National Gallery of Art

This panel and its companion, Saint John the Evangelist, originally formed part of an altarpieceAltarpiece
 An image-bearing structure set on the rear part of the altar, abutting the back of the altarblock, or set behind the altar in such a way as to be visually joined with the altar when viewed from a distance. It is also sometimes called a retable, following the medieval term retrotabulum. The altarpiece was never officially prescribed by the Church, but it did perform a prescribed function alternatively carried out by a simple inscription on the altarblock: to declare to which saint or mystery the altar was dedicated. In fact, the altarpiece did more than merely identify the altar; its form and content evoked the mystery or personage whose cult was celebrated at the altar. This original and lasting function influenced the many forms taken by the altarpiece throughout its history. —Alexander Nagel, Grove Art © Oxford University Press painted on both sides. The side displayed to the faithful presumably showed four stories of Christ flanked by saints and prophets [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, front side, right portion, by the Master of Saint Francis: a. Prophet Isaiah (fig. 3); b. Deposition (fig. 4); c. Lamentation (fig. 5); d. Saint Anthony of Padua (fig. 6) (see also Reconstruction), while the rear side showed the apostles and Saint Francis, full length [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Reconstruction of an altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato in Perugia, rear side, left portion, by the Master of Saint Francis (color images are NGA objects): a. Saint Francis (fig. 7); b. Saints Bartholomew and Simon (fig. 8); c. Saint James Minor; d. Saint John the Evangelist; e. Saint Andrew (fig. 9); f. Saint Peter (fig. 10) (see also Reconstruction). Of the main side of the altarpiece, which had already been dismembered by 1793,[1]  [1]
See Provenance note 4.  only the components of the right part have survived, namely Prophet Isaiah ([fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Master of Saint Francis, Prophet Isaiah, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi, treasury of the basilica of San Francesco, Assisi)[2]  [2]
Pietro Scarpellini, “Le pitture,” in Il tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto (Assisi, 1980), 43–44. Raimond Van Marle was the first to publish the painting and to report its location as being in the treasury, where it remains today. Raimond van Marle, “Il Maestro di San Francesco,” Rassegna d’arte antica e moderna 6, no. 1 (1919): 15, fig. 9.  and Deposition [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Master of Saint Francis, Deposition, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia, Lamentation [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Master of Saint Francis, Lamentation, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia, and Saint Anthony of Padua [fig. 6]   [fig. 6] Master of Saint Francis, Saint Anthony of Padua, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia, all three now in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia.[3]  [3]
See Provenance note 1. Jürgen Schultze, “Zur Kunst des ‘Franziskusmeisters,’” Wallraf-­Richartz-­Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 144, and others have asserted, correctly in my view, that as the principal side of the altarpiece, the side depicting the scenes of the Passion would have faced the nave. The fact that the architectural framing in relief would have conferred a richer and more solemn appearance on this side also leads to the same conclusion. Serena Romano, however, expressed doubts on the matter, and Donal Cooper maintained that the side with the apostles would have faced the nave and aisles of the church. Serena Romano, “Maestro di San Francesco,” in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 60; Donal Cooper, “Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of Double-­Sided Altarpieces in Pre-­Tridentine Umbria,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 64 (2001): 9–12.  Nothing has survived of the left part of the dossal, which perhaps showed Jeremiah (or another prophet), the counterpart of Isaiah on the other side, flanked by two other scenes of the Passion and another full-length saint, corresponding to Saint Francis on the back. The centerpiece of the dossal, probably a Madonna and Child, has also been lost.[4]  [4]
