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Mar 21, 2016 Version

Overview

When this painting was made in 1333, according to the date given on the lower frame, the style was a bit old-fashioned. Saint Paul’s frontal stance, the intensity and fervor of his direct gaze, the inclusion of his name in red-backed gold letters on either side of his head, and the pointed arch all might have been seen in a work from the previous century. Probably this archaizing look is just what was wanted by the 12 men and women whose small figures appear below this imposing saint. These donors were likely members of a lay confraternity that commissioned the image of their patron saint. Its tall, narrow shape suggests that it was hung in front of a church pillar, where confraternity members would gather periodically for prayer and song. Lay confraternities, which performed various kinds of charitable work like caring for the sick and burying the dead, were an important part of religious and civic life. We cannot say for certain, but these six couples may have been part of the Compagnia di San Paolo that administered what later became Florence’s convalescent hospital.

Among their expressions and gestures of praise—much more than in the stern countenance of Paul—we can see Bernardo Daddi’s bent for gentle narrative. Each face is quiet, filled with calm emotion, except the woman at the right who is moved to speak of her devotion to her neighbor, or perhaps to sing. Early in his career, Daddi had worked in the orbit of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337), but his figures avoid Giotto’s solemnity in favor of a more lyrical touch as shown in the soft fabric of Saint Paul’s mantle, breaking into sweeping folds that further emphasize the figure’s corporeal substance.

Entry

The panel, with the frontal figure of the standing saint, who is not accompanied to the sides by a series of superimposed narrative scenes of his legend as in so-called biographical icons, belongs to a type of image that began to appear in Florence and in other cities in Italy in the thirteenth century and remained widespread throughout the following century: narrow and elongated in format, these paintings were probably intended to be hung against a pillar in a church.[1] Paintings of this kind, however, were more frequently painted directly onto the pillar or onto the wall of the church with the more economical technique of fresco.[2] Panels with single figures of saints were realized either with a votive intention, as for instance the one by Daddi himself representing Saint Catherine of Alexandria and a kneeling donor, now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence,[3] or as an expression of the cult of a confraternity or a religious lay company that met to pray and sing before the image at particular times. Both the number of the minuscule kneeling figures below the saint — six men and six women — and the absence of any name or coat of arms of a donor family make it likely that a confraternity commissioned our panel.[4]

The composition of the painting is decidedly archaic: the device of placing the inscription of the name of the saint over a red ground against the gold on both sides, divided into two syllables by the figure, is especially found in paintings dating to the last decades of the thirteenth and early decades of the fourteenth centuries.[5] Also archaizing seems to be the exclusive use of decorations incised by hand, without any punched motifs, in the ornament of the halo [fig. 1]: in the years in which Bernardo painted this panel, major Florentine painters preferred to use the more rapid and labor-saving as well as more showy method of decorations impressed with punches in the gold ground. On the other hand, ornamental motifs very similar to those that decorate the halo of Saint Paul in this panel are also found in the lateral panels of the polyptych painted by Bernardo Daddi for the Ospedale della Misericordia in Prato only a few years later.[6] So the incised decoration, if it is not a deliberate archaism, is at any rate somewhat demodé, though it would recur throughout the painter’s work. Clearly, this archaic character of the image, the form itself of the panel with the triangular gable (without the inscribed Gothic arch and other decorative elements that usually embellished painted panels from the 1330s on), and the severity of expression of the frontally standing saint misled art historians, who failed for so long to recognize the master who painted it. Osvald Sirén’s attribution to the Master of Santa Cecilia, or to Buonamico Buffalmacco, with whom the art historian thought he could identify the anonymous master (1919, 1920), was the first attempt to establish an authorship.[7] Raimond van Marle (1924) accepted his reference to the Master of Santa Cecilia, but Richard Offner (1927, 1931, 1947) firmly rejected it, though without suggesting an alternative name.[8] By 1931, Bernard Berenson had given the painting to “a contemporary and close follower of Giotto,” and George Martin Richter was “inclined to feel [the painting] is too good for Maso, and [thought it] could be by Orcagna.”[9] Lionello Venturi’s alternative proposal (1931, 1933) of the authorship of Maso di Banco was probably formulated after the restoration commissioned by Duveen Brothers, Inc., a treatment that attenuated the grandeur and softened the rather rough character of the original image.[10] Wilhelm Valentiner (1933, 1935) accepted the proposed attribution to Maso, as did Luigi Coletti (1942, 1946), at least initially; Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca (1951) endorsed it, and Walter Paatz reported it skeptically (1941) before the later literature jettisoned it for good.[11] Emilio Cecchi gave the panel to Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) himself (1937). The more cautious definition “School (or follower) of Giotto,” with which the painting was first labeled in its present location (“The Mellon Gift” 1937), was promulgated by the earlier catalogs of the National Gallery of Art (NGA 1941, NGA 1949) and by the volume Duveen Pictures (1941), in which an attribution with a question mark to Giotto himself was hazarded; the postwar studies also abandoned it (Salvini 1952, Vigorelli and Baccheschi 1966).[12] David George Wilkins (1969, 1985), however, did not exclude the possibility that it might have been “a product of the late Giotto workshop,” while Arno Preiser (1973) preferred to speak vaguely of “Florentine school.”[13] Richter (1941) returned to the old identification proposed by Sirén and conjectured an attribution to Buffalmacco, a point of view that remained without any following.[14] So, too, did the hypothesis of Richard Offner (1958), who compared the panel in the Gallery with four lateral panels of a dismantled polyptych in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence (nos. 8704, 8705, 8708, 8709), subsequently given to Lorenzo Monaco (Florentine, c. 1370 - c. 1425) by Federico Zeri and by most modern authorities.[15] Berenson, in letters to Edward Fowles and Joseph Duveen, had altered his opinion in favor of Daddi by 1935, and the dealer recorded it on the 1936 bill of sale to the Mellon Trust while describing the painting as “attributed to Giotto.”[16] Coletti (1950) reproposed Daddi’s authorship, perhaps independently and with considerable caution.[17] This view finally achieved almost unanimous acceptance after being cited in the posthumous edition of Berenson’s Lists (1963) and then in the catalogs of the Gallery from 1965 onwards.[18]

