National Gallery of Art

The image of Mary seated on the ground (humus) accentuates the humility of the mother of Jesus, obedient ancilla Domini (Lk 1:38). The child’s gesture, both arms raised to his mother’s breast, alludes, in turn, to another theme: the suckling of her child, a very ancient aspect of Marian iconographyIconography, or Iconology
 Terms that refer broadly to the study of subjects and themes in works of art. Iconology, which is based on the results of iconography, is the more wide-ranging and comprehensive. One of the principal concerns of iconography is the discovery of symbolic and allegorical meanings in a work of art. —Willem F. Lash, Grove Art © Oxford University Press. In the medieval interpretation, at a time when the Virgin was often considered the symbol of the Church, the motif also alluded to the spiritual nourishment offered by the Church to the faithful.[1]  [1]
On the question, see E. Morsbach, “Lactans (Maria Lactans),” in Marienlexikon, eds. Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1991), 3:701–703. That the suckling of the child has a wider significance than the maternity of Mary is revealed not only by the circumstance that the child mainly directs his gaze towards the spectator but also by the inscription MATER OMNIUM (mother of all) on a Madonna of Humility attributed to Roberto d’Oderisio in the church of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples. Cf. Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Arte di corte nella Napoli angioina (Florence, 1986), 377 and fig. 63.  As is common in paintings of the period, the stars painted on Mary’s shoulders allude to the popular etymology of her name.[2]  [2]
See P. De Ambrogio, “Maria, Santissima,” in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols. (Vatican City, 1952), 8:76–85; Günter Bernt, “Stella maris,” in Marienlexikon, eds. Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheff­czyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1994), 6:291.  The composition—as it is developed here—presumably was based on a famous model that perhaps had originated in the shop of Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348).[3]  [3]
A Madonna of Humility painted on the back of Bernardo Daddi’s Gambier Parry polyptych dated 1348, and now in the Courtauld Institute Art Gallery in London, is the earliest known version of the iconographic theme in Florentine painting. See Frederick Antal, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background: The Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo de’ Medici’s Advent to Power, XIV and XV Centuries (London, 1948), 181. The composition of the London painting is close to that of the panel being discussed here; it suggests that the model, now lost, for Jacopo’s panel can be traced to Daddi’s shop. The fundamental study of the iconography of the Madonna of Humility remains that of Millard Meiss, “The Madonna of Humility,” The Art Bulletin 18 (1936): 435–464; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 132–156; see also Gregor Martin Lechner, “Umiltà,” in Marienlexikon, eds. Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1994), 6:512–515. Contrary to what Meiss suggested (1936) and what virtually all the subsequent literature endorsed, the iconography of the Madonna of Humility originated not c. 1340 but sometime earlier, and probably at Avignon, where it was familiar even before the arrival of Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) in that city in 1335. See Joseph Polzer, “Concerning the Origin of the Virgin of Humility Theme,” Racar 27 (2000): 1–31; and Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italieni­sche Malerei: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 83.  It enjoyed considerable success in Florentine painting of the second half of the fourteenth century and even later: numerous versions of the composition are known, many of which apparently derive directly from this image in the Gallery.[4]  [4]
Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Prince­ton, 1951), 138 n. 23, lists the following copies of the Gallery panel: Giovanni del Biondo, New York, former Tolentino sale; Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (now attr. to), Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, no. 3161; Lorenzo di Bicci (now attr. to), Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, no. 3148, now Santa Maria Assunta, Loro Ciuffena; Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon, no. M.I. 365; Lorenzo di Niccolò, chiesa parrocchiale, Cevoli, Pisa; Master of the Orcagnesque Misericordia, formerly Galerie Pardo, Paris; Tommaso del Mazza (now attr. to), Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, no. 1945.25.119. For more on these copies see, respectively, Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 5, pt. 2, Giovanni del Biondo (New York, 1969), 190, pl. xlv; Gaudenz Freuler, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 4, vol. 7, pt. 2, Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro de’ Gherarducci, ed. Miklós Boskovits, new ed. (Florence, 1997), 412–417, pl. xlii; Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 2, I dipinti toscani del secolo XIV (Rome, 1965), 128–129, fig. 89; Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench, Peinture italienne: Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), 103; Adelheid Medicus Gealt, Lorenzo di Niccolò (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1979), 44 and fig. 23; Marilena Tamassia, Collezioni d’arte tra Ottocento e Novecento: Jacquier fotografi a Firenze, 1870–1935 (Naples, 1995), 85–86; Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 1250–1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 414–416. Other paintings to be added to this list are those of Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci in the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, no. 83.68.4; Niccolò Gerini, Acton collection, Florence; as well as Masolino’s famous panel in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. For these paintings, see Freuler 1997, 422–423; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), fig. 162; Perri Lee Roberts, Masolino da Panicale (Oxford, 1993), fig. 5.  This painting, therefore, must have been prominently displayed in a church of the city, and familiar to devotees.

