Song of Solomon 2:1: “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.” In medieval religious thought, the rose is often linked to the figure of Mary, who is praised as rosa speciosa or rosa gratiae divinae; cf. M. Schmidt and S. Egbers, “Rose,” in Marienlexikon, ed. Remigius Bäumer and Leo Scheffczyk, 6 vols. (St. Ottilien, 1993), 5:548–552. Eugenio Battisti’s conjecture of a connection between flower and rosary, on the other hand, is unfounded. See Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca, 2 vols. (Milan, 1971), 1:389, 528 n. 548. It cannot be excluded that the iconography of the Virgin with a rose was influenced by transalpine models, for which see Julian Gardner, “Panel Paintings Attributed to Giotto in American Collections,” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 19 (1999): 71–72; Julian Gardner, “Giotto in America (and Elsewhere),” in Italian Panel Painting of the Due­cento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 171–176. However, the motif of the Madonna presenting the Christ child with a rose predates Giotto and is attested in Tuscan painting since the thirteenth century; cf. Dorothy C. Shorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 114. It is also known that an oratory was built around an image of the “Madonna delle Rose” at Lucca in 1309; see Angela Protesti Faggi, “Un episodio di protogiottismo a Lucca: La ‘Madonna della Rosa,’” Antichità viva 27 (1988): 3–9.

Ever since the third century, the Canticles (the Song of Solomon) had been considered an allegorical description of God’s relation with the Church and hence in medieval exegesis an expression of Christ’s love for the Church. See Frank L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London and New York, 1958), 1270.

“The isolated forefinger of the Virgin’s right hand would seem to possess a variety of meanings,” observed Dorothy C. Shorr in The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italy during the XIV Century (New York, 1954), 168. In the case of the painting being discussed here, since the right hand of Mary is occupied in holding the symbolic rose, the artist used the other hand in a Christological sense: the Christ child grasps his mother’s forefinger as if to point it towards himself, thus designating him as victim. Shorr also observed, “This pointing finger has already been seen in French sculpture of the late thirteenth century, when the so-called Vierge dorée of Amiens Cathedral points to the Child seated on her arm.”

Even if it has perhaps been cropped below by c. 2.5 cm, as Monika Cämmerer-George suggested, the panel in the National Gallery of Art has the squat proportions of paintings dating to the first two decades of the fourteenth century, in which the panels of the main tier, if of rectangular format, often are or were surmounted by triangular gables. See Monika Cämmerer-George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966), 71. Examples of this type, apart from the laterals in Chaalis (cf. note 9 below), probably included Giotto’s panel of Saint Anthony of Padua in the Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence; cf. Franco Russoli and Nicky Mariano, La raccolta Berenson (Milan, 1962), no. 1. Though now shorn of gables, the panels attributed to Pacino di Bonaguida from the polyptych now divided between the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence (no. 6146) and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, or nos. 1961.1.2 and 1961.1.3 in the El Paso Museum of Art attributed to Jacopo del Casentino, also exemplify the same type of altarpiece. See, respectively, Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Flor­entine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 2, Elder Contemp­­oraries of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1987), 155–161; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 7, The Biadaiolo Illuminator, Master of the Dominican Effigies (New York, 1957), 100–101.

For example, cf. the polyptych no. 28 in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena attributed to Duccio himself, and polyptych no. 33 in the same gallery, attributed to the Master of Città di Castello; the polyptych by the Goodhart Duccesque Master in the church of Monterongriffoli; and that by Ugolino da Siena in the Clark Art Institute in Williams­town, Massachusetts. See James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 2: figs. 131, 188, 262, 450. According to Monika Cämmerer-­George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966), 71, the type of altarpiece in question is of Sienese origin; but clearly altarpieces of this type, even if they have not survived intact, must have been widespread both in Florence and in Arezzo, as suggested inter alia by the example of the early fourteenth-century polyptych now divided between the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (Loeser bequest) and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (nos. 1943.203, 1946.13).

