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On the iconography of the Virgin of Hodegetria type, see note 1 in the entry on Enthroned Madonna and Child. Cherries, symbols of the Annunciation and the Incarnation of Christ but also of the blood of the Redeemer, frequently accompany representations of the Madonna and Child in fifteenth-century paintings; far less frequently do they appear in paintings of the previous century. Cf. Mirella Levi D’Ancona, The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting (Florence, 1977), 89–93. Nevertheless, cf. some versions of the Madonna and Child painted by painters active in Pisa, such as Francesco Neri da Volterra in his panel at San Benedetto a Settimo, Spinello Aretino in a painting commissioned from him in Pisa (no. 3130, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart), and Cecco di Pietro in a panel in the Musée in Tours and in another similar panel in the church of San Torpè at Pisa: cf. Mariagiulia Burresi, ed., Pisa e l’area pisana, I luoghi della fede (Milan, 2000), 137–138; and Andrea De Marchi, in Italies: Peintures des musées de la région Centre, ed. Annie Gilet and Éric Moinet (Paris, 1996), 75–76. For a Sienese example of the child carrying cherries in his hand, cf. the panel by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the parish church of Roccalbenga, Siena; see Enzo Carli, La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 212–214. Dorothy C. Shorr (1954) interpreted the motif as “fruit of Heaven”; Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 112.
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In Tuscan panels of the early fourteenth century, the child at times appears naked, at times dressed in a tunic and mantle all’antica, or a garment that recalls the shirt or dalmatic used by celebrants on certain liturgical occasions. Sometimes, however, as in the Maestà by Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, or in the Madonna and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti himself in the pieve of Castiglione d’Orcia, the child wears a dress that bears no relation to the liturgical conventions of the day, such as a smock furnished with prominent buttons or laces, which probably reflects children’s garments of the time. See Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 113–115. To this group belong, from the fourth and fifth decades of the fourteenth century onwards, images representing the child dressed in smocks with short but very wide sleeves, such as that illustrated in our painting or in some panels by Bernardo Daddi (active by 1320, died probably 1348) (Madonna no. 553 in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, or Madonna no. 1923.35 in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts). On the development of the fashion of the manicottolo and its reflections in painting of the early fourteenth century, see Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974), 41–54.
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Cf. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 717–720.
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Cf. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 2, Iconography of the Saints in Central and South Italian Schools of Painting (Florence, 1965), 255–266.
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Apart from the scene of the Annunciation of the Death of Mary, in which Gabriel generally hands a palm branch to her, this attribute is alien to the iconography of the angels; cf. “Engel,” in Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, eds. Engelbert Kirschbaum and Günter Bandmann, 8 vols. (Rome, Basel, and Vienna, 1968), 1:626–642. In the present context, the motif probably is meant as a symbol of triumph, as in various biblical narratives—for example, in that relating to the celebration of the feast of Tabernacles (Lev 23:34, 40), or an important military victory of Simon Maccabeus (1 Mac 13:51), or the entry of Christ into Jerusalem (Mt 21:8; Jn 12:12).
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It is not clear when or how the fragment containing the inscription of the lost original frame was removed. It already had been removed from the original frame, and was incorporated into the frame that was on the painting when the current frame was commissioned in 1941–1942. The literature long ignored the inscription, probably due to difficulties in reading it. Its transcription was published for the first time in the NGA catalog of 1965, with the date interpreted as MCCCXXI. This was repeated in NGA 1985, although Charles Parkhurst had already sent the transcription to the Frick Art Reference Library and Robert Langton Douglas in 1946 (letters of August 1 and 2, 1946, copies in NGA curatorial files). Parkhurst’s reading was published by Fern Rusk Shapley (1979). See National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 77; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:269–270.
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The expertises in question were furnished by such leading art historians of the time as Wilhelm von Bode (“Pietro Lorenzetti . . . ein Hauptwerk”), Georg Gronau (“ein Hauptwerk nicht nur des Pietro Lorenzetti sondern der Sienesischen Malerei”), Detlev von Hadeln (“Pietro Lorenzetti. Since years I have not seen in the market a work of such a high rank by an earlier Italian master”), Roberto Longhi (“una delle creazioni più solenni della maturità di Pietro Lorenzetti”), August L. Mayer (“Pietro Lorenzetti . . . one of the most important works of the Italian School of the Trecento”), and Wilhelm Suida (“eine charakteristische Arbeit des Pietro Lorenzetti . . . Die Erhaltung aller Teile ist eine vorzuegliche”). Restorers Stephen Pichetto (“Pietro Lorenzetti . . . the general state of the painting is almost perfect”) and Hammond Smith (oral opinion, cited by Contini in a letter to Felix Warburg of January 3, 1927: “he [Smith] considered it as one of the most important works of the 1300 Italian period in the finest possible state of preservation”) were no less fulsome in their praise. Documents in NGA curatorial files.
