Christ on the Cross [reverse]
c. 1380/1390
Painter, Sienese, active from 1389 - died 1428

The painting belongs to an uncommon genre of devotional icons painted on both sides. It is a simplified version of the portable diptych in which the Madonna and Child was usually depicted on the obverse, and Christ on the Cross on the reverse. This panel presents an isolated image of Christ hanging on the cross, unattended by the usual figures of mourners, soldiers, or onlookers who allude to the event of the Crucifixion.
Andrea di Bartolo and his shop specialized in small devotional pictures like this one, which was owned and used for private meditations by the woman (donor) who appears kneeling in prayer on the panel’s obverse side, which is decorated with an image of the Madonna of the Humility. An attached frame, now lost, contained seven circular cavities, or roundels, that held the owner’s collection of relics (the remains of a holy site or holy person, of which those related to Christ and the Virgin Mary were most valued).

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 3
Artwork overview
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Medium
tempera on panel
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Credit Line
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Dimensions
painted surface: 30 × 18.6 cm (11 13/16 × 7 5/16 in.)
overall: 30 × 18.6 × 0.8 cm (11 13/16 × 7 5/16 × 5/16 in.)
framed: 52.7 x 34.3 x 7.9 cm (20 3/4 x 13 1/2 x 3 1/8 in.) -
Accession
1939.1.20.b
More About this Artwork
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Private collection, Italy, c. 1920.[1] (Alessandro Contini, Rome [from 1930, Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi]); sold October 1927 to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955], New York;[2] transferred 1929 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York; gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] In his expertise dated 8 August 1934, commissioned from him by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (copy in the NGA curatorial files), F. Mason Perkins states that he had seen the painting for the first time in an Italian private collection fifteen years earlier.
[2] The bill of sale for sculpture, maiolica, furniture, antique velvet, and several paintings, including a "Madonna and Child by Lippo Memmi...given to Donato Martini by some experts," is dated 5 October 1927 (copy in NGA curatorial files).
Associated Names
Bibliography
1936
Meiss, Millard. "The Madonna of Humility." The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 437, n. 8.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 133-134, no. 131, as by Lippo Memmi (?).
Richter, George Martin. "The New National Gallery in Washington." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 78 (June 1941): 177.
1943
Pope-Hennessy, John. "A Madonna by Andrea Vanni." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 83, no. 484 (1943): 177.
1946
Meiss, Millard. "Italian Primitives at Konopištĕ." The Art Bulletin 28 (1946): 6.
1951
Meiss, Millard. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death. Princeton, 1951: 22-23, n. 34, 134.
1966
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 66-67, fig. 174.
1968
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:8.
1969
Os, Hendrik W. van. Marias Demut und Verherrlichung in der sienesischen Malerei: 1300-1450. The Hague, 1969: 18, 120, 187, pl. 10b.
1971
Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolo’s Assumption of the Virgin." Arts in Virginia 2 (1971): 5.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 6, 228, 346, 645.
1974
Os, Hendrik W. van. "Andrea di Bartolo’s Madonna of Humility." M: A Quarterly Review of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 6, no. 3 (1974): 21, 25.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:3-4; 2:pl. 1a.
1982
Il gotico a Siena: miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’arte. Exh. cat. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. Florence, 1982: 292.
1983
L’Art gothique siennois: enluminure, peinture, orfèvrerie, sculpture. Exh. cat. Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon. Florence, 1983: 274.
Kasten, Eberhard. "Andrea di Bartolo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1983-1990: 2(1986):976.
1984
Gilbert, Creighton E. "Tuscan Observants and Painters in Venice, ca. 1400." in Interpretazioni Veneziane: studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro. Edited by David Rosand. Venice, 1984: 113 (repro.), 114-116.
1986
Maderna, Valentina, ed. Il polittico di Andrea di Bartolo a Brera Restaurato. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Florence, 1986: 10-11, 17.
1987
Freuler, Gaudenz. "Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso d’Antonio Cafarini, and Sienese Dominicans in Venice." The Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 577.
1989
Os, Hendrik W. van, J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer, C. E. de Jong-Janssen, and Charlotte Wiefhoff, eds. The Early Sienese Paintings in Holland. Translated by Michael Hoyle. Florence, 1989: 29, 32.
1992
Kasten, Eberhard. "Andrea di Bartolo." In Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Edited by Günter Meissner. 87+ vols. Munich and Leipzig, 1992+: 3(1992):514.
1998
Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 44, 48, 224, 230, 351, 479.
1999
Mannini, Maria Pia, ed. Da Bernardo Daddi a Giorgio Vasari. Exh. cat. Galleria Moretti, 26 September 1999. Florence, 1999: 56.
2005
Schmidt, Victor M. Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal Devotion in Tuscany, 1250-1400. Florence, 2005: 222-223, 265 n. 82.
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):250, 252.
2016
Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 7-13, color repro.
Wikidata ID
Q20173257