Edward Garrison (1949), followed by Dillian Gordon (1982), maintained that the central panel of the side with the scenes of the Passion would have represented the Crucifixion, while Jürgen Schultze (1963) argued that an iconographic theme more suitable for such a situation would have been a Madonna and Child Enthroned. Gordon has since (2002) accepted his proposal. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 171; Dillian Gordon, “A Perugian Provenance for the Franciscan Double-­Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco,” The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 71; Jürgen Schultze, “Zur Kunst des ‘Franziskusmeisters,’” Wallraf-­Richartz-­Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 144–145; Dillian Gordon, “Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Perugian Double-Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function ” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 229–234. An altarpiece of a format and date not too dissimilar from the one being considered here, the work of the Master of Farneto in the Galleria Nazionale dell’ Umbria in Perugia (no. 27), seems to support the latter hypothesis. See Francesco Santi, ed.,Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d’arte di età romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969), 34–35.  On the back of the dossal, from left to right, were Saint Francis ([fig. 7]   [fig. 7] Master of Saint Francis, Saint Francis, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia, now Galleria Nazionale dell’ Umbria, Perugia, no. 24); Saints Bartholomew and Simon ([fig. 8]   [fig. 8] Master of Saint Francis, Saints Bartholomew and Simon, c. 1272, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; see note 1); the two panels being discussed here from the National Gallery of Art; Saint Andrew [fig. 9]   [fig. 9] Master of Saint Francis, Saint Andrew, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia, in the past erroneously identified with other apostles (Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, no. 23)[5]  [5]
Giovanni Cecchini (1932) identified the saint as Saint John the Evangelist, Edward Garrison (1949) as Saint Matthew, and Francesco Santi (1969) as Saint Matthew. But the inscription found during a recent restoration (SANCTVS [F]VIT IN PATRAS) establishes that the apostle in question can only be Andrew, martyred, according to tradition, in Patras; see Serena Romano, “Maestro di San Francesco,” in Dipinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 58. Cf. Giovanni Cecchini, La Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia (Rome, 1932), 21; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 162; Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d’arte di età romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969), 30–31. ; and Saint Peter ([fig. 10]   [fig. 10] Master of Saint Francis, Saint Peter, c. 1272, tempera on panel, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Image courtesy of Former Superintendent BSAE Umbria-Perugia, formerly Stoclet collection, Brussels; acquired by the Italian State in 2002 for the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia, no. 1393). As for the lost central panel on the rear side, images of the Madonna and Child or Christ Enthroned have been proposed.[6]  [6]
Edward Garrison (1949) proposed the Crucifixion as an alternative to the image of the Madonna and Child, while Jürgen Schultze (1963) argued that the lost central image could have represented Christ Enthroned. Dillian Gordon (2002) also accepted the latter hypothesis. See Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 163; Jürgen Schultze, “Zur Kunst des ‘Franziskusmeisters,’” Wallraf-­Richartz-Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 142 – ​143; Dillian Gordon, “Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-­Century Perugian Double-­Sided Altarpieces: Form and Function,” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 229–230.  To the right of the central image, the presence of six other apostles can be assumed; two of them presumably were combined in a single panel, as in the case of the Metropolitan Museum of Art painting. It is likely, lastly, that the seventh figure, the one closest to the central panel, was the apostle Saint Paul.[7]  [7]
Cf. Jürgen Schultze, “Ein Duecento-­Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Flor­enz 10 (1961): 62.

