The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation

c. 1400/1405

Paolo di Giovanni Fei

Artist, Sienese, c. 1335/1345 - 1411

A woman, Mary, sitting on a throne made of clouds is surrounded by ten winged angels, floating above a landscape with twelve people gathered closely around a long, rectangular, stone box filled with flowers, all set against a gold background in this tall, vertical painting. Mary and the angels have pale, peachy skin and the men below have more tan complexions. Each person’s head is surrounded by a flat, gold halo. In the upper half of the composition, Mary’s blond hair is covered by a veil, and her white robe is decorated with a pattern of starburst-like, gold shapes and edged in gold. She holds her hands together in prayer and looks up. She sits on a light blue, cloud-like form, which is held up by two angels. The other eight angels look on, four to each side. Six of them each play a different musical instrument, and the top two cross hands across their chests. The angels all have blond hair and wear flowing robes in cranberry red, steel gray, cream white, or pale sky blue. In the bottom half of the painting, the people kneeling or bending over the coffin-sized, stone box wear gold-trimmed robes in azure blue, lilac purple, raspberry pink, marigold orange, sage green, or coral red. All but one is bearded, though the face of one, opposite us, is half-hidden behind the outstretched arm of his neighbor. One man, to our left, points into the box, which is filled with white and red flowers and pine-green leaves, and others look into the box, up, or at each other. The box is inlaid with teal-green panels on the side we can see. Grass and flowers grow below. Beyond the box and people, and between them and Mary above, a person kneels on an olive-green, rocky outcropping with hands raised. The angels around Mary line the inner edge of an arch at the top of the panel. The roundels at the top corners above the arch are occupied by a person wearing a mauve-pink robe over a gold garment to our left and a blue robe over a white and gold garment to our left. The entire panel is surrounded by a gold frame carved with steps and moldings.

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It was 1950 before the Catholic Church accepted the Virgin Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven as official dogma, but the notion had long been part of her legend and a subject for artists. One of the earliest large-scale depictions of this event in Italy was a rose window in the cathedral of Siena, designed by Duccio around 1288. No doubt Paolo di Giovanni Fei would have seen Duccio’s work many times. Paolo’s panel, on the other hand, was used for private devotion. The representation of the Annunciation with images of Mary and the archangel Gabriel in small roundels suggests that it stood on its own, without flanking panels.

Paolo’s Virgin is serene, enthroned on a cloud and looking similar to the young Mary that Paolo painted in The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. The artist’s real interest, though, seems to be in the reactions of the apostles, communicated especially through their gestures. At the end of Mary’s time on earth, clouds transported all the apostles from the places where they taught to her bedside. When she died, Jesus appeared to escort her soul to heaven and returned three days later for her body. Here, 11 apostles crowd around Mary’s sarcophagus. Each expresses his wonderment at the miraculous appearance of flowers where a body should have been. In the center of the group, one jostles in to get a closer look. Apart from the others is Thomas, kneeling on the Mount of Olives. Questioning these events, he prayed to Mary for a further sign, and she handed down the girdle (belt) from her robe. His body, arms flung wide and head thrown back dramatically, conveys the measure of his awe.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface: 66.5 × 38.1 cm (26 3/16 × 15 in.)
    overall: 79.8 × 51 cm (31 7/16 × 20 1/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1961.9.71