Osvald Sirén (1917) published the panel as an autograph work of Andrea OrcagnaAndrea di Cione
 (Orcagna; Orgagna; Arcagnuolo) (born 1315–20; died Florence, 1368) Painter, sculptor, and architect, thought to have also been active as a poet. He was trained as a painter and referred to himself as “pictor” on the tabernacle in Orsanmichele. Details of his training are not known, but his first surviving works reveal various influences, especially of Maso di Banco and Taddeo Gaddi. —G. Kreytenberg, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, with a dating around 1350.[5]  [5]
Osvald Sirén, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans. Frederic Schenck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:220, 224, 225, 275; 2: pl. 187.  The proposal was widely accepted in the art historical literature, though Richard Offner initially stated (see Lehman 1928), that it was the work of an assistant to the artist.[6]  [6]
Robert Lehman, The Philip Lehman Collection, New York (Paris, 1928), no. 5.  Bernard BerensonBerenson, Bernard
 (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) Art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United States with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin School, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful application for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, ‘Art prevails in this programme because it is there that I feel myself weakest. One can study literature here . . . but art not at all.’ On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed by friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the decision to settle in Italy and to devote his life to the study of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press also at first proposed an attribution to Orcagna (Lehman 1928), but later (1931, 1932, 1936) suggested that the master executed the painting in collaboration with the youthful Jacopo di Cione, Orcagna’s brother.[7]  [7]
See note 6 above. Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 2,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 1057; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 275; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 236. In fact, Berenson annotated the back of the photograph in his archive (now in the Berenson Library at I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence): “Madonna by Andrea Orcagna; Christ and angels probably by Jacopo di Cione.” This annotation is also on a photograph in the Kress Foundation records (copy in NGA curatorial files).  The attribution to Jacopo himself was suggested by Hans Dietrich Gronau (1932, 1933); Frederick Antal (1948); Offner (in Shorr 1954 and Offner 1962), though the same scholar in 1965 and 1967 detected the collaboration of assistants in the work; Mirella Levi d’Ancona (1957); Klara Steinweg (1957–1959 and Offner and Steinweg 1969); Miklós Boskovits (1962, 1967, 1975); Alessandro Parronchi (1964); Luisa Marcucci (1965); Barbara Klesse (1967 with admission of workshop assistance); Carl Huter (1970); Marvin Eisenberg (1989); Barbara Deimling (1991, 2000, 2001, 2009); Paul Joannides (1993); Erling Skaug (1994); Mojmir S. Frinta (1998); Daniela Parenti (2001); Costanza Baldini (2003); Angelo Tartuferi (2003, 2004); Carl B. Strehlke (2004); and in Galleria dell’Accademia 2010.[8]  [8]
Hans Dietrich Gronau, “Jacopo di Cione,” in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1932), 26:39; Hans Dietrich Gronau, “Lorenzo di Bicci: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 4 (1933): 114; Frederick Antal, Florentine Painting and Its Social Background: The Bourgeois Republic before Cosimo de’ Medici’s Advent to Power, XIV and XV Centuries (London, 1948), 145, 194, 225 nn. 126–127, pl. 44a; Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 74–75; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 1, Andrea di Cione (New York, 1962), 73; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), iv, 3, 5, 6, 103, 104 n. 1, 107–111, 123, 125 n. 5, 139, pls. X–X³; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 4, Giovanni del Biondo (New York, 1967), ix n. 77; Mirella Levi D’Ancona, “Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci e il Maestro delle Canzoni: Due miniatori trecenteschi della scuola di S. Maria degli Angeli a Firenze,” Rivista d’arte 32 (1957): 11, 13; Klara Steinweg, “Die Kreuzigung Petri des Jacopo di Cione in der Pinacoteca Vaticana,” Rendiconti: Pontificia Accademia romana di archeologia 30–31 (1957–1959): 244 n. 19; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Flor­entine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 5, pt. 2, Giovanni del Biondo (New York, 1969), v, 59 n. 2; Miklós Boskovits, “Une Madonne de l’atelier de Niccolò di Pietro Gerini,” Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-­Arts 21 (1962): 27; Miklós Boskovits, “Der Meister der Santa Verdiana: Beiträge zur Geschichte der florentinischen Malerei um die Wende des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 13 (1967): 50; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), 330; Alessandro Parronchi, Studi sulla “dolce” prospettiva (Milan, 1964), 121; Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 2, I dipinti toscani del se­colo XIV (Rome, 1965), 102, 129, 136, 137; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 99, 149, 160, 255, 397; Carl Huter, “Gentile da Fabriano and the Madonna of Humility,” Arte veneta 24 (1970): 29–30, 34 n. 12, fig. 38; Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton, 1989), 7, 53 n. 27, fig. 266; Barbara Deimling, “Il Maestro di Santa Verdiana: Un polittico disperso e il problema dell’identificazione,” Arte cristiana 79 (1991): 406; Barbara Deimling and Simona Pasquinucci, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 4, vol. 8, Tradition and Innovation in Florentine Trecento Painting: Giovanni Bonsi–Tommaso del Mazza, ed. Miklós Boskovits, new ed. (Florence, 2000), 187 n. 1; Barbara Deimling, “The Contamination of the Senses and the Purification of the Air in Mid-­Fourteenth-­Century Florence,” in Opere e giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europea dedicati a Max Seidel, ed. Klaus Bergdolt and Giorgio Bonsanti (Venice, 2001), 171 fig. 6; Barbara Deimling, “Tommaso del Mazza: The Portrait of a Painter in Late Trecento Florence,” in Discovering a Pre-­Renaissance Master: Tommasso del Mazza, ed. Anne Short (Greenville, SC, 2009), 3; Paul Joannides, Masaccio and Masolino: A Complete Catalogue (London, 1993), 41, 48, 380, pl. 28; Erling S. Skaug, 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), 1:195; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 514; Daniela Parenti, “Studi recenti su Orcagna e sulla pittura dopo la ‘peste nera,’” Arte cristiana 89 (2001): 330; Costanza Baldini, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’ Accademia di Firenze, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 124; Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Due­cento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 136; Angelo Tartuferi, “Jacopo di Cione,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2004), 62:58; Carl Brandon Strehlke, Italian Paintings, 1250–1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 2004), 415–416; Miklós Boskovits and Daniela Parenti, eds., Dipinti, vol. 2, Il tardo Trecento: Dalla tradizione orcagnesca agli esordi del gotico internazionale, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (Florence, 2010), 154.  However, the painting entered the Kress Collection (NGA 1945) as a joint work by Orcagna and Jacopo, probably at Berenson’s suggestion,[9]  [9]
See note 7 above.  and this proposal met with wide support: it was accepted by Millard Meiss (1951); Berenson (1963); NGA (1965, 1968, 1985); Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, but in 1979 she attributed the painting to Jacopo alone, or to Jacopo and his workshop); Deborah Strom (1980); Perri Lee Roberts (1993); Marilena Tamassia (1995); and Gaudenz Freuler (1994, 1997).[10]  [10]
Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Prince­ton, 1951), 31, 42, 138, fig. 140; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 2:106, 163; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 97; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 85; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 294; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century (London, 1966), 31–32; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:247–249; Deborah Phyl Strom, “A New Look at Jacopo della Quercia’s Madonna of Humility,” Antichità viva 19, no. 6 (1980): 19, fig. 6; Perri Lee Roberts, Masolino da Panicale (Oxford, 1993), 25, 253, fig. 7; Marilena Tamassia, Collezioni d’arte tra Ottocento e Novecento: Jacquier fotografi a Firenze, 1870–1935 (Naples, 1995), 85; Gaudenz Freuler, in Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300–1450, ed. Laurence B. Kanter et al. (New York, 1994), 130, 168; Gaudenz Freuler, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 4, vol. 7, pt. 2, Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro de’ Gherarducci, ed. Miklós Boskovits, new ed. (Florence 1997), 275, 293–294, 296, 412 n. 1, 416, 420 n. 1, 422 n. 2, 277 fig. 1.  More recently, the proposal by Pietro Toesca (1951) and Michel Laclotte (1956), who both considered the painting a product of the shop of Andrea Orcagna, has met with some favor, though modified by some to suggest it is substantially an autograph work by Orcagna (Laclotte and Mognetti 1976; Padoa Rizzo 1981; Kreytenberg 1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000; Franci 2002; Laclotte and Moench 2005; Freuler 2006).[11]  [11]
Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dell’arte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 637 n. 157; Michel Laclotte, De Giotto à Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les musées de France (Paris, 1956), 17; Michel Laclotte and Elisabeth Mognetti, Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais: Peinture italienne, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1976), no. 78; Anna Padoa Rizzo, “Per Andrea Orcagna pittore,” Annali della Scuola normale superiore di Pisa: Classe di lettere e filosofia 11 (1981): 852, 887, pl. lxiii–2; Gert Kreytenberg, “Orcagna’s Madonna of Humility in the National Gallery of Art in Washington: Fragen nach Attribution und Ikonographie,” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 10 (1990): 57–58; Gert Kreytenberg, “Andrea di Cione,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1991), 1:607; Gert