Both the arrangement of this series of figures, standing under arcades, and their architectural framing were inspired, as Dillian Gordon (1982) showed, by an early Christian sarcophagus formerly kept in the church of San Francesco al Prato (and now in the Oratory of San Bernardino in Perugia); it had been used as the tomb of the Blessed Egidio (Egido),[8]  [8]
“The marble sarcophagus is sculpted with [the]​ . . . ​enthroned Christ in the centre, with standing figures​ . . . ​on either side; several of these​ . . . ​are doubled under one arch, several holding scrolls”; all these motifs are also present in the altarpiece of the Master of Saint Francis. What is particularly worthy of note, however, is “the curious pose of St. James with the right arm tucked up into a sling of drapery​ . . . ​found in both outermost figures of the sarcophagus.” This “awkward arrangement,” which according to Fern Rusk Shapley (1979) “may be due to the intention of showing him holding the fuller’s club, symbol of the martyrdom of James the Minor,” is in fact merely a further sign of the fidelity with which the thirteenth-century painter tried to imitate the early Christian model. See Dillian Gordon, “A Perugian Provenance for the Franciscan Double-­Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco,” The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 75; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:325 n. 2.  one of the first companions of Saint Francis, who died near Perugia in 1262 and was greatly venerated in that city.[9]  [9]
Cf. Silvana Vecchio, “Egidio d’Assisi,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1993), 42:312–316.  Since the same church also housed the large painted crucifix dated 1272 likewise executed by the Master of Saint Francis and now in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia,[10]  [10]
Inv. n. 26; see Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d’arte di età romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969), 26–28. The crucifix, a panel of large dimensions (489 × 352 cm), pre­sumably had been intended to be placed—like other paintings of this kind—over the choir screen, instead of over the altar, as is sometimes asserted. Its position can be supposed to be similar to that illustrated by the well-known fresco depicting the Miracle of Greccio in the upper church of San Francesco at Assisi.  Gordon proposed a similar date for the altarpiece as a whole—a very plausible hypothesis, even if not everyone has accepted it.[11]  [11]
Dillian Gordon (1982) interpreted the report according to which the sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio was to be seen below the “Altare del Crocifisso” in 1647, in the sense that the sarcophagus formed the altar table and that the altarpiece painted by the Master of Saint Francis was placed above it. In Gordon’s view, the altarpiece and the large painted crucifix were produced c. 1272 as elements of a single project. In their later publications, Filippo Todini (1986) and Elvio Lunghi (1986) expressed doubts about the destination of the altarpiece for the Franciscan church of Perugia, while Luiz Marques (1987) revived the old thesis that the altarpiece had been executed for the lower church of Assisi in c. 1260. On the other hand, although they accepted a date close to 1272, both Gail Solberg (1992) and Donal Cooper (2001) cast doubt on the common destination of the panels by the Master of Saint Francis and the sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio. The latter, in fact, is documented in a side chapel and not on the site of the high altar. Serena Romano (1994), followed by Vittoria Garibaldi (2002), was convinced that the altarpiece of the Master of Saint Francis did indeed stand over the sarcophagus of the Blessed Egidio, but in the crypt of the church, and that it was executed at a “data più vicina al 1262 (sistemazione delle reliquie del Beato Egidio) che al 1272.” See Dillian Gordon, “A Perugian Provenance for the Franciscan Double-­Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco,” The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 75–76; 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; Elvio Lunghi, “Maestro di San Francesco,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:624; Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 61–64; Gail E. Solberg,Taddeo di Bartolo: His Life and Work (PhD diss., New York University, 1991), 634; Donal Cooper, “‘Qui Perusii in archa saxea tumulatus’: The Shrine of Beato Egidio in San Francesco al Prato, Perugia,” Papers of the British School at Rome 69 (2001): 226–230; Serena Romano, “Maestro di San Francesco,” in Di­pinti, sculture e ceramiche della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Studi e restauri, ed. Caterina Bon Valsassina and Vittoria Garibaldi (Florence, 1994), 60; Vittoria Garibaldi, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria: Guida (Milan, 2002), 14.

As Edward B. Garrison (1949) and other scholars recognized, the altarpiece formerly in San Francesco al Prato should be considered one of the earliest examples of the type of altarpiece classifiable as “low dossal.” Both its large size and the fact that it was painted on both sides suggest that it was intended for the high altar of the church.[12]  [12]
For the earliest panels painted on both front and rear sides, cf. Julian Gardner, “Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure,” in La pittura nel xiv e xv secolo, il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Hendrik W. van Os and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 297–322; Miklós Boskovits, “Appunti per una storia della tavola d’altare: Le origini,” Arte cristiana 80 (1992): 422–438.  Its measurements cannot have diverged very much from Jürgen Schultze’s (1961) calculations (0.58 × 3.5 m).[13]  [13]
Jürgen Schultze, “Ein Duecento-­Altar aus Assisi? Versuch einer Rekonstruktion,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 10 (1961): 63–64.  Its external profile was probably distinguished by a central gable, whether arched or triangular, placed over the lost central panel,[14]  [14]
Edward Garrison calculated the width of the original dossal by the Master of San Francesco as c. 370 cm. Gordon proposed instead that the altarpiece and the large crucifix by the master had the same width, i.e., c. 352 cm. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 171; Dillian Gordon, “A Perugian Provenance for the Franciscan Double-­Sided Altarpiece by the Maestro di S. Francesco,” The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 76.  an archaic type that was replaced as early as the last decade of the thirteenth century by the more modern form of multigabled dossals.[15]  [15]
On dossals of this type, cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 168. Julian Gardner noted that the “mixture of narrative scenes and standing saints employs an iconographical model already enunciated by Nicola Pisano in his Siena Duomo pulpit.” Julian Gardner, “Some Aspects of the History of the Italian Altar, ca. 1250 – ​ca. 1350: Placement and Decoration,” in Objects, Images and the Word: Art in the Service of the Liturgy, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2003), 151.

