The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul

c. 1430/1435

Master of the Osservanza

Painter, Sienese, active late 1420s - early 1440s

Sano di Pietro

Painter, Sienese, 1405 - 1481

Three scenes showing the same person, Saint Anthony, are spaced along a path that winds from the lower right corner and around hills and trees into the distance in this vertical painting. In all three scenes, Saint Anthony has pale skin, a long white beard, and a halo framing a fringe of white hair around a balding head. He is barefoot and wears a black monk’s robe, and wears or carries a coral-pink cloak. Closest to us, in front of the mouth of a dark cave, Saint Anthony embraces a light-skinned, bearded man with long, curly blond hair. That man wears cream-white robes and also has a halo. Two walking sticks lie on the ground at their feet. The pebble-lined path disappears between stylized trees painted with smooth dark brown trunks and canopies created with pine and spring-green dots over a ground of forest green. To our right and farther along the path as it rises along the ridge of a hill, Saint Anthony meets a centaur, which has the torso and head of a man and the body and legs of a horse. The centaur holds a palm frond, and Saint Anthony raises one hand. On the opposite side of the hill, in the distance to our left, Saint Anthony walks along the path with a walking stick, and his pink robe hangs over a second long stick slung over his shoulder. Trees running along the background come nearly to the top of the panel, but a sliver of sky is painted gold, and the top edge is punched or embossed with a decorative pattern. Pale red shapes beyond the trees could be a building, perhaps a church, rising in the distance.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 3

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    tempera on poplar panel

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    painted surface: 46.5 x 33.4 cm (18 5/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
    overall: 47 x 33.6 cm (18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.)
    framed: 61.6 x 125.4 x 7.6 cm (24 1/4 x 49 3/8 x 3 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.293

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Granville Edward Harcourt Vernon [1816-1861], Grove Hall, Nottinghamshire; by inheritance to his wife, Lady Selina Vernon [later Lady Hervey], Grove Hall, Nottinghamshire;[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 17-18 June 1864, 2nd day, no. 270, as Two Monks embracing at the Foot of a Mountain by P. Laurenti); purchased by Anthony;[2] Wentworth Blackett Beaumont, 1st baron Allendale [1829-1907], London; by inheritance to his son, Wentworth Canning Blackett Beaumont, 1st viscount and 2nd baron Allendale [1860-1923], London; by inheritance to his son, Wentworth Henry Canning Beaumont, 2nd viscount and 3rd baron Allendale [1890-1956], London;[3] sold 1937 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold June 1938 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] See Ellis Waterhouse, "Sassetta and the Legend of St. Anthony Abbot," The Burlington Magazine (September 1931): 113, note 7; and a letter of 15 December 1964 from Ellis Waterhouse to the Kress Foundation (copy in NGA curatorial files), discussed in Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:319 n. 2. According to Algernon Graves (A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912, 5 vols., London, 1913-1915: 1:23, 439; 2:768, 883; 3:995, 1247), Harcourt Vernon allowed various early Italian pictures in his collection to be exhibited as early as 1857, at the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester.
[2] Shapley 1979, 1:319. According to Ellis Waterhouse's 1964 letter (see note 1), the painting "was bought by the dealer Anthony for 1.2 Pounds. It was probably bought by W.B. Beaumont...soon after."
[3] Ellis Waterhouse, in a letter of 4 March 1965 (in NGA curatorial files) to Fern Rusk Shapley, noted that he had "discovered" the painting "in a bathroom" on 29 October 1930. He adds that "the picture was never, I fancy, in Northumberland [Bretton Hall, Viscount Allendale's country estate], but in London, at 144 Piccadilly..." The year of the panel's acquisition by Duveen is given in the same letter.
[4] The Duveen Brothers letter confirming the sale of eight paintings, including NGA 1939.1.293, is dated 21 June 1938; the provenance is given as "Lord Allendale" (copy in NGA curatorial files; Box 474, Folder 5, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2243.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1930

  • Catalogue of a Collection of Pictures, Furniture, and Other Objects of Art, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1930-1931, no. 19.

1988

  • Painting in Renaissance Siena, 1420-1500, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1988-1989, no. 10g, repro., as The Journey and Meeting of Saint Anthony with Saint Paul the Hermit by the Master of the Osservanza.

2010

  • Da Jacopo della Quercia a Donatello. Le Arti a Siena nel Primo Rinascimento, Complesso Museale Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, 2010, no. C.34g, repro.

Bibliography

1931

  • Waterhouse, Ellis K. "Sassetta and the Legend of St. Anthony Abbot." The Burlington Magazine 59 (September 1931): 108-113, plate II-C.

1941

  • Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: nos. 33-35, repros., as by Stefano di Giovanni Sassetta.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 178-179, no. 404, as by Sassetta.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 185, as by Sassetta.

1944

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 32, color repro., as by Sassetta.

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 25, repro., as by Sassetta.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 40, repro.

1946

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. Supplement to the Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1946: 26, repro., as by Sassetta

1956

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1956: 16, repro., as by Sassetta.

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. "Rethinking Sassetta." _The Burlington Magazine_98 (October 1956): 366, 368, fig. 29.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 41, repro., as by Sassetta.

1961

  • Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 18-23, color repro. pl. 18, fig. 17.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 72, repro., as by Sassetta.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 120, as by Sassetta and Assistant.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:12, color repro.

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 141, fig. 380-381.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 107, repro., as by Sassetta and Assistant.

  • Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 22-23, color repro.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:254.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 318, repro., as by Sassetta and Assistant.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:319-323; 2:pl. 230, 230A,B, as Master of the Osservanza Triptych.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 78, no. 26, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 368, repro.

1993

  • Gagliardi, Jacques. La conquête de la peinture: L’Europe des ateliers du XIIIe au XVe siècle. Paris, 1993: 402.

1997

  • Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Illustrated Jesus through the Centuries, New Haven & London, 1997, p. 118, repro.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 481-495, color repro., as by Master of the Osservanza (Sano di Pietro).

2012

  • Bellosi, Luciano. "Considerazioni introduttive al problema dell'identificazione tra il "Maestro dell'Osservanza" e Sano di Pietro." In Gabriele Fattorini et. al., eds. Sano di Pietro: Qualità, devozione e pratica nella pittura senese del Quattrocento. Giornate di studio nel sesto centenario della nascita. Siena 5 dicembre 2005 – Asciano 6 dicembre 2005. Milan, 2012: 44.

  • De Marchi, Andrea. "Sano di Pietro prima della Pala dei Gesuati e il "Maestro dell'Osservanza": aporie di una doppia identità." In Gabriele Fattorini et. al., eds. Sano di Pietro: Qualità, devozione e pratica nella pittura senese del Quattrocento. Giornate di studio nel sesto centenario della nascita. Siena 5 dicembre 2005 – Asciano 6 dicembre 2005. Milan, 2012: 62-65, figs. 37-38.

Wikidata ID

Q20173494

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