Overview
The Virgin and Child are seated in majesty on a gabled throne, whose shape echoes a tabernacle used to hold the reserved portion of the sacrament, the divine mystery of the bread and wine that is at the very heart of the Eucharist. Yet this Virgin and Child are also in joyous and very human interaction with the angels and saints surrounding them. These holy figures exhibit a gentle playfulness that is characteristic of
Mary looks down with tenderness toward Jesus, who is twisting in her arms to reach for the small bird perched on the finger of an angel. His eyes widen with delight and his lips open in a smile. Standing to one side, another golden-haired angel plucks at a psaltery, a zither-like instrument. Opposite, a third angel, cheeks puffed, fingers the flared shaft of a shawn, a forerunner of the oboe. Kneeling before the throne, two more angels add to the musical harmony with a fiddle and an organ. Hovering above are angels of a higher order: red-winged seraphim and blue-winged cherubim.
Eight saints complete this heavenly hierarchy. Not all of them can be securely identified, but we can recognize most by the attributes they hold. In the row below the standing angels, Apollonia, at the far left, raises one of the teeth yanked from her mouth as she was tortured. The crowned saint holding the book at the far right might be Catherine of Alexandria, patron of scholars. Below them, on the left, Lucy—a name derived from lux, Latin for light—supports a brass lamp. John the Baptist wears his camel's hair tunic, and Andrew lifts the cross on which he was martyred. On the right, Paul holds the sword of his own beheading and a book representing the Epistles. The bright yellow robe of Peter, leader of the apostles, symbolizes the church’s revelation of the faith. And, finally, Agnes cradles a lamb to recall the purity she maintained throughout her torture and martyrdom.
Entry
The painting, which formed the central panel of a portable
The painting has always been recognized as an autograph work by Bernardo Daddi, to whom Richard Offner (as cited in Sinibaldi and Brunetti 1943) was the first to attribute it.
The details in question suggest for our panel a date either close to or probably slightly after 1340. In this phase the artist tended to add more spaciousness to his compositions, while his figures gain in grandeur thanks both to their expanded forms and the amplitude of the mantles that envelop them. At the same time, however, they become more relaxed in posture, more spontaneous in gesture
Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)
March 21, 2016
Provenance
According to a tradition reported by a previous owner, Virgoe Buckland, the panel comes from the Vallombrosa abbey near Florence and in 1872 it was given by the abbot to the painter and restorer J. Stark;[1] purchased from Stark by Sir Henry Doulton [1820-1897];[2] his heirs;[3] by inheritance to Commander Virgoe Buckland [d. 1949], Hove, Sussex;[4] (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 2 November 1949, no. 76, as by Bernardo Daddi); (Mannenti), probably the agent for (Count Alessandro Contini Bonaccossi, Florence); sold July 1950 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[5] gift 1952 to NGA.
Exhibition History
- 1937
- Mostra Giottesca, Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence, 1937, no. 165A (no. 157 in the 1943 catalogue of the exhibition, edited by Sinibaldi and Brunetti).
- 1949
- Possibly loan to display with permanent collection, Hove Museum and Art Gallery, England (according to 1949 sale catalogue).[1]
- 2012
- Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2012-2013, not in catalogue (shown only in Toronto).
Exhibition History Notes
[1] See the Provenance of the painting for details about the 1949 sale. The Hove Museum is now unable to locate a record of the painting being lent to them (e-mail, 6 June 2011, Karen Wraith to Anne Halpern, in NGA curatorial files).
Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a single plank of wood, 2.6 cm thick with vertical grain. The outer edges of the wooden support and of the engaged frame, which were originally covered with
The panel has not been thinned and retains its original reverse coating. In spite of the coating, the panel has a convex warp. A blackened hollow area at the bottom of the frame on the left side may be the result of a candle burn. By the mid-1930s, the panel appeared much darkened by dust and opacified varnishes, and the face of the Virgin had been heavily
Bibliography
- 1941
- Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: nos. 15-16, repros.
- 1943
- Sinibaldi, Giulia, and Giulia Brunetti, eds. Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento: catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937. Exh. cat. Galleria degli Uffizi. Florence, 1943: 498 (repro.), 499, no. 157.
- 1944
- Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 16, repro.
- 1947
- Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma; Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. New York, 1947: 182 n. 1.
- 1951
- Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 20-23, repro.
- 1951
- Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945-1951. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1951: 32, no. 4, repro., as Madonna and Child Enthroned, Surrounded by Angels and Saints.
- 1958
- Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. VIII: Workshop of Bernardo Daddi. New York, 1958: xxiii, 15-17, pl. 3.
- 1958
- Paccagnini, Giovanni. "Daddi, Bernardo." In Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte. Edited by Istituto per la collaborazione culturale. 15 vols. Florence, 1958-1967: 4(1961):183.
- 1959
- Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 19, repro.
- 1960
- Damiani, Giovanna. "Daddi, Bernardo." In Dizionario biografico degli italiani. Edited by Alberto Maria Ghisalberti. 82+ vols. Rome, 1960+: 31(1985):624.
- 1963
- Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:58.
- 1963
- Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 297, repro.
- 1965
- Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 36.
- 1966
- Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 25-26, fig. 61.
- 1967
- Klesse, Brigitte. Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts. Bern, 1967: 454 no. 471c.
- 1968
- National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 29, repro.
- 1972
- Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 63, 318, 647, 666.
- 1975
- European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 90, repro.
- 1979
- Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:153-154; 2:pl. 108.
- 1984
- Brown, Howard Mayer. "Catalogus. A Corpus of Trecento Pictures with Musical Subject Matter, pt. 1." Imago Musicae 1 (1984): 242-243.
- 1984
- Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 73, no, 15, color repro.
- 1985
- European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 111, repro.
- 1986
- Ford, Terrence, compiler and ed. Inventory of Music Iconography, no. 1. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York 1986: 1.
- 1989
- Offner, Richard, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. III: The Works of Bernardo Daddi. 2nd ed. Florence, 1989: 87, 391.
- 1994
- Skaug, Erling S. 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: 1:104, 114 n. 186; 2:punch chart 5.3.
- 1996
- Rowlands, Eliot W. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings, 1300-1800. Kansas City, MO, 1996: 53.
- 1998
- Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 382, 411, 445.
- 2001
- Offner, Richard, Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century. Sec. III, Vol. V: Master of San Martino alla Palma; Assistant of Daddi; Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece. 2nd ed. Florence, 2001: 394 n. 1.
- 2003
- Modestini, Dianne Dwyer. "Imitative Restoration." in Early Italian Paintings: Approaches to Conservation. Proceedings of a Symposium at the Yale University Art Gallery, April 2002. Edited by Patricia Sherwin Garland. New Haven, 2003: 215.
- 2016
- Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 73-78, color repro.
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