How, then, can this panel be inserted in the sequence of the painter’s works, assuming that the date in the inscription should be transcribed as 1333?[19] Observing the imposing figure of Saint Paul and especially his brooding face, rigidly frontal, dilated eyes, as well as the forms modeled (as the old photo testifies) with extreme delicacy, we may at first be reminded of certain paintings by Giotto himself, especially in his earlier phase. But the elements that exclude a Giottesque authorship are too many to be ignored. The proportions of the figure (in which the ratio between head and overall height of the figure lies between 8:1 and 9:1) are without parallel in Giotto’s oeuvre, with the exception of the final phase in his career, for example in the frescoes in the chapel of the Bargello, Florence, where the scenes painted by the artist (or by his pupils) are populated by very tall figures.[20] The subtle detailing of the garments and the saint’s furrowed brow are also quite alien to Giotto. The works most closely related to the Saint Paul in Washington are to be found, instead, in the output of Bernardo Daddi, especially among those paintings that reveal affinities with Giotto’s pupil Taddeo Gaddi, with whom Bernardo seems to have established a kind of collaborative venture around 1333 – 1334.[21] In his cycle of frescoes in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce, Florence, Taddeo adopted extremely tall figures of powerful monumentality.[22] On the other hand, the rhythm of the draperies in the Washington panel is too refined, too static, and the chiaroscuro modeling of the forms too delicate for an artist trained exclusively in the school of Giotto. Admittedly, the physiognomic type of the saint is rather unusual in the production of Daddi’s shop;[23] nonetheless a Saint Paul with a youthful face framed by a short and silky beard does occasionally appear in Daddi’s paintings dating to the early 1330s.[24] The delicately calligraphic pictorial modeling of the face can be compared with that of the frontal bust of Christ in the votive Madonna, now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, executed in February 1335.[25] The soft fabric of our saint’s mantle, breaking into sweeping folds that further emphasize the figure’s corporeal substance, seems very similar to that presented by Daddi in the already cited figure of Saint Catherine, dated 1333.[26] [26]
See note 3 above. In conclusion, that Bernardo Daddi was the artist of the Gallery panel can, I think, be unhesitatingly confirmed.[27]

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

Inscription

above the saint's halo: S[ANCTUS]; above the saint's shoulders: PAU LUS; on the lower frame below the worshippers: [ANNO DOMI]NI.MCCCXXXIII M...II.ESPLETUM FUIT H[O]C OPUS (In the year of the Lord 1333... this work was finished) [1]

Inscription Notes

[1] The much-abraded inscription has been variously read. Sirén (1919) transcribed it as “ESPLETUM FUIT H(OC) OPUS (ANN)O DI MCCCXXXIII MED”; Venturi (1931, 1933), as “A.MCCCXXXVI... ESPLETUM FUIT H(OC) OPUS”; Coletti (1942), accepting Sirén’s reading, interpreted the letters MED as a fragment of Mediolanum and suggested the very unlikely theory that the painting was executed in Milan. Shapley (1979) and more recent authors accepted the date 1333; Shapley considered the fragmentary letters after the year (M...II?) as probable indication of the month and day. Boskovits (1984) read the letters after the date as MEN[SE]. Conti (1994) specified that if so, the panel must have been executed within the month of July (MEN[SE IUL]II). See Osvald Sirén, “A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 229; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America, Milan, 1931: no. 27; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, translated by Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols., New York and Milan, 1933: 1:no. 34; Luigi Coletti, “Contributo al problema Maso–Giottino,” Emporium 98 (1942): 463-464; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, DC, 1979: 1:152-153; Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency, Florence 1984: 349; Alessandro Conti, “Maso, Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana,” Prospettiva 73-74 (1994): 43 n. 19.