Richard Offner, “A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings,” The Arts 5 (1924): 244, was the first to note that “a St. Stephen in the Horne collection in Florence​ . . . ​happens to have originally stood to our Virgin’s right in the same original polyptych.” The hypothesis was immediately accepted by Mather and by Curt H. Weigelt in 1925 and by practically all the subsequent literature, at least until Dillian Gordon pointed out that “the Washington panel​ . . . ​has been gilded with orange bole” while “the St. Stephen​ . . . ​was definitely gilded with green [earth].” From this observation she deduced not that the panels belong to different altarpieces but instead that they probably were executed by different artists. This hypothesis is rather improbable, because while the realization of an altarpiece could have been entrusted to more than one painter, it is unlikely they would each have been left the freedom to choose their own techniques, including the kind of preparation to be used before applying the gilding. Cf. Frank Jewett Mather, “Two Attributions to Giotto,” Art Studies 3 (1925): 25–27; Curt H. Weigelt, Giotto: Des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1925), 242; Dillian Gordon, “A Dossal by Giotto and His Workshop: Some Problems of Attribution, Provenance and Patronage,” The Burlington Magazine 131 (1989): 526. [Editor’s note: see also Cecelia Frosinini, “St Stephen" in Dominique Thiebaut, ed., Giotto e compagni (Paris, 2013), 139–140, for a discussion of the recent technical examination of the painting. This examination revealed that St Stephen was also gilded with a red bole on top of a green earth layer. Miklós Boskovits did not survive to learn of these new findings.]

Both paintings are surrounded by ornamental borders with decorative motifs incised freehand into the gold ground. The ornamental borders are framed in both panels by a double row of dots impressed into the gold ground. The halos also have incised decoration freehand, hence without the use of punched motifs, and are surrounded both inside and outside by concentric circles formed of dots. The border of the child’s halo is further punctuated by three rosettes.

See note 6 above. Gilding laid on a green underpaint foundation has also been observed elsewhere in Giotto’s oeuvre, in particular in his stories of Christ, now divided among the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (Presentation of Jesus in the Temple), the Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence (Entombment), the National Gallery in London (Descent of the Holy Spirit), the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (Last Supper, Crucifixion, Descent to Limbo), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Adoration of the Magi). See also Dillian Gordon, “A Dossal by Giotto and His Workshop: Some Problems of Attribution, Provenance and Patronage,” The Burlington Magazine 131 (1989): 524–531. [Editor’s note: see also Dominique Thiébaut, ed., Giotto e compagni (Paris, 2013), 130–151, for a discussion of the results of the cleaning of this painting, which Miklós Boskovits did not survive to examine. The National Gallery of Art has preserved his manuscript as he submitted it. In the case of these Giotto panels, it is important to point out that Boskovits wrote about them before technical examination in advance of exhibitions at the J. Paul Getty Museum and at the Louvre revealed new information about their construction.]

Roberto Longhi, “Progressi nella reintegrazione d’un polittico di Giotto,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 285–291, was the first to propose the reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych with the Washington Madonna at its center, flanked to the left by the Saint John the Evangelist in Chaalis and the Saint Stephen in the Museo Horne, and to the right by the Saint Lawrence in Chaalis and a still unidentified panel. The hypothesis met with a generally favorable reception among art historians, though Monika Cämmerer-George (1966) contested it, noting incongruities between the presumed laterals of the altarpiece in terms of both the decorative borders around the outer edge of the gold ground and the respective size of the panels and the proportions of the saints represented in them. See Monika Cämmerer-­George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966), 71–74, 208 n. 233. Curiously, Francesca Flores d’Arcais, though considering Longhi’s reconstruction valid, also adduced some stylistic divergences between the panels in Chaalis and Florence, in Francesca Flores d’Arcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 320, 324. Only in recent years, however, were Cämmerer-­George’s doubts accepted by Giovanna Ragionieri, in Giovanni Previtali and Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua bottega, ed. Alessandro Conti, 3rd ed. (Milan, 1993), 147 n. 217, 329, 348, 391; and Alessandro Tomei, “Giotto,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1995), 6:671. Miklós Boskovits (2000) and Angelo Tartuferi (2000) firmly ruled out the common origin of the four panels in Miklós Boskovits, “Giotto: Un artista poco conosciuto?” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 182–186; Angelo Tartuferi, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 118. On the panels in Chaalis, cf. Nicolas Sainte Fare Garnot, “Brève histoire d’une redécouverte,” in Primitifs italiens du Musée Jacquemart-­André (Paris, 2000), 104–105, who still seemed to accept Longhi’s reconstruction.