Kreytenberg, “L’arca di San Ranieri di Tino di Camaino: Questioni di ti­po­logia e di iconografia,” in Storia ed arte nella piazza del Duomo: Confe­renze 1992–1993, ed. Opera della Primaziale pisana (Pisa, 1995), 36–37, fig. 17; Gert Kreytenberg, “Cione,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 7:335; Gert Kreytenberg, “Cione, Andrea di,” in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Günter Meißner, 87 vols. (Munich, 1998), 19:259; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 164–166, 180, 250, pl. 47; Beatrice Franci, “Orcagna, Andrea,” in La pittura in Europa: Il dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 2:660–661; Michel Laclotte and Esther Moench, Peinture italienne: Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon (Paris, 2005), 103; Gaudenz Freuler, in Lorenzo Monaco: Dalla tradizione giottesca al Rinascimento, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti (Florence, 2006), 101, fig. 1.

As for the dating of our panel, its attribution, even partial, to Orcagna implies that it was completed by or not much later than 1368, the year of the artist’s death. Sirén (1917) dated the painting to c. 1350, and Raimond van Marle (1924) substantially accepted the proposal. Gronau (1932), though he too supported an attribution to Jacopo, dated the painting c. 1360–1370. Presumably Berenson (1936) had a similar dating in mind when classifying the panel as a youthful work by Jacopo. So did Meiss (1951), who defined the painting as “probably designed by Orcagna and partly executed by Jacopo di Cione.”[12]  [12]
Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Prince­ton, 1951), 42. Levi d’Ancona (1957) suggested a date of 1360–1365 for the painting; the National Gallery of Art (1965) catalog, c. 1360. Steinweg (1957–1959), in turn, dated the panel to after the death of Orcagna in 1368, and Shapley (1966) to 1370.[13]  [13]
Osvald Sirén, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans. Frederic Schenck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:220, 224, 225, 275; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 466–468; Hans Dietrich Gronau, “Jacopo di Cione,” in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1932), 26:39; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 236; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 42; Mirella Levi D’Ancona, “Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci e il Maestro delle Canzoni: Due miniatori trecenteschi della scuola di S. Maria degli Angeli a Firenze,” Rivista d’arte 32 (1957): 11, 13; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 97; Klara Steinweg, “Die Kreuzigung Petri des Jacopo di Cione in der Pinacoteca Vaticana,” Rendiconti: Pontificia Accademia romana di archeologia 30–31 (1957–1959): 244 n. 19; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century (London, 1966), 31–32.  Some scholars who have argued in favor of Jacopo’s authorship have suggested a dating as late as 1370–1380. Offner and Steinweg (1965) dated the panel c. 1380, followed by Klesse (1967) and Carl Huter (1970). Huter detected in the painting, unconvincingly, a reflection of the vision of the Nativity of Our Lord attributed to Saint Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden during her journey to the Holy Land. Reconsidering her earlier opinion, Steinweg (Offner and Steinweg 1965) called the panel “Jacopo di Cione’s latest work.” She was followed by Shapley (1979), according to whom it was painted “perhaps as late as the 1380s,” while Boskovits (1975) proposed a date of c. 1370–1375.[14]  [14]
Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), 108; Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 255; Carl Huter, “Gentile da Fabriano and the Madonna of Humility,” Arte veneta 24 (1970): 29; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Flor­entine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 5, pt. 2, Giovanni del Biondo (New York, 1969), 59 n. 2; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:247–249; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), 330.  The question is complicated by the problems relating to the reconstruction of the youthful activity of Jacopo di Cione,[15]  [15]
For the problems in reconstructing the artist’s youthful phase, see Angelo Tartuferi, “Jacopo di Cione,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2004), 62:57–58. Bernard Berenson assigned to Jacopo’s early activity several paintings now generally attributed to the Master of San Lucchese, whereas he attributed to Niccolò di Tommaso various paintings that the present writer and much of the more recent literature has reinstated in the catalog of Jacopo di Cione. Cf. Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 2,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 1039–1058; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), 321–330. Richard Offner (1933) attributed to Jacopo the former Stoclet Madonna now in a private collection in New York, but the volume of the Corpus dedicated to Jacopo excluded it, apparently on the initiative of Klara Steinweg, who believed the most appropriate classification for the painting to be “Daddesque–Orcagnesque.” Cf. Richard Offner, “The Mostra del Tesoro di Firenze Sacra,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 63 (1933): 84 n. 59; Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Flor­entine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), iii n. 2. These doubts about the attribution to Jacopo of the important ex-­Stoclet painting, which apart from the date 1362 also bears the coat of arms of the Parte Guelfa, were later transformed by Gert Kreytenberg into an attribution to Andrea Orcagna. See Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 162–163.  and also by the poor condition of the former Stoclet Madonna, which, with its date of 1362, represents the only secure chronological point of reference for the artist’s initial phase.[16]  [16]