Provenance

The often-repeated statement in the earlier literature that the panel comes from the Florentine monastery of San Felice in Piazza[1] does not seem to be based on any secure, or at any rate documented, evidence. Perhaps more plausible, based at least on the identity of the saint, is the more recent proposal of a provenance either from the Florentine Ospedale di San Paolo or from the nearby church of San Paolino, since a handwritten annotation on an old photograph indicated its provenance “dai padri di San Paolino.”[2] Elia Volpi [1858–1938], Florence, by the early 1900s;[3] (his sale, American Art Galleries, New York, 21-27 November 1916, seventh day, no. 1040, as “Primitive school of Tuscany, early XVth century”); (Bourgeois Galleries, New York);[4] purchased January 1920 by (Duveen Brothers, Inc. London, Paris, and New York);[5] sold 15 December 1936 to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[6] gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] In the introduction to the 1916 sale catalogue (n.p.), Elia Volpi states that among his pictures which “belong . . . to the School of Italian Primitives, the majority . . . [come] from the sacristy of the convent of St. Felice in Florence.” On this basis both Venturi and several other later authors claimed that the NGA Saint Paul formerly belonged to that church; however, as Lucia Meoni has (1993) pointed out, “nessuna fonte antica o le schede del Carocci testimoniano l’antica collocazione del San Paolo nella chiesa di San Felice. . . .” ("No early source nor the entries in Carocci's Inventory [an inventory compiled in 1892 on behalf of the Soprintendenza of Florence] record the presence of the Saint Paul in the church of San Felice..."). Roberta Ferrazza (Palazzo Davanzati e le collezioni di Elia Volpi, Florence, 1993: 216 n. 52) has found records of sales of art objects from the Conservatorio di San Pier Martire, annexed to the church of San Felice, in the years between 1884 and 1901, as well as a note in the photo archive of the Biblioteca Berenson at I Tatti (Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence), according to which Stephan Bourgeois, who bought the panel now in Washington at the Volpi sale, “went to see Mr. Guglielmetti, Mr. Volpi’s secretary, from whom he [Bourgeois] received the information that Mr. Volpi [said he had] bought the picture in 1907 from the administrators of the Monastery of S. Felice in Florence. . . .” NGA systematic catalogue author Miklós Boskovits is inclined, however, to think that the records of Volpi’s secretary were based on the same rather vague memories and should not be considered trustworthy.

[2] According to the unpublished research of Kathleen Giles Arthur (c. 1991; copy in NGA curatorial files) “the Saint Paul most probably was commissioned by one of the major charitable institutions in fourteenth century Florence,” i.e., the Ospedale di San Paolo, and the worshippers of the saint can be identified as the members of the third order of Saint Francis, lay men and women who formed the staff of the hospital. The claim, however, is no more than speculation on the part of the author. The provenance from San Paolino, on the other hand, is asserted by a handwritten note on the reverse of an early photograph in the photo archive of Federico Zeri in Bologna (no. PI 0044/2/32; originally taken c. 1910 apparently by the firm Brogi in Florence); see also Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The fourteenth century, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency, Sec.III, Vol. IX, Florence,1984: 350 n. 3). San Paolino (originally San Paolo), in the Quartiere Santa Maria Novella, was already a collegiate church in the eleventh century and, after various vicissitudes, was sold to the discalced Carmelites in 1618; they rebuilt the church in its present form later in the seventeenth century and still officiate it. After the suppression of religious orders in 1808, the friars had to abandon the church and its annexed convent, but it was restored to them in 1814, and they remained there until a second suppression of the convent in 1866 (Osanna Fantozzi Micali and Piero Rosselli, Le soppressioni dei conventi a Firenze, Montelupo Fiorentino, 2000: 233). Since the late nineteenth century, however, the church has once again been officiated by the discalced Carmelites; see Walter and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz. Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, Vols. 1-6, Frankfurt am Main, 1940-1953: 4(1952): 591. There is no documentation of any confraternity dedicated to Saint Paul that met in this church, but the large group of donors at the foot of the NGA panel suggests that a lay confraternity commissioned it. It is known, on the other hand, that Daddi did work for San Paolino: another painting by him, representing the Madonna and Child and now in the Galleria dell’Accademia (no. 3466; see Angelo Tartuferi in Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Vol. 1: Dipinti, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi, Florence, 2003: 60-63), also comes from this church and can be assumed to be close in date to the Gallery's painting.

[3] After an early career as a painter and restorer, Volpi began to work as an art dealer in Città di Castello towards the end of the nineteenth century. He then moved to Florence, where he purchased the Palazzo Davanzati in 1904 and transformed it into a private museum, furnishing it with paintings and objets d’art from his collection. The museum was opened to the public in September 1910. Presumably by then the panel discussed here was already in Volpi’s possession; the Volpi sale catalogue of 1916 noted that it had come from the Palazzo Davanzati. Luigi Coletti (“Il Maestro colorista di Assisi,” Critica d'Arte 8-9 (1949-1950): 447) claims that the painting passed through the hands of the dealer Stefano Bardini (1836–1922), but Everett Fahy’s research (L’Archivio storico fotografico di Stefano Bardini. Dipinti, disegni, miniature, stampe, Florence, 2000) does not confirm this.