Bernard Berenson, “Italian Paintings,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 15 (1920): 160–161; Edward Robinson, “The Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 15 (1920): 75; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, The Henry Goldman Collection (New York, 1922), n.p., no. 1; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, “The Henry Goldman Collection,” Art News (1927): 9–10.

See Provenance, note 2. Commenting on the work many years later, Bernard Berenson observed: “si cita ancora la mia attribuzione​ . . . ​al Daddi, sebbene io rammenti d’aver scritto al Dr. Valentiner molto tempo prima che pubblicasse il catalogo di quella collezione [i.e., that of Henry Goldman] per informarlo che io ritenevo opera di uno dei pittori che eseguirono gli affreschi disegnati da Giotto nella chiesa inferiore di San Francesco ad Assisi” (My attribution to Daddi is still cited, even though I recall having written to Dr. Valentiner long before he published the catalog of the Goldman collection to inform him that I considered [it] the work of one of the painters who executed the frescoes designed by Giotto in the lower church of San Franceso in Assisi). See Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 1,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 988 n. 1. In fact, Wilhelm R. Valentiner, though maintaining the attribution to Daddi, also noted that the panel “is so closely related to the work of Giotto that one who is not professional would immediately think of the master himself.” Wilhelm R. Valentiner, The Henry Goldman Collection (New York, 1922), n.p., Introduction.

Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 3, The Florentine School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 185–190, tried to reconstruct the catalog of an “Assistant of Giotto’s” whom he dubbed the “Master of the Six Scenes from the Life of Christ.” This name referred to the series of panels cited in note 8 above (without the scene of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, now in the National Gallery in London). The Dutch scholar attributed both this group of paintings and the small versions of the Crucifixion in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Strasbourg to the same hand, but they are now generally recognized as autograph works by Giotto. Van Marle also added to the catalog of the “Master of the Six Scenes” the painted crucifix in the Florentine church of San Felice in Piazza, a panel still disputed between those who regard it as an autograph work by Giotto and those who assign it to a studio assistant. Richard Offner, “A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings,” The Arts 5 (1924): 244, considered both the Goldman Madonna and the Saint Stephen in the Museo Horne in Florence the work of a “nameless master” of “considerable gifts who must have worked very close to Giotto.”

Curt H. Weigelt, Giotto: Des Meisters Gemälde (Stuttgart, 1925), 242; Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, in Henry Thode, Giotto, ed. Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, 3rd ed., Künstler-­Monographien (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1926), 159 n. 62; Wilhelm R. Valentiner, A Catalogue of Early Italian Paintings Exhibited at the Duveen Galleries, New York, April to May 1924 (New York, 1926), n.p., Introduction; Pietro Toesca, La pittura fiorentina del Trecento (Verona, 1929), 60 n. 9; Pietro Toesca, “Giotto di Bondone,” in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. 1929–1939 (Milan, 1933), 17:218; Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 1,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 974, 988 n. 1; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 236; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 203; Robert Oertel, Die Frühzeit der italienischen Malerei (Stuttgart, 1953), 91; Robert Oertel, Early Italian Painting to 1400 (London, 1968), 98.

