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Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011), “Bartolomeo Bulgarini/Saint Catherine of Alexandria/c. 1335/1340,” Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/12118 (accessed March 19, 2024).

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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 Reconstruction). It is the work of Bartolomeo Bulgarini, one of the most renowned painters in mid-14th century Siena, less than one hundred miles from Lucca, where other panels from this altarpiece survive. His style reflects two great Sienese artists of the earlier generation: the decorative brilliance of Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319) and the simple, heavier figures and tender humanity of Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345).

Entry

The painting represents the martyr saint of Alexandria according to the usual iconographic canons of the early fourteenth century in Tuscany: with a crown placed on her blond hair, which is parted over the top of her head and gathered over the nape of her neck, the palm of martyrdom in her left hand and a book that she supports with both hands against the wheel, her instrument of martyrdom, with sharp, denticulated metal spikes along its rim.[1] The image is not self-sufficient. It belonged to a polyptych, more particularly a five-part altarpiece, known as the San Cerbone altarpiece [fig. 1] (see also Reconstruction), of which the other components are the Madonna and Child [fig. 2] and the Saint John the Evangelist [fig. 3] now in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi in Lucca (nos. 160 and 162),[2] and the panels of Saint Bartholomew [fig. 4] and Mary Magdalene [fig. 5], nos. 345 and 346 in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome.[3] In 1706 Antonio de Brandeglio described the paintings in question, together with the panel now in the National Gallery of Art, as extant in the chapel of the Madonna in the church of San Cerbone in Lucca. But when Michele Ridolfi visited the church in 1845, he found only the central image of the Madonna in the chapel and that of Saint John in the sacristy, while all trace of the other panels had already been lost. They had perhaps been separated and dispersed presumably after 1806, following the Napoleonic suppression of the religious orders.

The five-part San Cerbone polyptych had a rather archaic structure, formed of five rectangular panels [fig. 1]. The painted surface of each of these panels terminated in an ogival arch, apparently without any figurative decoration in the spandrels to the side of the arch. This type of altarpiece makes it probable that the surviving panels were surmounted by another series of images: perhaps with two above each panel, as in some polyptychs produced in the shops of Pietro Lorenzetti (Sienese, active 1306 - 1345)[4] and of Ugolino di Nerio[5] in the late 1320s and during the following decade, or more probably with a single image above each panel, as in some works of the earliest phase in the career of Bulgarini himself.[6]

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.[7] Adolfo Venturi (1905, 1906, 1907) discarded this attribution and instead gave it, together with the other two components from the same complex with a provenance from the Sterbini collection, to Pietro.[8] The proposal met acceptance from F. Mason Perkins (1905 and 1931), Raimond van Marle (1924), Emilio Cecchi (1930), and George Harold Edgell (1932), and in the volume Duveen Pictures (1941) and various catalogs of the Gallery (NGA 1941, Shoolman and Slatkin 1942, Kress 1945).[9] Emil Jacobsen (1907) and Edward Hutton (1909) reported, but without expressing their own opinion about, the attribution to Pietro, while Ernest DeWald (1929) gave the three former Sterbini panels to a “follower of Segna di Bonaventura.”[10] In 1931, Andrea Péter and Millard Meiss independently recognized the common origin of these paintings with the other two now in the Museo Nazionale in Lucca.[11] Péter, however, detected the collaboration of two different hands in the polyptych; he assigned the two panels now in Lucca to “Ugolino Lorenzetti” (the master to whom he attributed works now generally recognized as belonging to Bulgarini’s initial phase), whereas he saw the intervention of the Ovile Master in the former Sterbini collection panels. For his part Meiss attributed the whole polyptych to “Ugolino Lorenzetti,” into whose catalog he incorporated the works that other art historians label with the conventional name of the Ovile Master. Meiss thought that the altarpiece belonged to a relatively early phase in the master’s output, dating it to c. 1330 – ​1340. Van Marle (1934) accepted his proposal, calling the San Cerbone polyptych an example of an intermediate phase between the artist’s early period influenced by Duccio’s art and his later phase, reflecting the influence of Pietro Lorenzetti.[12] Yet Meiss’s subsequent (1936) identification of the anonymous master, Ugolino Lorenzetti, with Bulgarini initially encountered resistance; only after the further clarification of the question, accompanied by the publication of new documentary evidence by Elisabeth H. Beatson, Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff (1986), did the attribution to Bulgarini gain general acceptance.[13]