[4] A copy of the sale catalogue in the NGA library is annotated with the Bourgeois name, which is also given in the Duveen prospectus (in NGA curatorial files). See Osvald Sirén, “A great contemporary of Giotto – I,” The Burlington Magazine 35 (December 1919): 229; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 152; and note 1 above.

[5] Boskovits 1984, 349-350, and Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 422; reel 45, box 133, folder 1; reel 101, box 246, folder 4; copies from the Duveen records in NGA curatorial files.

[6] The original bill of sale is in Records of The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Subject Files, Box 2, Gallery Archives, NGA; copy in NGA curatorial files. The painting is attributed to Giotto, with a parenthetical note stating that Bernard Berenson gives it to Daddi.

Associated Names

American Art Association
Bourgeois Galleries
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Monasterio di San Felice, Florence
Volpi, Elia, Professor

Exhibition History

1910: Palazzo Davanzati, Florence, between September 1910 and 1916.

1921: Loan Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Italian Artists of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Cincinnati Art Museum, 1921, no catalogue.

1933: Sixteenth Loan Exhibition of Old Masters. Italian Paintings of the XIV to XVI Century, Detroit Institute of Art, 1933, no. 3.

Technical Summary

The wooden support, which has not been cradled, retains its original thickness of 3.3 cm. The engaged frame adds another 1.2 cm around the edges. The vertically grained panel is composed of three planks; the central one has a crack running the length of the panel. Three horizontal battens, attached with very large nails, reinforce the panel on the reverse; the lowest of these appears more recent than the other two, which are probably original. The wood panel was covered with fabric, and over it, gesso.[1] The craquelure is continuous over the panel and the inner part of the molding, indicating that the inner portion of the frame molding, attached with nails and dowels, is original. The outermost portion of the molding, however, is a later addition. Red bole serves as the preparation layer for the gold ground, upon which Saint Paul’s halo is incised rather than punched. The gold trim on Saint Paul’s robe and mantle was mordant gilded. The wooden support shows extensive worm damage, especially along the sides. The gold ground is much abraded. The silver leaf of Saint Paul’s sword has oxidized to black in some areas. A broad pattern of wide-aperture craquelure penetrates the painted surface, which contains many small, scattered losses, especially in the headdresses of several small figures at the lower right, and a few scratches. The original engaged frame, decorated with silver leaf overlaid with orange and green pigments, has discolored in some of the areas where the leaf is exposed.[2] A small section of the original gable top, mostly underneath the frame, has been replaced. Photographs of the painting made in the years 1910 – 1915 [fig. 1] [3] show it much darkened by dust and somewhat opaque varnishes. Shortly after the 1916 sale the panel underwent partial varnish removal; the inscription with the date was discovered on this occasion [fig. 2].[4] It was treated again in 1928, when the figures were inpainted and the frame completed above and re-gilded.[5] The painting was treated most recently between 1984 and 1989.[6] During this treatment the insecure areas in the wooden support were strengthened, the discolored varnish and old inpainting were removed, and losses were inpainted.

Bibliography

1919: Sirén, Osvald. "A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 228 (repro.), 229, 230, 236.

1920: Sirén, Osvald. "The Buffalmaco Hypothesis: Some Additional Remarks." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 37 (1920): 183.

1923: Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 3(1924):276, 277, 287, 290.

1927: Offner, Richard. "A Great Madonna by the St. Cecilia Master." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 50 (1927): 97.

1931: Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. I: The School of the S. Cecilia Master. New York, 1931: 17.

1931: Venturi, Lionello. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931: no. 27, repro.

1933: Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Die Leihausstellung frühitalienischer Malerei in Detroit." Pantheon 12 (1933): 238, repro. 239.

1933: Venturi, Lionello. Italian Paintings in America. Translated by Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott. 3 vols. New York and Milan, 1933: 1:no. 34, repro.

1935: Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Giovanni Balducci a Firenze e una scultura di Maso." L’Arte 38 (1935): 29, fig. 25.

1937: Cecchi, Emilio. Giotto. Milan, 1937: 174, pl. 177.

1937: "The Mellon Gift. A First Official List." Art News 35 (20 March 1937): 15.

1940: Paatz, Walter and Elisabeth Paatz. Die Kirchen von Florenz: ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch. 6 vols. Frankfurt am Main, 1940-1954: 2(1941):51.

1941: Coletti, Luigi. I Primitivi. 3 vols. Novara, 1941-1947: 2(1946):xli.

1941: Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 12, repro., attributed to Giotto, as St. Paul with Twelve Adorers.

1941: National Gallery of Art. Book of Illustrations. Washington, 1941: 114 (repro.), 233.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 80-81, no. 3, as by Follower of Giotto.

1941: Richter, George Martin. "The New National Gallery in Washington." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 177 n. 3.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 239, repro. 116, as by Follower of Giotto.

1942: Coletti, Luigi. "Contributo al problema Maso-Giottino." Emporium 98 (1942): 463-464.

1947: Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma; Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. New York, 1947: 7, 39, 42 n. 1, 94 n. 1.