Once they came into possession of the painting after Goldman’s death, Duveen Brothers, Inc., commissioned expert opinions from the most reputable connoisseurs of the day. Since some of these expertises are dated 1938 (copies in NGA curatorial files), it must be assumed they were collected in anticipation of the painting’s sale to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Among the scholars approached by Duveen, Giuseppe Fiocco, Roberto Longhi, Wilhelm Suida, and Adolfo Venturi all unhesitatingly confirmed the attribution to Giotto, whereas Berenson and F. Mason Perkins attributed it respectively to a “close follower of Giotto” and “one of the closest and most gifted of Giotto’s anonymous pupils.” Not invited to express his opinion on this occasion, Richard Offner entrusted his view of the Goldman Madonna to a highly critical article devoted to the Italian paintings in the new National Gallery of Art in Washington, intended for the Art News but never in fact published; all that remains of it are the page proofs, copies of which are in the NGA curatorial files. “Thus the peculiarities of the National Gallery panel”—observes inter alia the great American connoisseur—“would commit it, like the altarpiece to which it belongs, to Giotto’s studio, where the living presence of the master communicated to this work a considerable proportion of its admirable qualities, but in which the actual execution was due to an assistant.” Offner’s judgment of our Madonna was, after all, highly positive; he combined it with a proposed dating “toward the end of the first quarter of the century,” close to that supported by Longhi and various other proponents of Giotto’s authorship.

It is worth adding that the newspaper article by Carlyle Burrows cited in Provenance note 5 triumphantly reported the “final judgment” of Bernard Berenson, as pronounced viva voce by the “nonagenarian authority on Italian Renaissance art” in 1958: Berenson had then decided, reported Burrows, to accept the panel as a genuine “late Giotto.” He would memorialize this oral opinion in his posthumously published volume, Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 2:81. The fact that the recent Giotto monograph by Michael Schwarz (2009) did not cite the Washington Madonna presumably means that he did not accept the painting as an autograph work by Giotto. Cf. Michael Viktor Schwarz, Giotto (Munich, 2009).

Frank Jewett Mather, “Two Attributions to Giotto,” Art Studies 3 (1925): 25–27; Carlo Gamba, “Problemi artistici all’esposizione di Londra,” Il Marzocco 35, no. 17 (1930): 2; Roberto Longhi, “Progressi nella reintegrazione d’un polittico di Giotto,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 289–291; Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 26; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 32; Mario Salmi, “La mostra giottesca,” Emporium 86 (1937): 358.

Frank Jewett Mather, “Two Attributions to Giotto,” Art Studies 3 (1925): 25–27; Cesare Brandi, “Giotto,” Le Arti 1 (1938–1939): 126; Enzo Carli, Giotto (Florence, 1951), n.p; Enzo Carli, La pittura senese (Milan, 1955), 96; Eugenio Battisti, Giotto (Geneva, 1960), 115–117; John Walker, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour, Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings and Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection (London, 1961), 4–6; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 2:81; Ferdinando Bologna, Novità su Giotto: Giotto al tempo della cappella Peruzzi (Turin, 1969), 98; Luciano Bellosi, Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974), 52; Luciano Bellosi, “Ancora sulla cronologia degli affreschi del Cappellone di San Nicola a Tolentino,” in Arte e spiritualità nell’ordine agostiniano e il Convento San Nicola a Tolentino: Atti della seconda sessione del convegno “Arte e Spiritualità negli Ordini Mendicanti”; Tolentino, 1–4 settembre 1992, ed. Graziano Campisano (Rome, 1994), 189; Michel Laclotte, “Reconstruction and Revaluation,” Apollo 108 (1978): 387; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:219–221; Cesare Brandi, Giotto (Milan, 1983), 147; Laura Cavazzini, Giotto (Florence, 1996), 33.

Pietro Toesca, “Giotto di Bondone,” in Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti, ed. Istituto Giovanni Treccani, 36 vols. (Milan, 1933), 17:218; National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC, 1985), 177; Elvio Lunghi, “Giotto,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:576; Giorgio Bonsanti, “La bottega di Giotto e la Croce di San Felice,” in La croce giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: Storia e restauro, ed. Magnolia Scudieri (Venice, 1992), 79, 89 n. 50; Giorgio Bonsanti, “La bottega di Giotto,” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 66, 71; Alessandro Tomei, “Giotto,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medie­vale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1995), 6:671.