The question of the authorship of the work has never been seriously disputed (even though some art historians have preferred to attribute the dispersed Perugian dossal to the workshop of the Master of Saint Francis).[16]  [16]
Thus Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 170, and, at least initially, Francesco Santi, La Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria in Perugia, Itinerari dei musei e monumenti d’Italia 90 (Rome, 1956), 7.  Greater uncertainties surround its date. To elucidate the question, some preliminary reflections on the main stages in the painter’s career are needed.

Two plausibly datable works can be of help in this regard. Some have attributed to the Master of Saint Francis the Madonna and Child with an angel frescoed on the north wall of the nave in the lower church of the basilica of San Francesco in Assisi and considered it to have been executed in 1252 or just after.[17]  [17]
Jürgen Schultze (1963) published it as a work related to the narrative frescoes by the Master of Saint Francis on the walls of the church. Basing his view on a sixteenth-century text by Fra’ Ludovico, Pietro Scarpellini (Fra’ Ludovico da Pietralunga 1982) asserted that it had been executed to decorate the burial place of Cardinal Pietro di Barro, who died in 1252 and was buried in the area of the lower church where the fresco was situated. More recent studies cast doubt on the attribution to the Master of Saint Francis; they preferred to see the fresco as the work of an anonymous Umbrian master (Marques 1987), or of a painter of Tuscan culture (Cadei 1991), or of Roman masters still active in Assisi in the 1270s (Andaloro 2001). Filippo Todini (1986), on the other hand, asserted that it was a work of the earliest phase of the Master of Saint Francis, and it seems to me that this thesis is fully confirmed by comparison with passages of the stained glass attributable to the same master in the upper church (Martin and Ruf 1997). See Jürgen Schultze, “Zur Kunst des ‘Franziskusmeisters,’” Wallraf-Richartz-­Jahrbuch 25 (1963): 129–130; Pietro Scarpellini, in Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini (intro. and comm.), Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso, 1982), 181; Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 59, 60; Antonio Cadei, “Le prime immagi­ni,” in San Francesco: Basilica patriarcale in Assisi; Testimonianza artistica, messaggio evangelico, ed. Roberto Caravaggi (Milan, 1991), 102; Maria Andaloro, “Tracce della prima decorazione pittorica,” in Il cantiere pittorico della Basilica superiore di San Francesco in Assisi, ed. Giuseppe Basile and Pasquale Magro (Assisi, 2001), 80 – ​81; 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), 2:375; Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), figs. 130, 142.  The cycle of narrative frescoes on both walls of the same nave, on the other hand, unanimously has been attributed to the same artist and dated to around 1260.[18]  [18]
Joanna Cannon (1982) and Beat Brenk (1983) both indicated the publication of the Legenda maior of Saint Francis in 1263 as the probable terminus ante quem for the frescoes, and more recent studies generally have accepted this proposal. See Joanna Cannon, “Dating the Frescoes by the Maestro di San Francesco at Assisi,” The Burlington Magazine 124 (1982): 65–69; Beat Brenk, “Das Datum der Franzlegende der Unterkirche zu Assisi,” in Roma anno 1300: Atti della iv settimana di studi di storia dell’arte medievale dell’Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” ed. Angiola Maria Romanini (Rome, 1983), 229–234.  Comparing them with the one securely dated work of the painter, the painted crucifix of 1272 in Perugia, suggests that the elegant, lively figures in the Washington panels—Saint John turning his head to the right, Saint James stepping forward to the left—are closer to the figures of the cycle with stories of Christ and of Saint Francis than to the fragmentary image of the Madonna. With its more summary design and the static poses of its figures, the latter recalls on the one hand the figurative tradition of artists active in the middle decades of the century, such as Simeone and Machilone from Spoleto,[19]  [19]
Cf. Edward B. Garrison, “Simeone and Machilone Spoletenses,” Gazette des Beaux-­Arts 35 (1949): 53–58.  and on the other the manner of the German workshop that executed the earliest stained-glass windows in the basilica of Assisi, those of the apse of the upper church.[20]  [20]
See Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Ent­wicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regens­burg, 1997), 19–40.