1949: Coletti, Luigi. "Il Maestro colorista di Assisi." Critica d’arte 8-9 (1949-1950): 447.

1949: Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 7, repro., as by Follower of Giotto.

1950: Florisoone, Michel. Giotto. Paris, 1950: 116 n. 6.

1951: Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 23 n. 1.

1951: Galetti, Ugo, and Ettore Camesasca. Enciclopedia della pittura italiana. 3 vols. Milan, 1951: 2:1604, 1606.

1952: Salvini, Roberto, ed. Tutta la pittura di Giotto. Biblioteca d’arte Rizzoli. Milan, 1952: 52.

1958: Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. VIII: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi. New York, 1958: 46 n. 2.

1963: Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:58.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 297, repro., as by Follower of Giotto.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 36.

1966: Vigorelli, Giancarlo, and Edi Baccheschi. L’opera completa di Giotto. 1st ed. Milan, 1966: repro. 122-123.

1968: European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 29, repro.

1969: Wilkins, David G. "Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1969. Ann Arbor, MI, 1979: 214.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 63, 437, 645.

1973: Finley, David Edward. A Standard of Excellence: Andrew W. Mellon Founds the National Gallery of Art at Washington. Washington, 1973: 40.

1973: Preiser, Arno. Das Entstehen und die Entwicklung der Predella in der italienischen Malerei. Hildesheim and New York, 1973: 37, 38, fig. 10.

1975: Boskovits, Miklós. Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370-1400. Florence, 1975: 22, 195 n. 47, 243 n. 201.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 90, repro.

1975: Fremantle, Richard. Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: A Guide to Painting in and near Florence, 1300 to 1450. London, 1975: 47, 50, fig. 92.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:152-153; 2:pl. 107.

1981: Salvini, Roberto. Giotto: Werkverzeichnis. Die großen Meister der Malerei. Frankfurt, 1981: 94, fig. 191.

1982: Tambini, Anna. Pittura dall’Alto Medioevo al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forlì. Faenza, 1982: 112.

1983: Volpe, Carlo. "Il lungo percorso del ‘dipingere dolcissimo e tanto unito.’" In Storia dell’arte italiana 2: dal Medioevo al Novecento. pt. 1, dal Medioevo al Quattrocento. Edited by Federico Zeri, Giulio Bollati and Paolo Fossati. Turin, 1983: 265 n. 11, 275 n. 23.

1984: Boskovits, Miklós. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. 9: The Miniaturist Tendency. Florence, 1984: 71, 349-350, pls. 177b, 178.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 73, no. 12, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 111, repro.

1985: Ferrazza, Roberta. "Elia Volpi e il Commercio dell’arte nel primo Trentennio del Novecento." In Studi e ricerche di Collezionismo e Museografia, Firenze 1820-1920. Pisa, 1985: 414 n. 50.

1985: Wilkins, David G. Maso di Banco: a Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento. New York, 1985: 209.

1986: Offner, Richard, and Miklós Boskovits. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. I: The School of the S. Cecilia Master. 2nd ed. Florence, 1986: 309.

1989: Offner, Richard, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi. 2nd ed. Florence, 1989: 35 n. 15, 37, 87, 391.

1991: Offner, Richard, and Miklós Boskovits. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. IV: Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Fllowing. 2nd ed. Florence, 1991: 166 n. 3, 513.

1992: Boskovits, Miklós, ed. The Martello Collection: Further Paintings, Drawings and Miniatures 13th-18th Centuries. Florence, 1992: 54.

1992: Labriola, Ada. "Daddi, Bernardo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 23(1999):356.

1993: Ferrazza, Roberta. Palazzo Davanzati e le collezioni di Elia Volpi. Florence, 1993: 128, 174 fig. 165, 216 n. 52, 220 n. 70.

1993: Meoni, Lucia. San Felice in Piazza a Firenze. Florence, 1993: 41 fig. 27, 44.

1994: Conti, Alessandro. "Maso, Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana." Prospettiva 73-74 (1994): 36, 38 fig. 6, 43 n. 19.

1994: Ladis, Andrew and Hayden B. J. Maginnis. "Sculpture’s Pictorial Presence: Reflections on the Tabernacles of Orsanmichele." Studi di storia dell’arte 5-6 (1994-1995): 45, 49 n. 3, 53 fig. 6.

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: 1:99, 108, 110 n. 174; 2:punch chart 5.3.

1996: Neri Lusanna, Enrica. "Daddi, Bernardo." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. New York and London, 1996: 8:442.

2001: Offner, Richard, Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma; Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. 2nd ed. Florence, 2001: 635.

2004: Secrest, Meryle. Duveen: A Life in Art. New York, 2004: 444.

2004: Strehlke, Carl Brandon. Italian Paintings, 1250-1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 2004: 102 n. 4.

2005: Boskovits, Miklós, and Daniela Parenti, eds. Da Bernardo Daddi al Beato Angelico a Botticelli: dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg. Exh. cat. Museo di San Marco. Florence, 2005: 70.

