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Home » Collection » Saint Ursula with Two Angels and Donor
  • Inscription
  • Provenance
  • Bibliography
Inscription

on halo of central saint: .SANCTA.VREVLA.VIRGO. (original inscription, miscorrected during an early restoration, was "VRSVLS"); on halo of saint in upper right:.ANGELVS.; on halo of saint in upper left: .ANGELVS.; below nun in lower left, partially legible, "o" above the other letters: Suora .Ginevera.

Provenance

Grand Duke Georg II Saxe-Meiningen [1826-1914], who possibly acquired it during the third quarter of the nineteenth century in Florence;[1] by 1900 in his castle at Meiningen, Saxony;[2] sold in the mid- or late 1920s.[3] (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York); sold March 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] Although it does not appear among the ten early Italian panels described by Max Jordan in the collection of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen in 1872 (see Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II to the XVI Century, German ed. trans. Max Jordan, 6 vols. in 8 parts, Leipzig, 1869-1876: 4:592-593), it is likely that at that time the collection had already assumed its definitive aspect. Two of the more important items, the pair of Saints by Perugino now in New York (see Pietro Scarpellini, Perugino, Milan, 1984: 114) were still in Florence in 1850, with the dealer Metzger (see Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. Le Monnier, 14 vols., Florence, 1850 (originally 1568): 6:47 n. 2), and it is likely that Johann Metzger and his son, Ludwig, suppliers of early Italian pictures to the Berlin and Munich galleries, also provided paintings of the same kind to Meiningen Castle. On the Metzgers see John Fleming, "Art Dealing in the Risorgimento-II," The Burlington Magazine 121 (1979): 497 n. 2.

[2] See Bernard Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 2nd ed., New York and London, 1900: 106.

[3] The collection was probably broken up in the 1920s. A triptych by Bernardo Daddi, now in the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh (no. 1973.27), was sold in 1920 (see Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 3, 2nd ed., Florence, 1991: 4:234), and Filippino Lippi's Adoration of the Child (NGA 1937.1.18), left the Saxe-Meiningen collection in 1929. In any case, Gozzoli's panel, recorded by Bernard Berenson, "Quadri senza casa: Il Quattrocento fiorentino. Part 3," Dedalo 12, no. 11 (November 1932): 837, as on the market, obviously must have changed ownership sometime before that date.

[4] The Duveen Brothers letter confirming the sale of twenty-four paintings, including NGA 1939.1.265, is dated 9 March 1937; the provenance is given as "Saxe-Meiningen Coll'n" (copy in NGA curatorial files; Box 474, Folder 5, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles).

Bibliography
1941
Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: nos. 49-50, repros.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 90, no. 376.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 122.
1945
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 46, repro.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 63, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 61.
1966
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 115-116, fig. 315.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 53, repro.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 160, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: I:228, II:pl. 154
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 185, repro.
2003
Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 342-345, color repro.