Overview
It was 1950 before the Catholic Church accepted the Virgin Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven as official dogma, but the notion had long been part of her legend and a subject for artists. One of the earliest large-scale depictions of this event in Italy was a rose window in the cathedral of Siena, designed by
Paolo’s Virgin is serene, enthroned on a cloud and looking similar to the young Mary that Paolo painted in
Entry
Although the bodily Assumption of the Virgin did not officially become the dogma of the Catholic Church until 1950,
The panel in the National Gallery of Art might originally have been a self-sufficient devotional image and not part of a larger complex. This is suggested by the two medallions with the Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate in its upper spandrels; in
The attribution of the painting has never been in doubt: ever since Robert Langton Douglas (1904) introduced it to the art historical literature, its ascription to the Sienese master Paolo di Giovanni Fei has been unanimously accepted.
Paolo di Giovanni Fei’s stylistic development can be briefly summed up as follows. In works presumably dating to the 1370s, the artist proposed solemn and static compositions. The figures are virtually immobile and symmetrically distributed. Reserved, even impassive, in expression, they are enveloped in thick starched draperies with the consistency of leather, barely ruffled by a few broad folds. After this phase, exemplified by such paintings as the versions of the Madonna in the Atlanta Art Association and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or the Saint Lawrence formerly in the Matthiesen Gallery in London,
As in other paintings dating to the first years of the fifteenth century, the artist skillfully exploits the background of his compositions to enlarge the space of the action and tries in various ways to give a realistic character to the episodes. In the panel now in Washington, each of the figures reacts in his own personal way to the miracle of the flowers that bloom in profusion in the sarcophagus in place of the body of Mary
Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)
March 21, 2016
Provenance
Marchese Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari [1841-1908], Siena, by 1904;[1] his heirs; (Alberto Riccoboni, Italy), by 1947 or 1948;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.
Exhibition History
- 1947
- Prima mostra Nazionale Antiquaria. Quattrocento Pitturi inedite, Organizzazione Manifestazioni Artistiche, Venice, 1947, no. 23, fig. 12.
Technical Summary
The support is a single piece of wood with vertical grain, to which the engaged frame is affixed.
The panel, which is now 2.5 cm thick, was
Bibliography
- 1903
- Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 6 vols. Edited by Robert Langton Douglas (vols. 1-4) and Tancred Borenius (vols. 5-6). Vol. 3, The Sienese, Umbrian, and North Italian Schools. London, 1903-1914: 3(1908):125 n. 2, 131 n. 3.
- 1904
- Douglas, Robert Langton. "The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena." The Nineteenth Century and After 57 (1904): 763.
- 1907
- Perkins, Frederick Mason. "Paolo di Giovanni Fei." In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Edited by Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker and Hans Vollmer. 37 vols. Leipzig, 1907-1950: 26(1932):211.
- 1908
- Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 3 vols. Edited by Edward Hutton. Vol. 2, Sienese School of the Fourteenth Century; Florentine School of the Fifteenth Century. London and New York, 1908-1909: 2(1909):74.
- 1909
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- 1914
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- 1923
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- 1932
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- 1932
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- 1936
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- 1947
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- 1951
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- 1951
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- 1952
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- 1955
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- 1959
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- 1960
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- 1964
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- 1965
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- 1965
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- 1966
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- 1966
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- 1968
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- 1968
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- 1968
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- 1969
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- 1969
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- 1971
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- 1972
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- 1972
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- 1975
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- 1978
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- 1979
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- 1979
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- 1980
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- 1981
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- 1982
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- 1983
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- 1985
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- 1985
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- 1986
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- 1986
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- 1990
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- 1991
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- 1996
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- 1997
- Chelazzi Dini, Giulietta, Alessandro Angelini, and Bernardina Sani. Sienese Painting From Duccio to the Birth of the Baroque. New York, 1997: 198, 200-201, repro.
- 1997
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- 1998
- Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. "Virgin/Virginity." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:905.
- 1998
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- 2003
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- 2005
- Bagnoli, Alessandro, Silvia Colucci, and Veronica Radon, eds. Il Crocifisso con i dolenti in umiltà di Paolo di Giovanni Fei: un capolavoro riscoperto. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, 2005: 34 n. 18, 51, 60.
- 2008
- Boskovits, Miklós, and Johannes Tripps, eds. Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg. Exh. cat. Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, 2008: 82, 84, 85, 90, 129.
- 2016
- Boskovits, Miklós. Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2016: 112-118, color repro.
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