National Gallery of Art

Because of their relatively large size, this panel and its companion, The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist, have been considered part of the apron of a painted crucifix.[1]  [1]
See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 174–176, and, on the genre of the painted crucifixes, Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 400–406.  As their horizontal wood grain suggests, they undoubtedly formed the lateral terminals of a painting of this type, probably that belonging to the church of Santa Maria in Borgo in Bologna (now exhibited at the Pinacoteca Nazionale of that city), as Gertrude Coor was the first to recognize [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Reconstruction of a painted crucifix, formerly in San Francesco, Bologna, by the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes (color images are NGA objects): a. Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels (above) and the Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen (added by Jacopo di Paolo) (fig. 3); b. The Mourning Madonna; c. The Mourning Saint John the Evangelist; d. Bust of the Blessing Christ (fig. 2).[2]  [2]
Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 221, considered the panels to belong to the apron (tabellone) of a painted crucifix (i.e., the lateral compartments flanking the body of Christ). Gertrude Coor was the first to recognize that the fragments belong to the crucifix of Santa Maria in Borgo; she orally communicated this conclusion to Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:312 n. 4. Previously, Giulia Sinibaldi, in Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento: Catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937, ed. Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti (Florence, 1943), 151, had proposed that the two paintings belonged to the crucifix formerly in the choir and now in the Library of the Convent of San Francesco; but cf. in this regard Silvia Giorgi, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 200–201.  Another fragment of the work, a tondoTondo
 Circular painting or relief carving. It developed as an independent form in Florence in the first half of the 15th century, though earlier examples do exist, for example in France with Jean Malouel’s Pietà (Paris, Louvre) which dates c. 1400. Many of the surviving Italian tondi depict themes that also occurred on the desco da parto, from which the tondo may have evolved. This was a circular or polygonal painted tray made to celebrate the birth of a child and presented to the mother with gifts of sweetmeats and fruit. Tondi paintings were produced in Florence primarily for domestic settings, with the Adoration of the Magi and the Virgin and Child being particularly popular subjects. —Grove Art © Oxford University Press with the bust of the Blessing Christ [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Bust of the Blessing Christ, c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, now lost, was in the possession of the art dealer Bacri in Paris around 1939.[3]  [3]
It was Edward Garrison who recognized that the fragment, which measures 40 cm in diameter, belonged to his “Borgo Crucifix Master.” The panel, with a provenance from the Oertel collection in Dresden, was stolen from the dealer Bacri in 1939 and has never been rediscovered. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 219. Gertrude Coor proposed that it originally formed part of the Santa Maria in Borgo crucifix in a verbal communication to Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:312 n. 4.

The two panels represent, respectively, the mother of Jesus and his favorite disciple in the typical pose of mourners, with the head bowed to one side and the cheek resting on the palm of the hand.[4]  [4]
This was a gesture of sorrow already familiar in classical art and widespread in medieval art. See Moshe Barasch, Gestures of Despair in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art (New York, 1976), 129 n. 15; François Garnier, Le langage de l’image au Moyen Age, vol. 1, Signification et symbolique (Paris, 1982), 181–184.  As is seen frequently in Italian paintings of the late thirteenth century, Mary is wearing a purple maphorion over a blue robe,[5]  [5]
The maphorion was a sort of shawl used in Byzantium both in male and female costume; see Harry Kühnel, ed., Bildwörterbuch der Kleidung und Rüstung: Vom Alten Orient bis zum ausgehenden Mittelalter (Stuttgart, 1992), 168–169. A common element in Byzantine and Byzantinizing representations of the Madonna, an example of maphorion was preserved as a much-venerated relic in the Blancherna monastery in Istanbul; see Averil Cameron, “The Early Cult of the Virgin,” in The Mother of God: The Representation of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, ed. Maria Vassilaki (Milan and London, 2000), 11–13.  and Saint John a steel-blue garment and purple-red mantle.[6]  [6]
The distinctive colors of the saint are generally an azure (or blue) tunic and a pink (or red) mantle; cf. Margrit Lisner, “Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in Giottos Arenafresken: Farbgebung und Farbikonographie mit Notizen zu älteren Aposteldarstellungen in Florenz, Assisi und Rom,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53 (1990): 334.  In publishing them (1922), Osvald Sirén noted the stylistic affinity of the two panels with the Bolognese crucifix [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels (above) and the Kneeling Saint Francis (below), and Saint Helen (added by Jacopo di Paolo), c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. He inserted them in the catalog of the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes,[7]  [7]
