincers holding a small, white object, a tooth. The surface of the painting is noticeably cracked, especially in the shiny gold background behind the person.

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 4


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on poplar panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 38.8 × 28 cm (15 1/4 × 11 in.)
    framed: 56.83 × 46.04 × 8.89 cm (22 3/8 × 18 1/8 × 3 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1952.5.19


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Main altar of the church of Sant'Agostino, Borgo San Sepolcro (today called Sansepolcro), by 1470;[1] transferred 1555 to the Pieve di Santa Maria (afterward called Sant'Agostino) and also placed on the main altar;[2] dismantled probably sometime after 1652;[3] possibly Luca and Francesco Duci, Borgo San Sepolcro.[4] Giuseppe Franceschi Marini [d. 1858], Borgo San Sepolcro, probably by 1835;[5] by inheritance to his son, Piero Franceschi Marini, Borgo San Sepolcro, until at least 1904.[6] (Paoletti, Paris and Florence). (F. Kleinberger & Co., New York);[7] sold 1914 to Philip Lehman [1861-1947], New York;[8] sold September 1943 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[9] gift 1952 to NGA.
[1] The altarpiece, commissioned by the friars and laity of the church of Sant'Agostino in Borgo San Sepolcro, must have been essentially complete by November 1469, and Piero must have received a final payment for it before 21 May 1470; see James R. Banker, "Piero della Francesca's S. Agostino Altarpiece: Some New Documents," The Burlington Magazine 129 (1987): 645-651. Vasari saw the polyptych, still complete, on the main altar of the church sometime before 1550 (Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piú eccellenti ittori, scultori e architettori, Florence, 1550: 362).
[2] The Augustinians moved to the Pieve di Santa Maria on 16 April 1555. It is known that "avevano portato con se le Reliquie...[and] le pitture portatili" ("they took with them the relics and movable pictures"), and they claimed the patronage rights of the altars of their former church (see Ercole Agnoletti, Memorie religiose inedite di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, 1970: 27-30). The literature was unaware for a long time that the polyptych was transferred to the new church, and Milanesi (in Vasari, Milanesi ed., 2:493 notes 2 and 3), as well as others (Giovanni Felice Pichi, La vita e le opera di Piero della Francesca, Sansepolcro, 1892: 101-108; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, 11 vols. in 25 parts, Milan, 1901-1940: 7 part 2(1913):460, thought that the Peruginesque Assumption of the Virgin, placed on the main altar of the church of Santa Chiara (the original church of Sant'Agostino) in Sansepolcro, was the central element of Piero's polyptych. Tancred Borenius ("Professor Venturi on Quattrocento Painting," The Burlington Magazine 29 [1916]: 162 n. 4) corrected the error; however, even afterward the smaller panels from that complex continued to be identified as the "quadretti in tavola, alcuni de' quali sembrano di mano di Piero della Francesca" ("small panel pictures, some of which seem to be from the hand of Piero della Francesca") described by Giacomo Mancini (Istruzione storico-pittorica per visitare le chiese e palazzi di Città di Castello: colle memorie di alcuni artefici del disegno..., 2 vols., Perugia, 1832: 2:272) as being in the choir of the nuns of Santa Chiara. Thus Eugenio Battisti (Piero della Francesca, 2 vols., Milan, 1971: 2:45), and more recently Franco Polcri (Due ritrovamenti d'archivio a Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, 1990: 3-5, and Il Polittico Agostiniano di Piero della Francesca. Quaderni di Studi e Restauri del Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 2, Milan, 1996: 91) believe that parts of the altarpiece remained in the old church of the Augustinian friars, rededicated in 1555 to Santa Chiara.
[3] It is known that a wall of the church collapsed in 1652 (Agnoletti, Memorie religiose, 3, 1970); the polyptych on the main altar was probably moved and dismantled either on that occasion or during the subsequent restoration campaign. See also Miklós Boskovits, "Il San Nicola da Tolentino di Piero della Francesca restaurato," ACr n.s. 768 (May-June 1995): 227.
[4] In the unpublished Cronica di Borgo S. Sepolcro (Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Cod. Magl. cl. XXV, 202, fol. 70), datable to the second half of the seventeenth century, Giovanni Cinelli Calvoli describes in the house of Luca and Francesco Ducci four panels by Piero della Francesca representing four saints, which he says came from the high altar of the Pieve di Sant'Agostino. The identification of the individual saints is not always precise, but their description (see Alessandro Parronchi, "Ricostruzione del polittico di Sant'Agostino...," Michelangelo 13 [1984]: nos. 46-47, 30) leaves no doubt that these are Saints Augustine (now in Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, no. 1785), Michael (now in London, National Gallery, no. 769), John the Evangelist (now in New York, Frick Collection, no. 36.1.138), and Nicholas of Tolentino (now in Milan, Museo Poldo Pezzoli, no. 445/598). In the same collection are recorded also four "little pictures" attributed to Piero della Francesca, which very likely came from the same complex. They represent a Flagellation, a Crucifixion, and episodes of the Deposition and Resurrection, today all lost except the Crucifixion, which seems to be identifiable with a painting now in the Frick Collection in New York.
[5] A pamphlet published in 1835 (Vita di Piero della Francesca pittore del borgo Sansepolcro scrita da Giorgio Vasari Aretino, dedicata a Giuseppe Franceschi Marini. Nozze Franceschi Marini - Frescobaldi, ed. by Margherita Vedova Pichi, with notes by Francesco Gherardi Gragomanni, Sansepolcro) mentions four works by Piero preserved in the house of the Franceschi Marini: a youthful Self-Portrait (now lost, but recorded by Milanesi, 1878: 488, note 1, as a copy; see also Lajos Vayer, "Il problema degli autoritratti di Piero della Francesca," in Studi di storia dell'arte sul Medioevo e il Rinascimento nel centnario di nascita di Mario Salmi, 2 vols., Florence, 1992: 2:433-447), a Nativity (now in the National Gallery in London, no. 908), "e due altri quadretti in tavola" ("and two other little panel pictures"). Several years later, the notes to Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, 14 vols., Florence, Le Monnier, 1846-1870 (originally 1568): 4(1848):13 n. 2), mention instead "quattro quadretti dell'altezza di circa due terzi di braccio [a Florentine braccio equals 58.4 cm], raffiguranti San Niccolò di Bari, Sant'Apollonia, [una] Santa Monaca ed un Santo Vescovo" ("four little pictures about two-thirds of a braccio high, representing Saint Nicholas of Bari, Saint Apollonia, a nun saint, and a bishop saint"), thought to be the work of Piero, in the Franceschi Marini collection. This is undoubtedly the group now divided among the Frick Collection in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, and an unknown location. In fact, on the occasion of his visit around 1860 (see Donata Levi, Cavalcaselle. Il pionere della conservazione dell'arte italiana, Turin, 1988: 140-141, 152) to Sansepolcro, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle noted the existence of paintings by Piero with images of "St. Anthony between Chiara, Apollonia and another figure" (see Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II to the XVI Century, 3 vols., London, 1864-1866: 551), giving sufficient elements for the identification of the first three figures. From their description it appears that the panels were at that time framed together, alongside each other, while in 1835 they were probably framed in pairs in two separate frames. Although the Franceschi Marini were considered descendants of Piero della Francesca, the paintings probably came into that household only at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Augustinians left their church in Sansepolcro (see Agnoletti, Memorie religiose, 1970: 57-58). Ranieri Benedetto Marini in 1698 assumed the name Franceschi, thus becoming the founder of the Franceschi Marini family (see Vittorio Spreti, Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italica, Milan, 1930: 2:250-251).
[6] The archives of the National Gallery in London holds a letter of 25 July 1904 from Piero Franceschi Marini, in which he affirms: "I still possess a few small panel pictures (figures of saints) once forming part of a predella of...my great ancestor," offering them for sale; see Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca, 2 vols., Milan, 1971: 2:46.
[7] According to the Kleinberger files, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (communicated by Rolf Bagemihl). In all probability the three panels were sold together, sometime between 1904 and 1909; in 1909 they were said to be untraceable at their former location (Edward Hutton in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy..., 3rd ed., 3 vols., ed. Hutton, London and New York, 1908-1909: 3(1909):20 n. 3). By 1911 the two panels now in the Frick Collection were recorded in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna (David Charles Preyer, The Art of the Vienna Galleries, Boston, 1911: 215). They have been in their present location since 1950 (nos. 50.1.157-158).
[8] The date of acquisition by the Lehman collection is given in the Kleinberger files (see note 7).
[9] The bill of sale between Robert Lehman and the Kress Foundation for three paintings, including Saint Appolonia, is dated 15 September 1943 (copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale indicate that Philip Lehman’s son Robert Lehman (1892-1963) was the 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/1799.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1939

  • Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 282, as Saint Apollonia of Alexandria by Piero della Francesca.

1946

  • Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 815.

1992

  • Piero e Urbino, Piero e le Corti rinascimentali, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 1992, no. 46, repro., as by Piero della Francesco.

2013

  • Piero della Francesca in America: From Sansepolcro to the East Coast, The Frick Collection, New York, 2013, no. 3a, repro.

2016

  • Andy Warhol: Icons, The Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia Art Museums, Charlottesville, 2016, no catalogue.

  • Piero della Francesca: Indagine su un mito [Piero della Francesca: Exploring a Legend], Musei San Domenico Forlì, 2016, no. 4, repro.

2024

  • Piero della Francesca. The Augustinian Polyptych reunited, Museo Poldi-Pezzoli, Milan, 2024, no. 5, repro.

Bibliography

1944

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 38, color repro., as by Piero della Francesca.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 49, repro., as by Piero della Francesca.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 60, repro., as by Piero della Francesca.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 299, repro., as by Piero della Francesca.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 103, as by Piero della Francesca.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:36, color repro., as by Piero della Francesco.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 91, repro., as Piero della Francesca.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 4, fig. 10.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:342.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 270, repro., as by Assistant of Piero della Francesca.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:372-374; 2:pl. 270.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 90, no. 48, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 311, repro.

1998

  • Dillenberger, Jane Daggett. The Religious Art of Andy Warhol. New York, 1998: 52, 56, repro.

  • Calvesi, Maurizio. Piero della Francesca. Milan, 1998:212-215, fig. 15f, repro.

  • Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. "Virgin/Virginity." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:906.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 579-586, color repro., as by Piero della Francesca.

2013

  • Rosenberg, Karen. “At the Altar of Renaissance Tuscany.” New York Times 162, no. 56,048 (February 15, 2013): C-30.

Wikidata ID

Q3948792


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