Click on any panel in the altarpiece reconstruction below to see an enlarged version of the image. Color reproductions in the reconstruction indicate panels in the National Gallery of Art collection.
Overview
The inscription around the elaborate gold clasp holding her cloak gives her name, but 14th-century viewers would have immediately recognized Saint Catherine of Alexandria by the book she holds and the spiked wheel before her. Legends of the fourth-century Egyptian martyr made her one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages. A beautiful girl from a royal family, she was baptized following a dream in which the infant Jesus gave her a ring. As the bride of Christ, she rejected a temporal marriage to the Roman emperor Maxentius and protested his persecution of Christians. When famous philosophers were sent to convince her of the errors of her faith, she confounded them with her knowledge, but she was still sentenced to be torn apart between spiked wheels. When the moment came, miraculously, the wheels burst into flames, but she was beheaded anyway. Catherine was considered an especially potent intercessor for human prayers, protector of the dying, and patron of students.
This painting was once part of an altarpiece that stood in the church of San Cerbone, in the Tuscan town of Lucca (see
Entry
The painting represents the martyr saint of Alexandria according to the usual
The five-part San Cerbone polyptych had a rather archaic structure, formed of five rectangular panels
As for the attribution of the panel now in the Gallery, it was formerly considered a work by Deodato Orlandi, a leading painter of Lucca in the later thirteenth century, who is known to have painted a Crucifixion dated 1288, formerly in the same church of San Cerbone from which our Saint Catherine came.
What still remains problematic is the chronological sequence of Bulgarini’s oeuvre, which is devoid of dated works, apart from the tavole di biccherna.
This group of works can be safely assumed to have been executed in the same span of years, presumably still in the course of the first half of the century, but after an initial phase in which Bulgarini had produced the nervous, tormented figures of the polyptych formerly in the Museo di Santa Croce in Florence,
Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)
March 21, 2016
Inscription
on the gilded brooch of the saint's mantle: S.K.A.T.E.R.I.N.A
Provenance
Monastery of San Cerbone, near Lucca, by 1706 until no later than 1845;[1] possibly Carlo Lasinio [1759–1838] or his son, Giovanni Paolo Lasinio [c. 1796-1855], Pisa; probably Monsignor Gabriele Laureani [d. 1849], Rome;[2] Giulio Sterbini [d. 1911], Rome, by 1905; (Pasini, Rome).[3] (Godfroy [sometimes spelled Godefroy] Brauer, Paris and Nice), by 1921;[4] his estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 5 July 1929, no. 29); half shares purchased by (Kunsthandel A.G., Lucerne) and (antique dealer, Amsterdam); sold 18 October 1932 to (Julius Böhler, Munich);[5] sold 4 September 1937 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[6] sold 1940 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1943 to NGA.
Technical Summary
The painting is on a single-plank wooden support with the grain running vertically. In 1940 – 1941, Stephen Pichetto
There are a number of paint losses, especially along the abovementioned split. Apparently, the hooked spikes embedded in the rim of the wheel also were damaged: they were probably covered by silver leaf originally;
Bibliography
- 1706
- Brandeglio, Antonio di. Vita di S. Cerbone vescovo di Popolonia e confessore. Lucca, 1706: 221-222, 300.
- 1845
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- 1941
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- 1941
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- 1942
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- 1942
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- 1945
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- 1945
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- 1951
- Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 25 n. 1, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
- 1951
- Galetti, Ugo, and Ettore Camesasca. Enciclopedia della pittura italiana. 3 vols. Milan, 1951: 3:2482.
- 1951
- Toesca, Pietro. Il Trecento. Storia dell’arte italiana, 2. Turin, 1951: 572 n. 92, 574 n. 93.
- 1953
- Belli, Isa. Guida di Lucca. Lucca, 1953: 123-124.
- 1959
- Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 29, repro., as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
- 1965
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- 1966
- Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 53-54, fig. 145.
- 1968
- Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 2:347, pl. 67.
- 1968
- Bertolini Campetti, Licia, and Silvia Meloni Trkulja, eds. Museo di Villa Guinigi, Lucca: la villa e le collezioni. Lucca, 1968: 142.
- 1968
- National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 68, repro.
- 1972
- Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 133, 381, 646, 664.
- 1975
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- 1977
- Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. I Dipinti dal XII al XV secolo. Genoa, 1977: 136.
- 1978
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- 1979
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- 1979
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- 1981
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- 1982
- Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’arte. Exh. cat. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 250, 457.
- 1983
- Baracchini, Clara, ed. Il secolo di Castruccio: Fonti e documenti di storia lucchese. Exh. cat. Chiesa Monumentale di S. Cristoforo. Lucca, 1983: 199.
- 1983
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- 1983
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- 1985
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- 1986
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- 1986
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- 1989
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- 1990
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- 1990
- Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: i dipinti. 3rd ed. Genoa, 1990: 90.
- 1991
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- 1991
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- 1992
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- 1993
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- 1993
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- 1994
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- 1996
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- 1998
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- 2003
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- 2004
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- 2005
- Mori, Francesco. “Un polittico di Bartolomeo Bulgarini per la chiesa domenicana di San Gimignano.” In Capolavori ritrovati in terra di Siena: itinerari d’autunno nei musei senesi. Edited by Luciano Bellosi, Gabriele Fattorini, and Antonio Paolucci. Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 2005: 86.
- 2007
- De Floriani, Anna. "Pittura del Trecento fra Genova e Avignone: osservazioni in merito ad alcuni studi recenti e un’ipotesi ligure per il trittico di Angers." Studi di storia dell’arte 18 (2007): 41 n.15.
- 2007
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- 2009
- Bellosi, Luciano, et al., eds. La collezione Salini: dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV. 4 vols. Florence, 2009, 2015: 1(2009):113.
- 2009
- Boskovits, Miklós, ed. The Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware, USA. Vol. 1 (of 2), Italian Paintings from the 13th to 15th Century. Florence, 2009: 1:43, 46, 47 n. 13.
- 2016
- Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 28-37, color repro.
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Altarpiece Reconstruction

Reconstruction of the San Cerbone Altarpiece by Bartolomeo Bulgarini:
a.
b. Saint Bartholomew (Entry fig. 4)
c. Madonna and Child (Entry fig. 2)
d. Saint John the Evangelist (Entry fig. 3)
e. Saint Mary Magdalene (Entry fig. 5)