“Ihr Zusammenhang mit dem bolognesen Kruzifix geht überzeugend sowohl aus der Figurenzeichnung wie aus dem Typen und der Faltenbehandlung vor,” Osvald Sirén, Toskanische Maler im XIII. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), 222.  a painter of mixed Umbrian-­Pisan culture of the second half of the thirteenth century, whose oeuvre he himself had reconstructed. For his part, Raimond van Marle (1923) considered the fragments works of an Umbrian artist of the school of the Master of San Francesco.[8]  [8]
Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 1, From the 6th until the End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 402.  Robert Lehman, in compiling the catalog of his father’s collection (1928), accepted Sirén’s opinion but proposed the date of c. 1250 for the two fragments.[9]  [9]
Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), nos. 59, 60.  In 1929, Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà undertook a far more thorough examination of the problem of the two fragments and their stylistic affinities. Emphasizing the Umbrian component in the painter’s figurative culture, she stated that he was active in the years close to 1272 [10]  [10]
Recognizing that establishing a common authorship for the various painted crucifixes with a provenance from Umbria and Emilia-Romagna was problematic, Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà asserted that it was at least plausible to assume they were works of “un unico maestro . . . probabilmente Bolognese . . . che si sarebbe recato ad Assisi​ . . . ​e poi tornato a Bologna portando con sé​ . . . ​gli insegnamenti del Maestro di San Francesco” (a single master, probably Bolognese, who would have gone to Assisi and later returned to Bologna, bringing with him the teachings of the Master of Saint Francis). Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà, La croce dipinta ita­liana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 857.  and had worked extensively in Emilia-Romagna.

While most art historians have accepted Sirén’s view and the conventional name he coined for the master,[11]  [11]
August L. Mayer, “Die Sammlung Philip Lehman,” Pantheon 5 (1930): 115; National Gallery of Art, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection (Washington, DC, 1945), 4–5; Robert Langton Douglas, “Recent Additions to the Kress Collection,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 88 (1946): 85; Alfred M. Frankfurter, Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National Gallery (New York, 1946), 15; Hans Vollmer, “Meister des hl. Franziskus von Assis,” in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1950), 37:105; Fern Rusk Shapley and John Shapley, Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (New York, 1957), 13, pl. 3; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century (London, 1966), 4; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:312–313; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-­Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 287, 646, 665; Pietro Scarpellini, “Le pitture,” in Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto (Assisi, 1980), 40–41 (though he referred to the work under the alternative name of Maestro Crocifissi Blu); Anna Tambini, Pittura dall’Alto Medioevo al Tardogotico nel territorio di Faenza e Forlì (Faenza, 1982), 34–35 (who adopted as the conventional name for the group “Maestro di Santa Maria in Borgo”); Elvio Lunghi, “Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:596; Filippo Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989), 1:125; Angelo Tartuferi, Giunta Pisano (Soncino, 1991), 82, 94; Patricia Lurati, in Sauver Assise, ed., Giovanni Morello (Milan, 1998), 50 (all with the name “Maestro dei Crocifissi Blu,” to whom Todini and Tartuferi denied the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna); Laurence B. Kanter and Pia Palladino, in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, ed. Giovanni Morello and Laurence B. Kanter (Milan, 1999), 64; Daniele Benati et al., in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 106 n. 42, 125, 186, 194, 197–200, 201, 203, 210; Silvia Giorgi, “Maestro dei Crocifissi Francescani,” in La pittura in Europa: Il dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 2:534; Silvia Giorgi, in Pina­coteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 43; Anna Tambini, Storia delle arti figurative a Faenza, vol. 1, Le origini (Faenza, 2006), 75, 79. The only clearly dissenting opinion seems to be that of Berenson, who wrote the name of Coppo di Marcovaldo as the master on the back of the photograph sent to him for his examination (copy in NGA curatorial files), but Joanna Cannon also considered the attribution scarcely convincing. See Joanna Cannon, “The Era of the Great Painted Crucifix: Giotto, Cimabue, Giunta Pisano, and their Anonymous Contemporaries,” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 576.  advocates of a contrary thesis have not been lacking. There are those who support the thesis that the two fragments are Pisan in derivation, or even propose Giunta Pisano as the master of the crucifix.[12]  [12]
See Lionello Venturi, Pitture ita­liane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 5; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 6; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 24 (to be attributed “almost certainly to Giunta”). Recently, Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca suggested Giunta’s authorship, though with a question mark and without mentioning the Washington panels. See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 73, 74–75.  Other art historians insist that the painter was Bolognese and exclude from his oeuvre the paintings of Umbrian provenance.[13]  [13]