2008: Skaug, Erling S. "Bernardo Daddi’s Chronology and Workshop Structure as Defined by Technical Criteria." In Da Giotto a Botticelli: pittura fiorentina tra gotico e rinascimento. Atti del convegno internazionale Firenze, Università degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 20-21, 2005. Edited by Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps. Florence, 2008: 82-83.

2016: Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 64-72, color repro.

Related Content

[fig. 1] Tracing of halo, Bernardo Daddi, Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers, 1333, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection. (Joanna Dunn, National Gallery of Art, Washington)
Compare Image

[1]
On the typology and function of panels with the figure of a single standing saint, cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 222 n.1.
[2]
Pillar frescoes with figures of saints, the patrons of a family or guild, are common in fourteenth-century Florence; we may cite those in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore and in Orsanmichele. See Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1940 – 1953), 3:625 – 629; and Diane Finiello Zervas, ed., Orsanmichele a Firenze, 2 vols., Mirabilia Italiae (Modena, 1996), 1:549 – 557.
[3]
See Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 221 – 226. The painting’s votive character is suggested by the presence of the donor as devotee — evidently a member of the Medici family, as is indicated by the well-known family coat of arms at the foot of the panel.
[4]
For more on this question, see Ronald F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence, Population and Social Structure (New York and London, 1982); John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994). An appendix in Henderson lists confraternities active in Florence between the mid-thirteenth and the mid-fifteenth centuries. He included among them a Compagnia di San Paolo, founded in 1434, which used to meet in the Badia Fiorentina, and a Compagnia di San Paolo dei Sarti, founded in 1435, whose meeting place is unknown. One should not forget, however, that confraternities were often active many years or even decades before their first documentation.
[5]
Examples of a bilateral placing of the inscription include the thirteenth-century panel of Saint Luke and two devotees attributed to the Magdalen Master, now in the Uffizi, Florence (no. 3493), and various Florentine paintings of the early Trecento, such as Giotto’s polyptych in the church of the Badia (now displayed in the Uffizi) or the panel of the Vicchio-Paris Master representing Saint Felix, formerly in the Cini collection in Venice; cf. Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 6, Following of the St. Cecilia Master, Lippus Benivieni, Master of the Fogg Pietà (New York, 1956), 116.
[6]
In the polyptych in Prato — probably dating to after 1334, when Fra Francesco di Tieri became rector of the hospital — the particular foliate motif in the halo of Saint Catherine (further embellished in the external and internal circles with tiny motifs impressed with metal tools) seems virtually identical with the decoration of the halo of Saint Paul in the National Gallery of Art. The year 1337, when Bernardo Daddi was entrusted with the commission to paint the altarpiece of the Cappella del Sacro Cingolo in what is now the cathedral (then pieve) of Prato, should be considered a probable terminus ante quem for the hospital polyptych; cf. Richard Offner, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 45 n.53; Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 124. Bernardo also used motifs incised by hand in the halo of a panel of Saint Catherine, its present whereabouts unknown, dated 1333 (the painting was auctioned at Christie’s, New York, January 24, 2003, lot 25); see also Offner (1991, 102 – 104), though here small punched motifs also appear in the external and internal circles of the halo.
[7]
Osvald Sirén, “A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 228–230, 236; Osvald Sirén, “The Buffalmaco Hypothesis: Some Additional Remarks,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 37 (1920): 183.
[8]
Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 276; Richard Offner, “A Great Madonna by the St. Cecilia Master,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 50 (1927): 97; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle (New York, 1931), 17; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle (New York, 1947), 7, 39, 42 n. 1, 94 n. 1.
[9]
These opinions are recorded by Duveen Brothers, Inc.; see cable, November 3, 1931, Duveen’s London office to Duveen’s Paris office; cable, November 4, 1931, Paris to London; and letter, July 9, 1935, Duveen’s New York office to Edward Fowles in the Paris office (Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 101, box 246, folder 4; copies in NGA curatorial files). I wish to thank Anne Halpern in the National Gallery of Art department of curatorial records and files for this information.
[10]
Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 27; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 34. The restoration was done in 1928; see cables, April 30 and May 3, 1928, Duveen’s New York office to the Paris office (see note 9 for citation). Again, Anne Halpern kindly provided this information.
[11]
Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “Die Leihausstellung frühitalienischer Malerei in Detroit,” Pantheon 12 (1933): 238 – 239; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “Giovanni Balducci a Firenze e una scultura di Maso,” L’Arte 38 (1935): 29; Luigi Coletti, “Contributo al problema Maso – Giottino,” Emporium 98 (1942): 463 – 464; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xli; Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951), 2:1604, 1606; Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1940 – 1953), 2 (1941): 51.
[12]
“The Mellon Gift: A First Official List,” Art News 35 (1937): 15; Emilio Cecchi, Giotto (Milan, 1937), 174; National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1941), 80 – 81; National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection (Washington, DC, 1949), 7; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 12; Roberto Salvini, ed., Tutta la pittura di Giotto, Biblioteca d’arte Rizzoli (Milan, 1952), 52; Giancarlo Vigorelli and Edi Baccheschi, L’opera completa di Giotto (Milan, 1966), 122 – 123.
[13]
David G. Wilkins, Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1969), 214; David G. Wilkins, Maso di Banco: A Florentine Artist of the Early Trecento (New York, 1985), 209; Arno Preiser, Das Entstehen und die Entwicklung der Predella in der italienischen Malerei (Hildesheim and New York, 1973), 37 – 38.
[14]
George Martin Richter, “The New National Gallery in Washington,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (1941): 177 n. 3.
[15]
Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 8, Workshop of Bernardo Daddi (New York, 1958), 46 n. 2. On the problem relating to the dismantled polyptych from the Ardinghelli Chapel in the Church of the Carmine, documented between 1398 and 1400, cf. the contribution by Angelo Tartuferi, in Daniela Parenti and Angelo Tartuferi, eds., Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento (Florence, 2006), 120 – 127.
[16]
Letters (see note 9 for citation): Bernard Berenson to Edward Fowles, July 13, 1935, in which Berenson wrote, “This attribution [to Bernardo Daddi] I came to years ago, and it has stood the test of time — for me”; Berenson to Joseph Duveen, October 20, 1935; Berenson to Joseph Duveen, October 15, 1936. Information kindly supplied by Anne Halpern. For the bill of sale, see Provenance, note 6.
[17]
Luigi Coletti, “Il Maestro colorista di Assisi,” Critica d’arte 8–9 (1949–1950): 447.
[18]