What still remains problematic is the chronological sequence of Bulgarini’s oeuvre, which is devoid of dated works, apart from the tavole di biccherna.[14] The biccherna panels are difficult to compare with the static figures of far larger dimensions in the polyptychs, and among these the only secure point of reference is the dating to c. 1350 of the San Vittore altarpiece formerly in Siena Cathedral.[15] It may be asserted with some confidence that the San Cerbone polyptych should date to an earlier phase than this, on grounds of style, panel type, decoration, and iconography. It still lacks the softness of modeling and delicate chiaroscuro passages that distinguish the master’s later altarpieces. It also lacks the trefoil-arched moldings of the upper arch and the pastiglia ornament that characterize Bulgarini’s polyptychs around or after the midcentury. The particular motif of the child and the Madonna now in the Museo Nazionale di Villa Giunigi in Lucca, who devotes his undivided attention to his mother, twisting towards her with his whole body, is probably a Lorenzettian invention of the 1330s;[16] it also appears in Bulgarini’s Madonna now in the Museo Diocesano in Pienza.[17] Other paintings associated with this stylistic phase, as already observed in the past, include the fragment of a polyptych with a provenance from Radicondoli (no. 54 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena), where we also find iconographic formulae that are closely related to the figures of Saint Catherine and Mary Magdalene.[18] A similar image of the latter saint is also found in the polyptych of the Berenson Library at the Villa I Tatti near Florence,[19] while a variant of the figure of Saint John in the museum in Lucca recurs in the left lateral of the triptych from San Bartolomeo at Sestano, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena.[20]

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,[21] the triptych from the church of San Giovanni Battista in Fogliano near Siena,[22] or the two apostles of the Wallraf-­Richartz Museum in Cologne,[23] just to cite components of altarpieces. In the works of his intermediate period, those to which our Saint Catherine belongs, by contrast, Bulgarini based himself on models developed by Sienese artists in the wake of Duccio di Buoninsegna (Sienese, c. 1250/1255 - 1318/1319), and adopted the type of polyptych that had emerged in the third and fourth decade of the fourteenth century.[24] These are all features that differentiate our polyptych both from the artist’s initial phase and from his works dating to the years around and after the midcentury. Consequently a dating to c. 1340 would seem to me most likely for the Saint Catherine in the Gallery and for its companion panels.[25] What these panels have in common is a quest for grandeur, simplification of form, and the expression of powerful emotion, in the spirit of works painted by Pietro Lorenzetti in his early maturity.

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 cradled and probably thinned it (the present thickness is 1.2 cm). In addition, the top corners of the panel were cut during this treatment to form the arched shape the panel bears today. However, the top edge of the panel had already been cut down prior to Pichetto’s treatment, truncating the arch of the design.[1] A vertical split runs through the entire painting, passing through the saint’s left eye. The panel was prepared with a layer of gesso, in which the larger outlines of the figure were incised; the gilding, as usual, has a red bole layer underneath. The green underpainting is visible in the shadows of the flesh tones. The paint was thinly applied, with long strokes that follow the contours of the form.

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;[2] this was later lost or removed, making inpainting necessary in this area. The painting was cropped along its upper edge and taken out of its original frame probably in the seventeenth century.[3] Photographs made before 1905 [fig. 1] show it with the vertical split clearly visible and some small paint losses along the edges.[4] Another photo, made around 1930 [fig. 2], illustrates the painting already cleaned and restored and in a state apparently not very dissimilar to the one following Pichetto’s treatment, during which the painting was cleaned again and varnished.[5]