Giulia Sinibaldi, in Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento: Catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937, ed. Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti (Florence, 1943), 149, 151 (who classified the panels as works of a Bolognese Giuntesque painter, to be distinguished from the master of the Umbrian paintings to whom Osvald Sirén and Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà connected them); and Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 14, 221 n. 605 (who attributed to the “Borgo Crucifix Master” only the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca of Bologna, the fragments being discussed here, and the tondo placed on top of the cimasa formerly in the possession of the dealer Bacri in Paris). Osvald Sirén, Toskanische Maler im xiii. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1922), 223, 224; Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà, La croce dipinta italiana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 845, 855, 857, 884.  Today, however, there seems no good reason to deny the common authorship of the oeuvre mainly consisting of crucifixes first assembled by Sirén, or to reject the name he attached to it, Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes.[14]  [14]
Apart from the fragmentary fresco representing the Madonna and Child Enthroned and Saint Peter, which I have added to the catalog of the painter, two panels of a dismantled diptych have also been recognized as works of the same master: the one leaf representing the Crucifixion now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and its companion panel, Madonna and Child, in a private collection, identified by Filippo Todini. Cf. Miklós Boskovits, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 196; Ferdinando Bologna, La pittura italiana delle origini (Rome, 1962), 79; and Filippo Todini, “Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento in Umbria e il cantiere di Assisi,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:376 fig. 577. The name Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes also is now generally accepted in the catalogs of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, whereas the conventional name of Maestro del Crocifisso di Borgo had been preferred in the past. See Rosa D’Amico, La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna (Venice, 2001), 12 – ​14; and Silvia Giorgi, in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, catalogo generale, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, ed. Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero Cammarota, and Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (Venice, 2004), 41–44.

The chronological sequence of the works attributable to the anonymous master is still under discussion. Useful clues can be deduced, however, from a comparison between some passages, such as the figure of the mourning Saint John, that frequently recur in his paintings. In my view, the pictorial treatment of the apostle in the crucifixes in the Treasury of the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi, the Pinacoteca of Faenza, the bank in Camerino, and the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna not only confirm that these works were all painted by the same master but also suggest that their order of execution must have been that listed above. In the four versions of the image of Saint John, the design seems to gain in fluidity and the contours in movement, while the forms become more segmented, or ruffled, by the increasingly close-set alignment of the drapery folds. At the same time, the pose of the apostle gradually assumes the hanchement so dear to GothicGothic
 Term used to denote, since the 15th century, the architecture and, from the 19th century onward, all the visual arts of Europe during a period extending by convention from about 1120 to c. 1400 in central Italy, and until the late 15th century and even well into the 16th century in northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The early gothic style overlapped chronologically with Romanesque and flourished after the onset of Renaissance art in Italy and elsewhere. The term gothic is applied to western European painting of the 13th century to the early 15th century. Unlike gothic architecture, it is distinguished more by developments in style and function than in technique, and even in these areas there is considerable national and regional diversity. The applicability of the term to Italian painting is debated, as is its usefulness in accounting for developments in Netherlandish painting from the early 15th century. Contact with Byzantine art was close in the early 13th century, but after c. 1250 survived principally in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. —Peter Kidson, Grove Art © Oxford University Press taste. These changes are present, of course, in the works of other contemporary artists and provide points of reference for the dating of our two panels. Thus, the figure of Saint John in the painting in Assisi seems to be close in style to that executed by the Master of Santa Chiara between 1253 and 1260 (crucifix in the Basilica of Santa Chiara at Assisi),[15]  [15]