Apart from the above-cited catalogs and scholars, the following recognized, though sometimes with reservations or doubts, Bernardo Daddi as the master of the Saint Paul: Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, 1972), 63, 437, 645; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370 – 1400 (Florence, 1975), 22, 195 n. 47, 243 n. 201; Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 9, The Miniaturist Tendency (Florence, 1984), 71, 349 – 350, pls. 177b, 178; Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle, new ed. (Florence, 1986), 309; Richard Offner, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 35 n. 15, 37, 87, 391; Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 166 n. 3, 513; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 635; Roberta Ferrazza, “Elia Volpi e il commercio dell’arte nel primo trentennio del Novecento,” in Studi e ricerche di collezionismo e museografia, Firenze 1820 – 1920 (Pisa, 1985), 414 n. 50; Roberta Ferrazza, Palazzo Davanzati e le collezioni di Elia Volpi (Florence, 1993), 128, 174 (repro.), 216 n. 52, 220 n. 70; Enrica Neri Lusanna, in The Martello Collection: Further Paintings, Drawings and Miniatures 13th – 18th Centuries, ed. Miklós Boskovits (Florence, 1992), 54; Enrica Neri Lusanna, “Daddi, Bernardo,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 8:442; Lucia Meoni, San Felice in Piazza a Firenze (Florence, 1993), 41 fig. 27, 44; Alessandro Conti, “Maso, Roberto Longhi e la tradizione offneriana,” Prospettiva 73 – 74 (1994): 36, 38 fig. 6, 43 n. 19; Erling S. Skaug, 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), 1:99, 108, 110 n. 174; 2: punch chart 5.3; Andrew Ladis and Hayden B. J. Maginnis, “Sculpture’s Pictorial Presence Reflections on the Tabernacles of Orsanmichele,” Studi di storia dell’arte 5 – 6 (1994 – 1995): 45, 49 n. 3, 53 fig. 6; Ada Labriola, “Daddi, Bernardo,” in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Günter Meißner, 87 vols. (Munich, 1999), 23:356; Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York, 2004), 444; Angelo Tartuferi, in Da Bernardo Daddi al Beato Angelico a Botticelli: Dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau–Museum di Altenburg, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2005), 70.
[19]
The reading of the date as 1333 seems to be safe (but see Inscription note 1). However, as Erling S. Skaug (2008) observed, it might mean any date between January 1, 1333, and March 24, 1334. In fact, in Florentine style the year began on March 25. Skaug recalled that a big punch mark that Bernardo used in a Madonna dated August 14, 1333 (inv. no. 6170, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence), never appeared again in the artist’s later works and hypothesized that the punch, absent also in the Gallery's Saint Paul, might have been lost at the time of the disastrous flood in November 1333. See Erling S. Skaug, “Bernardo Daddi’s Chronology and Workshop Structure as Defined by Technical Criteria,” in Da Giotto a Botticelli: Pittura fiorentina tra gotico e rinascimento; Atti del convegno internazionale Firenze, Università degli Studi e Museo di San Marco, May 20 – 21, 2005, ed. Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps (Florence, 2008), 82 – 83.
[20]
Giovanni Previtali and Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua bottega, ed. Alessandro Conti, 3rd ed. (Milan, 1993), 129, 348 – 353; Janis Elliott, “The Judgement of the Commune: The Frescoes of the Magdalen Chapel in Florence,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 61 (1998): 509 – 519.
[21]
The composition of the small triptych with folding shutters now in the Museo del Bigallo in Florence, which bears the date 1333, is virtually replicated by Taddeo Gaddi in a work of similar structure signed and dated 1334, now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (nos. 1079 – 1081), a circumstance that has been variously interpreted. James Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (1864) believed that the Florentine triptych was also painted by Taddeo, while in more recent times, once Daddi’s authorship of it was universally accepted, the inference has been drawn that a now lost prototype from the hand of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) himself (Coletti 1946) or of Maso di Banco (Longhi 1959) must have existed. The present writer (Boskovits 1987; cf. also 2001), on the other hand, conjectures, if not a shared shop, then perhaps a collaboration between the two artists and a kind of commercial arrangement whereby Bernardo painted only panels for Florentine churches, and Taddeo almost exclusively frescoes. See Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1864), 1:360 – 362; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 2, I senesi e i giotteschi (Novara, 1946), xliii; Roberto Longhi, “Qualità e industria in Taddeo Gaddi,” Paragone 10, no. 109 (1959): 34 – 35; Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 50; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 12.
[22]
On the decoration of the Baroncelli Chapel, see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO, 1982), 88–112.
[23]
I wonder whether it was not the saint’s youthful face, with its close-trimmed beard, that prompted so acute a connoisseur as Richard Offner to compare the Saint Paul in Washington with the image of the same saint in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (inv. no. 8709), rather similar in facial type but in style clearly belonging to the last years of the fourteenth century.
[24]
I refer, for example, to the image of the saint that appears in the left shutter of a portable triptych in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts (no. 18.33), dated 1334.
[25]
Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 192 – 200. The date indicated in the inscription below, February 25, 1334, is in Florentine style, which calculated the year as beginning on March 25.
[26]
See note 3 above.
[27]
Perhaps it may not be superfluous to refer briefly to the kinship sometimes suggested between the Saint Paul and a fresco now preserved in the Pinacoteca of Forlì. In a typewritten note (copy in NGA curatorial files), Wilhelm Suida observed similarities between the panel and the representation of the same saint in a fragment of mural painting from the church of Santa Maria in Laterano (or di Schiavonia) at Forlì, where some saints and part of the Procession of the Magi are represented. Since some authorities claimed to have deciphered the signature of a certain Agostino in the fresco, Suida concluded that it was this painter, not otherwise documented, who executed the panel in Washington; cf. Eberhard Kasten, “Agostino,” in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Günter Meißner, 87 vols. (Munich, 1992), 1:546 – 547. Unpublished and ignored by the more recent literature, the hypothesis was cited only by Fern Rusk Shapley (1979); denying that the two paintings belong to the same master, she asserted the view that the painter “Augustinus, probably a native of Forlì, made use of a cartoon inherited from the painter of No. 3,” that is, the Saint Paul. Although Anna Tambini (1982) accepted this proposal in substance, it should be rejected. Apart from the fact that the reading of the presumed signature is quite uncertain (cf. Viroli 1980), the shared use and exchange of cartoons between fourteenth-century painters seems very improbable. The Saint Paul in the fresco, though presented in a frontal pose similar to the saints painted by Bernardo Daddi, is different both in pictorial style and in physiognomic type. It is clearly the work of an Emilian or Lombard artist of the last quarter of the fourteenth century, who could not, I think, have been influenced in any way by the Florentine panel. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:152; Anna Tambini, Pittura dall’Alto Medioevo al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forlì (Faenza, 1982), 112; Giordano Viroli, ed., La Pinacoteca Civica di Forlì (Forlì, 1980), 25 – 28.