Roberto Longhi, “Progressi nella reintegrazione d’un polittico di Giotto,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 289–291; Mario Salmi, “La mostra giottesca,” Emporium 86 (1937): 358; Emilio Cecchi, Giotto (Milan, 1937), 115 – ​116; Duveen Brothers, Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America (New York, 1941), no. 11; Alfred M. Frankfurter, The Kress Collection in the National Gallery (New York, 1944), 14; Michel Florisoone, Giotto (Paris, 1950), 117; Carlo Gamba, Il Museo Horne a Firenze: Catalogo con 40 illustrazione (Florence, 1961), 35; John Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, (New York, 1963), 68–69; Filippo Rossi, ed., Il Museo Horne a Firenze, Gallerie e musei minori di Firenze (Florence, 1966), 134; Cri­stina De Benedictis, “Firenze: Omaggio a Giotto ” Antichità viva 6, no. 3 (1967): 34; Paolo Dal Poggetto, ed., Omaggio a Giotto: Celebrazioni nazionali nel vii centenario della nascita di Giotto (Florence, 1967), 11; Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 112–113, 376–377; Giovanni Previtali, “Giotto,” in Dizionario della pittura e dei pittori, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo and Bruno Toscano, 6 vols. (Turin, 1990), 2:604; Paolo Venturoli, “Giotto,” Storia dell’arte 1, no. 2 (1969): 154, 156, 158; Angelo Tartuferi, “Dipinti del Due e Trecento alla mostra ‘Capolavori e Restauri,’” Paragone 38, no. 445 (1987): 53, 59 n. 30; Angelo Tartuferi, “Giotto: Una nuova immagine,” in Giotto: Guida alla mostra, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 21; Angelo Tartuferi, Giotto (Florence, 2007), 125, 127; Sandrina Bandera Bistoletti, Giotto: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence, 1989), 126; Francesca Flores d’Arcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 320, 324; Miklós Boskovits, “Giotto di Bondone,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2000), 55:412, 413, 418; Giovanna Ragionieri, “Giotto di Bondone,” in La pittura in Europa: Il dizionario dei pittori, ed. Carlo Pirovano, 3 vols. (Milan, 2002), 2:360; and Giovanna Ragionieri, in Luciano Bellosi and Giovanna Ragionieri, Giotto e la sua eredità: Filippo Rusuti, Pietro Cavallini, Duccio, Giovanni da Rimini, Neri da Rimini, Pietro da Rimini, Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Matteo Giovannetti, Maso di Banco, Puccio Capanna, Taddeo Gaddi, Giovanni da Milano, Giottino, Giusto de’Menabuoi, Altichiero, Jacopo Avanzi, Jean Pucelle, i fratelli Limbourg (Florence, 2007), 303, 305.

Federico Zeri, “Due appunti su Giotto,” Paragone 8, no. 85 (1957): 78; Cesare Gnudi, “Giotto,” in Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte, ed. Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 15 vols. (Florence, 1962), 6:236; Roberto Longhi, Edizione delle opere complete di Roberto Longhi, 14 vols. (Florence, 1961–1984), 4:6; Alberto Busignani, Giotto (Florence, 1993), 206, 307; Julian Gardner, “Giotto in America (and Elsewhere),” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 176; Bernard Berenson, “Quadri senza casa: Il Trecento fiorentino, 1,” Dedalo 11 (1930–1931): 974, 988 n. 1; Almamaria Tantillo Mignosi, “Osserva­zioni sul transetto della Basilica Inferiore di Assisi,” Bollettino d’arte 60 (1975): 136, 141 n. 38.

Frank Jewett Mather, “Two Attributions to Giotto,” Art Studies 3 (1925): 25–27. See Julius von Schlosser, ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwürdigkeiten: I Commentarii, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912), 1:36: “Nell’ordine de’ frati minori [in Florence] quattro cappelle et quattro tauole” (In the order of friars minor of Florence [i.e., Santa Croce] four chapels and four altarpieces). Vasari, ever since the first edition (1550) of his Vite, specified that the chapels in question were that with the stories of Saint Francis (the Bardi Chapel), that of the Peruzzi, that of the Giugni, and a fourth to the left of the sanctuary (the family chapel of the Tosinghi and Spinelli). Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a’ tempi nostri nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550, ed. Luciano Bellosi and Aldo Rossi (Turin, 1986), 119.