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation, c. 1400/1405

This horizontal painting is made up of three parts: in the center square panel, a woman reclines under a wooden shelter set into a rocky cave, which is surrounded by angels, and narrower wings to either side are each occupied by a standing man. All the people have pale skin, which is tinged with faint green. The three panels are joined with a gold frame, and the gold background behind the central scene and the men in the side panels are covered with a noticeable network of cracks. In the central panel, a cobalt-blue robe nearly envelopes the reclining woman’s body; this is Mary. It covers her head and falls open where she crosses her wrists over her chest to show a pink garment underneath. A flat gold halo encircles her head ,and her body is surrounded by a field of crimson red, almost like an aura. She rests under a wooden structure with a pitched roof, which is surrounded by craggy, barren rock. A swaddled infant lies in a rectangular, tray-like manger. The infant’s head is also surrounded by a gold halo. Fine gold rays emanate down into the structure from a star just above the peak of the roof. A bull and a donkey look down at the baby from the far side of the manger. The interior of the structure behind them is black. In a smaller scale, two women wash a haloed infant in a tub in front of the rocky cave near the lower left corner of this panel. A man with a white beard and hair sits to our left of Mary, holding a pink cloak at his throat and looking toward the infant. Above and around the rocks, seven winged and haloed angels cluster on each side. One angel to the right presents a scroll with black writing to two men accompanied by a dog and several sheep in the lower right. The man in the panel to the left, Isaiah, has a gray beard and long, wavy hair, and he wears a lilac-purple cloak draped over a coral-orange robe. In his right hand, on our left, he holds an unfurled scroll with large black lettering. His other hand is raised with one finger pointing upward. He looks to our left, away from the central scene. On the right, Ezekiel, echoes Isaiah's pose. Ezekiel holds an open scroll with his left hand, on our right, and his other hand is raised. He also wears a coral-colored robe, but his is overlaid with a blue cloak. His receding hair is short and brown, as is his beard. Like Isaiah, he takes up most of the height of the panel and gazes to our left, toward the central panel.

Scholarly Series:  Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Marchese Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari [1841-1908], Siena, by 1904;[1] his heirs; (Alberto Riccoboni, Italy), by 1947 or 1948;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.
[1] Robert Langton Douglas (“The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena,” The Nineteenth Century and After 57 [1904]: 763; James Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy, ed. Robert Langton Douglas, 6 vols., London, 1903-1914: 3(1908): 131 n. 3) and F. Mason Perkins (“Dipinti senesi sconosciuti o inediti,” Rassegna d’Arte antica e moderna 1 (1914): 99) confirm his ownership. Various authors, through Bernard Berenson (Pitture italiane del Rinascimento, Milan, 1936: 159), continued to mention that the painting belonged to the Chigi Zondadari family.
[2] The dealer Alberto Riccoboni (Quattrocento Pitture Inedite, exh. cat., Venice, 1947: 5) gives no ownership; presumably the painting still belonged to the Chigi Zondadari family at the time and was only entrusted to Riccoboni for sale in the following year.
[3] The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi on 7 June 1948 for a group of twenty-eight paintings, including this one; the offer was accepted on 11 July 1948 (see copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2077).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1947

  • Prima mostra Nazionale Antiquaria. Quattrocento Pitturi inedite, Organizzazione Manifestazioni Artistiche, Venice, 1947, no. 23, fig. 12.

Bibliography

1903

  • Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 6 vols. Edited by Robert Langton Douglas (vols. 1-4) and Tancred Borenius (vols. 5-6). Vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian Schools. London, 1903-1914: 3(1908):125 n. 2, 131 n. 3.

1904

  • Douglas, Robert Langton. "The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena." The Nineteenth Century and After 57 (1904): 763.

1907

  • Perkins, Frederick Mason. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker and Hans Vollmer. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 26(1932):211.

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):74.

1909

  • Berenson, Bernard. The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance. 2nd ed. New York, 1909: 167.

1914

  • Perkins, F. Mason. "Depinti senesi sconosciuti o inediti." Rassenga d'Arte 1 (1914): 99.

1923

  • Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):529, 531.

1932

  • Marle, Raimond van. Le scuole della pittura italiana. 2 vols. The Hague and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):578, 581.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places. Oxford, 1932: 184.

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: 159.

1947

  • Riccoboni, Alberto, ed. Prima Mostra Nazionale Antiquaria. Quattrocento pitture Inedite. Exh. cat. Venice, 1947: x, xxi, repro. 5.

1951

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 40, no. 8, repro.

  • Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 29.

1952

  • Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. London and New York, 1952: fig. 267.

1955

  • Ferguson, George. Signs and Symbols in Christian Art. 2nd ed. New York, 1955: pl. 26.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 37, repro.