Comparing the photograph of the painting taken on the occasion of its sale (Sotheby’s, London, June 30, 1965, lot 20) with that illustrated by Gert Kreytenberg (2000), it is apparent that the Stoclet Madonna had in the meantime been subjected to the “embellishment” of a restoration that had altered its original character. Cf. Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), pl. 48; and Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), pl. 46. Nevertheless, its stylistic character is sufficiently apparent to be able confidently to affirm for it an attribution to Jacopo di Cione.

The hypothesis that the panel is an autograph work by Orcagna clearly would need to be verified by comparing it with authenticated works of this artist, or works generally recognized as by his hand, in particular the polyptychPolyptych
 Type of object with several panels, usually an altarpiece, although it may also fulfil other functions. The polyptych normally consists of a central panel with an even number of side-panels, which are sometimes hinged to fold. Although in principle every object with two panels or more may be called a polyptych, the word is normally used as a general term for anything larger than a triptych. As with diptychs and triptychs, the size and material can vary. —Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press in the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, signed and dated 1357; the fresco of the Crucifixion in Santa Marta a Montughi (Florence);[17]  [17]
Miklós Boskovits, “Orcagna in 1357–and in Other Times,” The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971): 239–251; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 32–34.  the triptychTriptych
 A picture consisting of three parts. The term denotes both the object itself and its compositional form. As an object, the triptych may vary in size and material, but usually consists of a central panel flanked by wings (or shutters), which may be hinged; as a compositional form it is a tripartite structure, often with an emphasized central element. Although its imagery was, until the 19th century at least, predominantly religious, the object as such was not tied to a specific function. —Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press in the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam, dated 1350;[18]  [18]
Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 1,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 986, attributed the Rijksmuseum triptych to Orcagna; see also Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 66–71.  and the polyptych in the Galleria dell’Accademia,[19]  [19]
Mario Salmi, “Review of Studies in Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century by Richard Offner,” Rivista d’arte 11 (1929): 133–145; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künstler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 78–80.  Florence, probably dating to 1353. These paintings illustrate the main stages in Orcagna’s career in the years preceding the altarpiece of 1357. His last stylistic phase, in turn, is attested by the frescoes in the former refectory of Santo Spirito in Florence, now Fondazione Salvatore Romano,[20]  [20]
Osvald Sirén, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans. Frederic Schenck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:232–239; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 1, Andrea di Cione (New York, 1962), 65–69.  and the Pentecost triptych in the Galleria dell’Accademia.[21]  [21]
Osvald Sirén, Giotto and Some of His Followers, trans. Frederic Schenck, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1917), 1:226–227; Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 43–47.  The presence of the master in the Fondazione Romano frescoes and the Accademia triptych is often judged partial, but even if the involvement of assistants can freely be admitted, especially in the fresco of large dimensions, Andrea’s direct intervention is undoubtedly revealed in various parts of the cycle.[22]  [22]
This is the opinion expressed by Miklós Boskovits, “Orcagna in 1357–And in Other Times,” The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971): 251; Anna Padoa Rizzo, “Per Andrea Orcagna pittore,” Annali della Scuola normale superiore di Pisa: Classe di lettere e filosofia 11 (1981): 864, 874, 876, 889; Stefania Ricci, “Orcagna, Andrea / Andrea di Cione,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:645; Angelo Tartuferi, “L’arte dell’età gotica,” in La chiesa e il convento di Santo Spirito a Firenze, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Elena Capretti (Florence, 1996), 67.