[fig. 1] Archival photograph, c. 1915, Bernardo Daddi, Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers, 1333, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Compare Image
[fig. 2] Detail after cleaning but before inpainting, Bernardo Daddi, Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers, 1333, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection

[1]
The NGA scientific research department analyzed the ground layer using x-ray powder diffraction (XRD), and the gesso was identified as the dehydrate form of calcium sulfate (see report dated December 15, 1986, in NGA conservation files).
[2]
The NGA scientific research department analyzed pigments using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) and optical microscopy. The greens were mixtures of azurite and lead tin yellow; the browns contained massicot and red iron oxide; the reds contained red lakes, red iron oxides, and vermilion; the purples contained azurite and red lake; and the yellows were ocher pigments (see report dated December 15, 1986, in NGA conservation files).
[3]
Apart from the small and rather dark reproduction published in the 1916 sale catalog, the painting’s state in these years is also illustrated by a photograph made c. 1910, apparently by the firm Brogi, in Florence. A copy of it is now in the photographic archive of the Fondazione Federico Zeri in Bologna (no. PI 0044 / 2 / 32).
[4]
Osvald Sirén, “A Great Contemporary of Giotto, 1,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 35 (1919): 229, reported that by “the Spring of 1917 it had been very successfully cleaned.”
[5]
This can be deduced both from a comparison of the photo reproduced by Sirén with Venturi’s reproduction (1931 and 1933) and from the Duveen Brothers’ habit of immediately cleaning the pictures they acquired. See, e.g., Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers (London, 1976), 123; Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York, 2004), 334. See also Entry, note 9.
[6]
See the report dated 1984 and the treatment report of 1989 in NGA conservation files.

National Gallery of Art

Saint Paul and a Group of Worshippers, 1333