As new artists joined the enterprise of decorating the basilica at Assisi, however, styles rapidly changed. A transalpine artist of considerable stature must already have been at work there around 1260, introducing stylistic models more closely attuned to the 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 in western Europe. Under the guidance of this master the large windows of the transept of the upper church were realized, and among the artists working at his side was the Master of Saint Francis. In the windows assignable to him, the Umbrian artist responded with great sensitivity to the poetic aspirations of his transalpine companion; he repeated some of his ideas and forms both in his own stained-glass windows and in the cycle of narrative frescoes in the lower church, combining them with the rapid gestures and the strong expressive charge characteristic of his own native Umbrian culture. Thus, the stained-glass quatrefoils on the north side of the upper church, characterized by the plastic relief given to the bodies and the harsh vigor expressed in their poses, should be considered the result of a less advanced phase in the artist’s career than the mural cycle.[21]  [21]
Frank Martin and Gerhard Ruf, Die Glasmalereien von San Francesco in Assisi: Entstehung und Entwicklung einer Gattung in Italien (Regensburg, 1997), 40–52. The very late dating that Martin proposed (c. 1275) for the stained-glass panels by the Master of Saint Francis seems difficult to accept, not only because a scene like Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata (right part of the first bay upon entering) is at variance with the description proposed by Saint Bonaventura in the Legenda maior, but also because it is incompatible with the stylistic evidence: the style of the stained glass in question is more archaic than the frescoes by the Master of Saint Francis in the lower church.  The panel paintings executed for the Franciscan church of Perugia must belong to later years, presumably after an interval of some duration. Here the refined elegance prescribed by the Gothic style is expressed with particular evidence in the lean figures of the two panels with stories of Christ, and also in those with single figures. What is striking in them is the aristocratic refinement of their physiognomic types, their spontaneous and improvised poses, and the capricious undulation of the borders of their mantles [fig. 11]   [fig. 11] Detail, Master of Saint Francis, Saint James Minor, c. 1272, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Unfortunately, the few other works known to us do not offer sufficient clues to estimate how long a period of time must have elapsed between the works of the Master of Saint Francis in Assisi and those in Perugia.[22]  [22]
The works in question consist of a series of crucifixes of which the one in the Louvre, Paris (R.F. 1981.48), seems the earliest because of the pronouncedly linear definition of the slender body of Christ, its less arched position, and the fact that the head rests less heavily on the shoulder than in other similar paintings. This panel is presumably earlier than the fresco cycle of the lower church of Assisi, while the small crucifix painted on both sides now in the Galleria Nazionale in Perugia (no. 18), difficult to interpret because of the pronounced abrasion of its painted surface, is likely to be somewhat later in date, perhaps the second half of the 1260s. Even later is the crucifix in the Acton collection in Florence; cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 212. But the dating proposed for this painting, 1280–1290, is far too late: it must in my view antedate the crucifix dated 1272. The crucifix in the National Gallery in London (no. 6361) is probably the latest of the master’s surviving works.  On the other hand, the virtual identity of the style observable in the crucifix dated 1272 and in the surviving fragments of the altarpiece suggest that the two works must have been executed close to each other in time.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016