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Ernest T. DeWald, “Pietro Lorenzetti,” Art Studies 7 (1929): 162 n. 1.
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Emilio Cecchi, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 1930), 37.
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Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 293; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 252; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2:221.
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Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 2, La scuola senese del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 361.
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Giulia Sinibaldi, I Lorenzetti (Siena, 1933), 175.
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National Gallery of Art, Book of Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1942), 135, 251; National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 77; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings and Sculpture: Illustrations (Washington, DC, 1968), 68.
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“Reading of the date uncertain,” adds the catalog entry, evidently drawing on information made available by Berenson’s Indices. National Gallery of Art, Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture (Washington, DC, 1965), 77.
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Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 109, 312, 429, 646; Michel Laclotte, “Un ‘Saint Evêque’ de Pietro Lorenzetti,”Paragone 27 (1976): 18 n. 7; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, “Deletions from the Oeuvre of Pietro Lorenzetti and Related Works by the Master of the Beata Umilità, Mino Parcis da Siena and Iacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20 (1976): 290.
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There is no historical evidence of this painter other than the fact that he is mentioned in a document drawn up at Arezzo on September 21, 1321, in the role of witness, together with Pietro Lorenzetti. Cf. Andrea Mariotti, “Modulo di progettazione del Polittico di Arezzo di Pietro Lorenzetti,” Critica d’arte 15 (1968): 36, no. 100. But, as far as one is able to judge from the partial publication of the document, this citation implies neither that Mino was Pietro’s assistant nor that he was the father of Jacopo di Mino.
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Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:269–270.
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Ernest De Wald to Charles Parkhurst, August 25, 1942, letter in NGA curatorial files.
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Cf. Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 61, 97, 336, 483.
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National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 232; Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 195–196; 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), 1:226, 228; Cristina De Benedictis, “Lorenzetti, Pietro,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:884, 892; Alessio Monciatti, “Pietro Lorenzetti,” in Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Chiara Frugoni (Florence, 2002), 80, 82; Keith Christiansen, “Paul Delaroche’s Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti,” Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, 19; Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen, Italienische Gemälde im Städel 1300–1550: Toskana und Umbrien, Kataloge der Gemälde im Städelschen Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main (Mainz, 2004), 152 n. 44; Michela Becchis, “Lorenzetti, Pietro,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2005), 65:809; Ada Labriola, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 42; Laurence B. Kanter and John Marciari, Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 20.
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For the document of the commission, see Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese, 3 vols. (Siena, 1854–1856), 1:194.
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The date can now be read as M.CCC.X, but the nineteenth-century restoration integrated the inscription, with the result that various readings of it have been proposed (1315, 1316, 1340, 1341). In 1799, however, when the painting entered the Uffizi, Florence, the date 1343 reportedly was visible in the inscription. Cf. Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 166. The stylistic data confirm that the work must have been painted around 1340 or shortly after.
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Often ascribed to the bottega or school of Pietro Lorenzetti, the work was claimed as an autograph of Pietro himself by Carlo Volpe (1951). In his monograph (1989), Volpe dated the painting to the years 1340–1345, but the close kinship in style with Ambrogio would, in my view, make a dating in the late 1330s more plausible. See Carlo Volpe, “Proposte per il problema di Pietro Lorenzetti,” Paragone 2, no. 23 (1951): 13; Carlo Volpe, Pietro Lorenzetti, ed. Mauro Lucco (Milan, 1989), 197–198.
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Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence, 1878–1885), 1:473. On the otherwise rare motif of the cherries in Trecento painting, cf. note 1 above. Recently, Laurence Kanter noted that five of the six punches used in the Washington painting “do not recur in any other painting by Lorenzetti, nor in any other Sienese painting,” and he wondered if it could have been painted in Florence, based on the fact that at least one of the punches is found there as early as 1337 and that the shape of the panels in the Washington altarpiece is more commonly encountered in Florentine than in Sienese carpentry. Laurence B. Kanter and John Marciari, Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 20.