The stylistic features that distinguish the art of Orcagna in the last two decades of his life emerge from a comparative assessment of the above-cited paintings. They document his gradual transition from ample, softly modeled and majestic forms, defined by sharp contours, chiaroscuro effects of great delicacy, and a predilection for the abstract purity of large sweeping expanses of color, to a quite different manner. His late works are characterized indeed by a more marked, even at times brutal, accentuation of the three-dimensionality of bodies. Apparently, after the experience of realizing the sculptures for the tabernacleTabernacle
 A built-up surround for an image that provides an architectural dimension like a niche; also the ornamental receptacle used to contain the Host during Mass. —Grove Art © Oxford University Press of Orsanmichele (1352–1360), Orcagna was intent on reproducing in his paintings a two-dimensional simulation of the effect of reliefs that stand out clearly, with smooth and lustrous surfaces, from a monochromatic, enamel-like ground. His narrative scenes are characterized by an extreme reduction to essentials in composition and by the predominant role of the human figure, whose plasticity is accentuated by being delineated, as if contre-jour, against the gold groundGround
 The layer or layers used to prepare the support to hold the paint.. 

The artist of the Madonna in the Gallery, however, does not seem to have aimed at results of this kind. The delicate passages of chiaroscuro confer softness on the flesh parts, while the gradual darkening of the varicolored marble floor on which Mary is sitting subtly accentuates its extension into depth.[23]  [23]
The spatial device of the gradual darkening of the floor could be called pseudo-perspective; it is of the kind prescribed in Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte, ed. Fabio Frezzato (Vicenza, 2003), chap. LXXXV, 127, to suggest distance: “E’ quando ài da fare le montagnie che paiano più a lunghi, più fa’ scuri i tuoi colori; et quando le fai dimostrare più appresso, fa’ i colori più chiari” (And when you need to make mountains that appear farther away, make your colors darker; and when you need to show them closer, make your colors lighter). As the editor of the treatise pointed out (Cennini 2003, 222–223 n. 100), some modern commentators consider this rule the result of a mistaken description, but in fact it was a practice that Trecento painters frequently followed.  In particular the foreshortened prayer book in the foreground and the undulating lower hem of the Virgin’s mantle are painted with a deliberate illusionistic effect: the latter in particular projects beyond the front edge of the marble floor that defines the frame of the image, and thus seems to extend into the real space of the spectator. Such illusionistic effects are, as far as his generally recognized works show, alien to Orcagna’s repertoire. In the Gallery panel, moreover, there is no trace of the metallic hardness and sheen of forms. Nor does the drapery show any of the angular folds with deep, sharp-edged undercutting that are usually found in Andrea’s paintings, especially in those dating to the seventh decade, such as the abovementioned triptych of the Pentecost or the triptych of Saint Matthew in the Uffizi, Florence, a work begun by the artist but completed by a workshop assistant after Orcagna’s death in 1368.[24]  [24]
As is well known, the commission of the Uffizi triptych was transferred from Andrea to Jacopo di Cione in 1368, “essendo malato detto Andrea” (the said Andrea being ill). Cf. Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), 17–26; Gert Kreytenberg, Orcagna, Andrea di Cione: Ein universeller Künst­ler der Gotik in Florenz (Mainz, 2000), 166–169. I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere that the painting was completed not by Jacopo but by one of his assistants, the Master Ashmolean Predella; in any case, there can be no doubt that Orcagna himself was responsible for the design of the whole work and also for the painting of the central figure. See Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), 51.  Only some secondary passages, such as the fluttering angels in the central panel of the Pentecost altarpiece (of which Jacopo’s partial execution has been proposed),[25]  [25]
Miklós Boskovits, “Orcagna in 1357–And in Other Times,” The Burlington Magazine 113 (1971): 251 n. 38; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), 324.  recall the more fluid drawing and more relaxed emotional climate of the Gallery panel.