Bibliography

1706
Brandeglio, Antonio di. Vita di S. Cerbone vescovo di Popolonia e confessore. Lucca, 1706: 221-222, 300.
1845
Ridolfi, Michele. "Sopra i tre più antichi dipintori lucchesi dei quali si conoscono le opere: cenni storici e critici." Atti dell’Accademia lucchese di scienze, lettere ed arti 13 (1845): 374.
1901
Venturi, Adolfo. Storia dell’arte italiana. 11 vols. Milan, 1901-1940: 5(1907):696 n. 1.
1905
Perkins, F. Mason. "Arte senese nella Quadreria Sterbini a Roma." Rassegna d’arte senese 1, no. 4 (1905): 148-149, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1905
Venturi, Adolfo. "La quadreria Sterbini in Roma." L’Arte 8 (1905): 427, 428 fig. 5.
1906
Venturi, Adolfo. La Galleria Sterbini in Roma: saggio illustrativo. Rome, 1906: 33-34, repro. 35.
1907
Jacobsen, Emil. Sienesische Meister des Trecento in der Gemäldegalerie zu Siena. Strasbourg, 1907: 41 n. 1.
1907
Vollmer, Hans. "Meister der Ovile - Madonna." In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 37(1950):260.
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):90 n. 7.
1923
Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 2(1924):326.
1929
DeWald, Ernest T. "Pietro Lorenzetti." Art Studies 7 (1929): 160 n. 2.
1930
Cecchi, Emilio. Pietro Lorenzetti. Milan, 1930: 7, pl. 8.
1931
Meiss, Millard. "Ugolino Lorenzetti." The Art Bulletin 13 (1931): 378 (repro.), 380-384, 393, 397 n.
1931
Perkins, F. Mason. "Pitture senesi poco conosciute." La Diana 6 (1931): 28.
1931
Péter, Andrea. "Ugolino Lorenzetti e il Maestro di Ovile." Rivista d’arte 13 (1931): 22-33, figs. 13-14.
1932
Campetti, Placido. "Annuari." Bollettino storico lucchese 4 (1932): 159.
1932
Edgell, George Harold. A History of Sienese Painting. New York, 1932: 114.
1932
Marle, Raimond van. Le scuole della pittura italiana. 2 vols. The Hague and Florence, 1932-1934: 2(1934):155, 160.
1941
Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 14, repro., as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1941
National Gallery of Art. Book of Illustrations. Washington, 1941: 133 (repro.), 244.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 111, no. 521, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 250, repro. 135, as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1942
Shoolman, Regina, and Charles E. Slatkin. Enjoyment of Art in America: A Survey of the Permanent Collections of Paintings, Sculpture, Ceramics & Decorative Arts in American and Canadian Museums: Being an Introduction to the Masterpieces of Art from Prehistoric to Modern Times. Philadelphia and New York, 1942: 284, pl. 253.
1945
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 20, repro., as by Pietro Lorenzetti.
1945
"The New Kress Gift to the National Gallery, Washington." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 86, no. 504 (1945): 56.
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
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. .National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 77.
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
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 200, repro.
1977
Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. I Dipinti dal XII al XV secolo. Genoa, 1977: 136.
1978
Bruno, Raffaele. Roma: Pinacoteca Capitolina. Bologna, 1978: 3.
1979
De Benedictis, Cristina. La pittura senese 1330-1370. Florence, 1979: 85, 86.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:270-271; 2:pl. 186.
1981
Carli, Enzo. La pittura senese del Trecento. 1st ed. Milan, 1981: 221
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
L’Art gothique siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture. Exh. cat. Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 242.
1983
Skaug, Erling S. "Punch Marks. What Are They Worth? Problems of Tuscan Workshop Interrelationships in the Mid-Fourteenth Century." In La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte. Edited by Hendrik W. van Os and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer. Bologna, 1983: 263.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 233, repro.
1986
Beatson, Elisabeth H., Norman E. Muller, and Judith B. Steinhoff. "The St. Victor Altarpiece in Siena Cathedral: A Reconstruction." The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 628, n. 91.
1986
Castelnuovo, Enrico, ed. La Pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento. 2 vols. Essays by Antonio Caleca and Monica Leoncini. Milan, 1986: 1:254; 2:560.



1989
Neri, Enrica. "Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori. Edited by Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano. 6 vols. Turin, 1989-1994: 1(1989):475.
1990
Boskovits, Miklós, and Serena Padovani. Early Italian Painting 1290-1470. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. London, 1990: 36, 37 n.13.
1990
Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: i dipinti. 3rd ed. Genoa, 1990: 90.
1991
Baracchini, Clara. "Lucca. Scultura, Pittura e Miniatura." In Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale. Edited by Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana. 12 vols. Rome, 1991-2002: 8(1997):21.
1991
Steinhoff, Judith B. Bartolomeo Bulgarini and Sienese Painting of the Mid-Fourteenth Century. 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1990. Ann Arbor, MI, 1991: 1:134, 135, 176, 192, 193, 215; 2:388-392.
1992
Labriola, Ada. "Bulgarini Bartolomeo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 15(1997):109.
1993
Steinhoff, Judith B. "A Trecento Altarpiece Rediscovered: Bartolommeo Bulgarini’s Polyptych for San Gimignano." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 56 (1993): 107, 110, 111.
1993
Tazartes, Maurizia. "Profilo della pittura lucchese del Trecento." Ricerche di storia dell’arte 50 (1993): 90-91.
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: 1:250; 2:punch chart 7.12.
1996
Steinhoff, Judith B. "Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In The Dictionary of Art. Edited by Jane Turner. 34 vols. New York and London, 1996: 5:164.
1998
Filieri, Maria Teresa, ed. Sumptuosa tabula picta: pittori a Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento. Exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca. Livorno, 1998: 45.
2003
"Bulgarini, Bartolomeo." In Dictionnaire de la peinture. Edited by Michel Laclotte and Jean Pierre Cuzin. Paris, 2003: 122.
2004
Strehlke, Carl Brandon. Italian Paintings, 1250-1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, 2004: 83 n. 4.
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
Steinhoff, Judith. Sienese Painting after the Black Death: Artistic Pluralism, Politics, and the New Art Market. Cambridge, 2007: 49, 183-185, 189, figs. 77-79
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, 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.
2017
Brilliant, Virginia. Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings in the Ringling Museum of Art. Sarasota, FL, and New York, 2017: xix.

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Altarpiece Reconstruction

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.

Reconstruction of the San Cerbone Altarpiece by Bartolomeo Bulgarini:

a. Saint Catherine of Alexandria
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)

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