Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome, Saint Bernardino, and Angels
c. 1460/1470
Artist, Sienese, 1405 - 1481
West Building Main Floor, Gallery 8
Artwork overview
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Medium
tempera on panel
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Credit Line
-
Dimensions
painted surface: 62.5 x 42 cm (24 5/8 x 16 9/16 in.)
overall: 64.8 x 43.8 cm (25 1/2 x 17 1/4 in.) -
Accession
1939.1.274
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Family chapel of a country house at Larniano, near San Gimignano,[1] by about 1900. Count Silvio Piccolomini Clementini della Triana [1878-1962], Siena, in the 1920s and early 1930s.[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold June 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] A Brogi photograph (no. 11770) reproduces the painting as located in a "capella gentilizia" at Larniano, close to Siena. Actually Larniano is a locality not belonging to Siena but to the administrative district of San Gimignano (see Emmanuele Repetti, Dizionario geografico, fisico, storico della Toscana, Florence, 1835: 2:650, and Leone Chellini, Sam Gimignano e dintorni, Modena, 1921: 204-206). Chellini cites various villas in the area, some of them with private chapels, but neither he nor other authors of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries mention the NGA painting. The Brogi photograph is undated, but to judge from its number it must have been executed sometime before 1904; no. 15109 appears already in a volume by Corrado Ricci (Il Palazzo Pubblico di Siena e la mostra d'antica arte senese, Bergamo, 1904: fig. 66).
[2] The bill of sale to the Kress Foundation that includes this painting (see following note) lists the painting as "From Countess Piccolomini Collection, Siena." Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:413, gives Count Silvio Piccolomini as the former owner. In his expertise (in NGA curatorial files) written probably in 1937, F. Mason Perkins confirms that the panel used to belong to the Piccolomini family: "in one of whose palaces at Siena it was still hanging when first known to me." The fact, communicated to Mrs. Shapley by Everett Fahy (letter of 25 August 1972, in NGA curatorial files), that a copy of the NGA painting, made by A. Everett Austin, Jr. [1900-1957], and now in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, no. 1926.49, has on its back a handwritten note by the Museum's former director, Edward Forbes, possibly offers further information toward a reconstruction of the painting's history. Forbes writes: "I think it was painted by Austin in the studio of Federigo Ioni, Siena, about 1924." The Fogg copy was possibly made to replace the original in the Larniano chapel, and not utilized. In any case, by the mid-1920s the NGA painting must already have been in Siena, in one of the Piccolomini palaces.
[3] The bill of sale for a number of paintings and one sculpture, including NGA 1939.1.274, is dated 18 June 1937 (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1367.
Associated Names
Bibliography
1925
Trübner, Jörg. Die stilistische Entwickelung der Tafelbilder der Sano di Pietro (1405-1481). Strasbourg, 1925: 84.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 177, no. 385.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 183.
1946
Friedmann, Herbert. The Symbolic Goldfinch. Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art. Washington, DC, 1946: 154, 241, pl. 83.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 120.
1966
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 146, fig. 392.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 107, repro.
Bereson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968:1:383.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 182, 646.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 318, repro.
1977
Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. I Dipinti dal XII al XV secolo. Genoa, 1977: 287.
Levi d'Ancona, Mirella. The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting. Florence, 1977: 114.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:413-414, 2:pl. 294.
1983
Shearman, John. The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, 1983: 220.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 366, repro.
1987
Pope-Hennessy, John, and Laurence B. Kanter. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987: 220.
1993
Lloyd, Christopher. Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. Princeton, 1993: 214.
1998
Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 328.
Knauf, Marion. "Sano di Pietro's Madonna Panels: A Survey and Catalogue Raisonne of his Madonna and Child Pictures for Private Devotion." Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington, 1998: 47, 78, 241, 316, 325-326, cat. A66.
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: 617-621, color repro.
2012
Freuler, Gaudenz. "Sano di Pietro, la sua fortuna critica e il "problema" del Maestro dell'Osservanza." In Gabriele Fattorini et al, eds. Sano di Pietro: Qualità, devozione e pratica nella pittura senese del Quattrocento. Giornate di studio nel sesto centenario della nascita. Siena 5 dicembre 2005 – Asciano 6 dicembre 2005. Milan, 2012: 29, fig. 2.
2013
Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 235, 246, 248, 250.
2015
Sallay, Dóra. Corpus of Sienese Paintings in Hungary 1420-1510. Florence, 2015: 104-105, fig. 6.
2023
Ahl, Diane Cole. Painting in Fifteenth-Century Italy: "This Splendid and Noble Art". New Haven and London, 2023: 205, fig. 6.9.
Inscriptions
upper center in Virgin's halo: AVEGRATIAPLENA*DO[MINUS TECUM] (Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee), from Luke 1:28
Wikidata ID
Q20173805