It is in fact in the oeuvre of Jacopo di Cione that our panel finds its closest affinities, in particular with the polyptych painted between 1370 and 1371 for the Florentine church of San Pier Maggiore and with the Florentine Pala della Zecca (now in the Galleria dell’Accademia) for which Jacopo received final payment in 1373.[26]  [26]
Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), 2, 8.  Close relatives of the face of Mary in the Gallery panel seem to me that of the crowned Virgin in the Pala della Zecca [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Detail of Mary, Jacopo di Cione, Coronation of the Virgin (Pala della Zecca), 1373, tempera on panel, Galleria dell'Academia, Florence. © Scala/Art Resource, NY and that of the Madonna of Humility, also now in the Galleria dell’Accademia.[27]  [27]
Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), pls. VI² and VIII.  The Christ child, in turn, is closely akin to counterparts both in the latter panel and in the versions of the Madonna and Child in the church of Santi Apostoli in Florence and in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.[28]  [28]
Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), pls. IX–IX¹ and XII–XX¹. The second of the two paintings, already given to Jacopo by Bernard Berenson, Offner, and other scholars, was described as “circle of Jacopo di Cione” in the volume of the Corpus devoted to this master, again on Steinweg’s initiative.  The tiered angels in the upper part of our painting [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Detail of angels, Jacopo di Cione, Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels, c. 1370/1375, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection are almost identical to those in the two gabled panels from the San Pier Maggiore altarpiece [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Detail of angels in adoration, Jacopo di Cione, San Pier Maggiore altarpiece, 1370–1371, tempera on panel, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY, now in the National Gallery in London. The analogies can also be extended to the blessing God the Father [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Detail of God the Father, Jacopo di Cione, Madonna and Child with God the Father Blessing and Angels, c. 1370/1375, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, who recalls the Christ in the Pala della Zecca [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Detail of Jesus, Jacopo di Cione, Coronation of the Virgin (Pala della Zecca), 1373, tempera on panel, Galleria dell'Academia, Florence. © Scala/Art Resource, NY and some of the saints, too, in the polyptych of San Pier Maggiore [fig. 6]   [fig. 6] Detail of adoring saints, Jacopo di Cione, San Pier Maggiore altarpiece, 1370–1371, tempera on panel, National Gallery, London. © National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY.[29]  [29]
I refer in particular to the images of Saint James Major (with the pilgrim’s staff) and Saint Julian (with the sword) in the right lateral of the polyptych. See Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 4, vol. 3, Jacopo di Cione (New York, 1965), pl. III¹⁰.  In most of these images the modeling is now impoverished as a result of repeated, over-energetic cleaning, but the fluency of design, spaciousness of composition, and the artist’s ever greater attention to three-dimensional effects confirm the attribution of the painting to Jacopo. Typical of Jacopo di Cione, in addition, are such details as Mary’s tapering fingers and the mood of subtle languor that characterizes her face. The pursuit of gracefulness of pose and the delicate chiaroscuro in the modeling strongly suggest that the Gallery panel belongs to a phase preceding the artist’s output in the 1380s [30]  [30]
Apart from the triptych formerly in the Fischel collection in Vienna and dated 1379, and the main figures of the polyptych in the church of Santi Apostoli in Florence, which bears the date 1383, another painting dated to the same year may also be mentioned here, namely the Madonna in the church of Sant’Agata di Mugello in Scarperia. See Miklós Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400 (Florence, 1975), pl. 53 and fig. 119; and Lia Brunori, “Il patrimonio artistico,” in Scarperia: Storia, arte, artigianato (Florence, 1990), 47–50.  and was probably produced in the years c. 1370/1375, probably closer to the second of these dates.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

Associated Names