On this chapel, the penultimate to the left of the cappella maggiore, see Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunst­geschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1940), 1:574; Richard Offner, Miklós Boskovits, and Enrica Neri Lusanna, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi, new ed. (Florence, 1989), 122–145. The frescoes by Bernardo Daddi, with stories of Saints Lawrence and Stephen, probably date to the mid-third decade or slightly before. However, since they are superimposed over earlier frescoes (or possibly merely geometrical decoration), the chapel could have been officiated several years before Daddi’s intervention and perhaps even furnished with an altarpiece.

Julian Gardner, “Panel Paintings Attributed to Giotto in American Collections,” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 19 (1999): 71; Julian Gardner, “Giotto in America (and Elsewhere),” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 176.

Comparison with Giotto’s surviving polyptychs that include half figures of saints (the ones in the Badia, today in the Uffizi, Florence, and Santa Maria del Fiore [the Duomo]) shows a ratio between height and width of c. 2.5:1. If we assume that the panel in the National Gallery of Art originally had a size and shape similar to the panels of the two saints now in Chaalis, it must have been topped by an equilateral triangular gable and had an overall height of approximately 125 cm. We can then calculate the total width of the five-part polyptych as c. 312 cm. On the structure and proportions of Giotto’s polyptychs in general, see Monika Cämmerer-­George, Die Rahmung der toskanischen Altarbilder im Trecento (Strasbourg, 1966), 50–85.

Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 26; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1; no. 32.

Ugo Procacci, “La tavola di Giotto dell’altar maggiore della Chiesa della Badia fiorentina,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Mario Salmi, ed. Filippa Aliberti, 3 vols. (Rome, 1962), 2:9–45. The polyptych has been on display in the Uffizi, Florence, since 1957.

Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, in Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architetti, ed. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (Milan, 1949), 4:282 n. 69. The “tavola di man di Giotto, di figure piccole, che poi se n’è ita in pezzi” (painting by the hand of Giotto, with small figures, which was then broken into pieces), putatively rediscovered in Borgo Sansepolcro, was reported by Vasari in the second edition (1568) of Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols. (Florence, 1967), 2:113. The tendency now is to accept the hypothesis of Martin Davies, who identified the fragments of this polyptych with the stories of Christ divided among the museums of Boston, London, Munich, New York, and the Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence. See Martin Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, National Gallery Catalogues (London, 1951), 181; and note 8 above.

Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, no. 61.60. The polyptych given to Jacopo del Casentino is one of the few Florentine polyptychs of the period to have survived intact; see Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 4, Bernardo Daddi, His Shop and Following, new ed. (Florence, 1991), 179–189.

The Badia polyptych, painted by Giotto for the early medieval church that had been undergoing enlargement and reconstruction from 1284 onward, measures 91 × 340 cm. The polyptych painted by Simone Martini in 1319 for the high altar of the Dominican church of Santa Caterina in Pisa measures 195 × 340 cm; that by Pietro Lorenzetti, commissioned in 1320 for the main altar of the pieve of Santa Maria in Arezzo, 298 × 309 cm; and the panel by Meo da Siena, dated 1333 and destined for the high altar of San Pietro in Perugia, now in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut at Frankfurt, 59.5 × 304 cm. Smaller polyptychs were made for altars in side chapels or for the high altars in early churches, where the altar tables were generally of reduced size. We may cite as an example Giotto’s Stefan­eschi altarpiece in Old Saint Peter’s in Rome, whose original dimensions, despite its prestigious destination, were just over two and a half meters in width. On the problem, cf. Julian Gardner, “Fronts and Backs: Setting and Structure,” in La pittura nel XIV e XV secolo, il contributo dell’analisi tecnica alla storia dell’arte, ed. Hendrik W. van Os and J. R. J. van Asperen de Boer (Bologna, 1983), 297–322; Julian Gardner, “Giotto in America (and Elsewhere),” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 160–181.