1960

  • Campolongo, Elizabetta. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 82+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 46(1996):17.

1964

  • Mallory, Michael. "Towards a Chronology for Paolo di Giovanni Fei." The Art Bulletin 46 (1964): 530.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 49.

  • Mallory, Michael. Paolo di Giovanni Fei. PhD diss. Columbia University, 1965. Ann Arbor, MI, 1973: 177-191, 241, fig. 84.

1966

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 61, fig. 160.

  • Mallory, Michael. "An Early Quattrocento Trinity." The Art Bulletin 48 (1966): 86, fig. 1.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 41, repro.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:130.

  • Degenhart, Bernhard, and Annegrit Schmitt. Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen 1300-1450, 1: Süd- und Mittelitalien. 4 vols. Berlin, 1968: 1, pt. 1:200, fig. 281.

1969

  • Mallory, Michael. "A Lost Madonna del Latte by Ambrogio Lorenzetti." The Art Bulletin 51 (1969): 42, n. 14.

  • Os, Hendrik W. van. Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 164, 166, 208, fig. 112.

1971

  • Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolo’s Assumption of the Virgin." Arts in Virginia 2 (1971): 10, 11, fig. 13.

1972

  • Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 60, 307, 647.

  • "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei pittori e degli Incisori italiani: dall’XI al XX secolo. Edited by Alberto Bolaffi and Umberto Allemandi. 11 vols. Turin, 1972-1976: 8(1975):315.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 126, repro.

1978

  • Grimm, Claus. Alte Bilderrahmen: Epochen, Typen, Material. Munich, 1978: 46, fig. 22.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:177-178; 2:pl. 123.

  • Sutton, Denys. "Robert Langton Douglas. Part I." Apollo 109 (April 1979): 314 [68] fig. 42, 315 [69].

1980

  • Cole, Bruce. Sienese Painting from Its Origins to the Fifteenth Century. New York, 1980: 194, 195, fig. 103.

1981

  • Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese del Trecento. 1st ed. Milan, 1981: 244, fig. 283.

1982

  • Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’arte. Exh. cat. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 296.

1983

  • L’Art gothique siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture. Exh. cat. Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 278.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 299, repro.

  • Brown, Howard Mayer. "Catalogus. A Corpus of Trecento Pictures with Musical Subject Matter, pt. 2." Imago Musicae 2 (1985): 196, 197.

1986

  • Ford, Terrence, compiler and ed. Inventory of Music Iconography, no. 1. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York 1986: 1.

  • Leoncini, Giovanni. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo. 2 vols. Milan, 1986: 2:570.

1990

  • Newbery, Timothy J., George Bisacca, and Laurence B. Kanter. Italian Renaissance Frames. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Musem of Art. New York, 1990: 35.

1991

  • Manacorda, Simona. "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 6(1995):133.

1993

  • Gagliardi, Jacques. La conquête de la peinture: L’Europe des ateliers du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Paris, 1993: 106.

1996

  • Thomas, Anabel. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 24:28.

1997

  • Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina Sani. Sienese Painting From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque. New York, 1997: 198, 200-201, repro.

  • Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta. "La cosidetta crisi della metà del Trecento (1348-1390)." In Pittura senese. Edited by Giulietta Chelazzi Dini, Alessandro Angelini and Bernardina Sani. 1st ed. Milan, 1997: repro. 200.

1998

  • 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: 2:905.

  • Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 47, 70, 73, 94, 296, 318, 350, 379.

2003

  • "Fei, Paolo di Giovanni." In Dictionnaire de la peinture. Edited by Michel Laclotte and Jean Pierre Cuzin. Paris, 2003: 315.

2005

  • Bagnoli, Alessandro, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Radon, eds. Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umiltà di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: un capolavoro riscoperto. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, 2005: 34 n. 18, 51, 60.

2008

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and Johannes Tripps, eds. Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg. Exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, 2008: 82, 84, 85, 90, 129.

2016

  • Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 112-118, color repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20173329

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