On this work, see Elvio Lunghi, “La decorazione pittorica della chiesa,” in La basilica di Santa Chiara in Assisi (Ponte San Giovanni, Perugia, 1994), 151–164.  while the version of the same image now in the National Gallery of Art seems more closely comparable, both in elegance of proportions and in pose, to the mourning Saint John by the Master of San Francesco, part of the painted crucifix in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia, dated 1272.[16]  [16]
On the painting, see Serena Romano, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Gari­baldi (Florence, 1994), 63–65.  The period of time indicated by these works ought also to circumscribe the years of activity of the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes. On the other hand, the more lyrical manner of this master in comparison with the Umbrian masters cited above suggests that during the years spent in Umbria he was especially in contact with such painters as the Master of San Felice di Giano, the master of the crucifix (no. 17, unfortunately undated) in the Pinacoteca of Spoleto.[17]  [17]
For essential information on the Master of San Felice di Giano, see Giordana Benazzi, in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 66–67. The crucifix in the Museo in Spoleto is reproduced in Filippo Todini, La pittura umbra dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento, 2 vols. (Milan, 1989), 2: figs. 26, 27.  His style clearly differs from that of the Bolognese followers of Giunta Pisano,[18]  [18]
I refer to the painted crucifix in the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte in Bologna, which Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà (1929) ascribed to the catalog of the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes but which is generally classified in the more recent literature as a work of an anonymous Bolognese master, or the crucifix in the church of Santa Croce at Villa Verucchio near Forlì. See Evelyn Sandberg-­Vavalà, La croce dipinta italiana e l’iconografia della Passione (Verona, 1929), 855; Silvia Giorgi, in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 210–212; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 217.  and this circumstance in itself seems to rebut the hypothesis that he had been trained in the Emilian city. Yet it cannot be excluded that the artistic climate of Bologna could have stimulated successive developments in his career, especially the town’s vital and increasingly sophisticated tradition of producing miniatures for illuminated manuscripts, along with the influence of the sculpted Arca in the church of San Domenico, completed not long before the crucifix under discussion.[19]  [19]
See Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Nicola Pisano’s Arca di San Domenico and Its Legacy (University Park, PA, 1994).

That the two fragments formed part of the crucifix now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna must remain a hypothesis that only proper scientific and technical analysis of the panels could corroborate. Yet the dimensions and pictorial treatment of the panels now divided among the galleries of Bologna and Washington and a private collection provide strong arguments to support the view that they originally belonged together. As for the measurements, the two panels in the Gallery, slightly cropped to the sides, are very similar in size to the upper terminal of the Bolognese crucifix [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Detail of upper terminal, Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, Painted Crucifix with the Madonna between Two Angels, c. 1270/1275, tempera on panel, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna.[20]  [20]
In the absence of the original frame, it cannot be established how the panels now in Washington were joined to the crucifix of which they formed part. But if we consider that the width of the two lateral terminals in both the crucifix in the Muzzarelli Chapel of San Francesco in Assisi and in that in the Pinacoteca at Faenza is the same as the height of the upper terminal, it seems significant that the terminal still joined to the cimasa of the crucifix in the Pinacoteca of Bologna—the Madonna and Two Angels—has measurements very close to those of the Gallery's panels, namely, 33 × 84 cm. I wish to thank Dr. Paola Checchi for kindly measuring this part of the crucifix for me.  A virtual identity can also be seen in the pictorial treatment of these works. They all reveal the same search for a stylistic balance between Giuntesque formulae and a tendency towards the new needs of elegance and softness in the modeling of the figure. The similarity between the rapid brushstrokes that create the forms in the figures of the Madonna [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Detail, Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes, The Mourning Madonna, 1270/1275, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection and Saint John and in the crucifix in Bologna seems to me evident. All three panels, moreover, reveal the same manner of producing relief effects by sudden flashes of light, using the same technique of applying delicate touches of white to the green underpaint preparation. The effect of this pictorial freedom and of the graceful and humanizing rendering of the figures would not fail to stimulate the Bolognese miniaturists active in the last quarter of the thirteenth century.[21]  [21]
Massimo Medica, “La città dei libri e dei miniatori,” in Duecento: Forme e colori del Medioevo a Bologna, ed. Massimo Medica and Stefano Tumidei (Venice, 2000), 123–125, pointed out the probable influence of the Master of the Franciscan Crucifixes on Bolognese miniatures of the time.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

Associated Names