Peter Murray’s useful compilation (1959), complemented now by the work of Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis (2004), listed, apart from the Badia polyptych, four panels by Giotto in the church of Santa Croce, one in San Giorgio alla Costa (the fragmentary Maestà now in the Museo Diocesano of Florence), a crucifix and a now lost image of Saint Louis of Toulouse formerly in Santa Maria Novella, and a crucifix and four panels in Ognissanti. See Peter Murray, An Index of Attributions Made in Tuscan Sources before Vasari (Florence, 1959), 79–89; and Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis, Giottus pictor, vol. 1, Giottos Leben (Vienna, 2004), 285–303. The tabula altaris in the chapel of the Palazzo del Bargello is perhaps cited by error in a manuscript of Filippo Villani’s De origine. Other manuscripts of Villani’s book only report the presence of Giotto’s frescoes in this chapel; cf. Schwarz and Theis 2004, 290.

Of the four panels cited in Santa Croce, that of the Baroncelli Chapel is still in situ. There are no firm reasons for assuming that the polyptych now in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh has a provenance from the family chapels of the east side of the transept of this church, though its relatively small size (105.7 × 250 cm) and the presence of Francis of Assisi among the saints represented (Santa Croce being a Franciscan church) make this a possibility. The hypothesis of Wilhelm Suida (1931), who considered this polyptych as intended for the Peruzzi Chapel, is now generally accepted. See Wilhelm Suida, “A Giotto Altarpiece,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 59 (1931): 188–193. The proposed identification of one of Giotto’s Santa Croce panels with that formerly in the Bromley Davenport collection at Capesthorne Hall (Macclesfield) is more uncertain. This altarpiece, perhaps a product of Giotto’s atelier and indeed intended for the church of Santa Croce, was certainly not painted by the hand of the master; the proposed attribution to the young Taddeo Gaddi seems very convincing. Its original destination might have been the Lupicini Chapel or, less probable, the Bardi Saint Francis Chapel, in either of which, given its relatively small size, it could have been easily accommodated on the altar. Cf. Mina Gregori, “Sul polittico Bromley Davenport di Taddeo Gaddi e sulla sua originaria collocazione,” Paragone 25, no. 297 (1974): 73–83; and Federico Zeri, “Italian Primitives at Mssrs. Wildenstein,” The Burlington Magazine 107 (1965): 252–256. We may wonder whether so acute an observer as Ghiberti could ever have classified it as an autograph work by the master himself. The panels of saints dispersed between the Horne and Jacquemart-­André museums remain to be considered. That they come from the chapels in the east transept of Santa Croce seems improbable due to their measurements; see Julian Gardner, “Giotto in America (and Elsewhere),” in Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, ed. Victor M. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art (Washington, DC, and New Haven, 2002), 181 n. 80. But the existence of a Giotto polyptych would also be conceivable in the chapel of Saint Louis, on the north side of the transept: this chapel, dating to the years 1332–1335, could have accommodated an altarpiece of a width exceeding 3 meters; cf. Irene Hueck, “Stifter und Patronatsrecht: Dokumente zu zwei Kapellen der Bardi,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20 (1976): 263–270. It cannot be excluded, lastly, that one of Giotto’s four polyptychs might have been executed for the high altar of the old church of Santa Croce, in use at least until 1314 and perhaps until 1320/1330 and doubtless not left without appropriate decoration. See Walter Paatz and Elisabeth Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1940), 1:500.

As for the church of Ognissanti, one of the panels with an undoubted provenance from the church is the Maestà now in the Uffizi, Florence, often—though without foundation—considered an altarpiece for the high altar or displayed on its rood-screen; cf. Irene Hueck, “Le opere di Giotto per la chiesa di Ognissanti,” in La ‘Madonna d’Ognissanti’ di Giotto restaurata (Florence, 1992), 37–49. Whatever the case, the fact remains that the Maestà comes from Ognissanti, as does the Dormitio Virginis now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (no. 1884) and the great painted crucifix still in situ in the church that Ghiberti cited in addition to the four panels. On the crucifix, see Marco Ciatti, ed., L’officina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti, Problemi di conservazione e restauro (Florence, 2010). Two other panels therefore remain to be identified. One might have been the “mezza Nostra Donna col fanciullo in braccio” that Ghiberti saw above the side door of the church leading into the cloister. It is possible, however, that this Madonna and Child was not a panel painting but a frescoed lunette. Julius von Schlosser, ed., Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwürdigkeiten, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1912), 1:36.

Erling Skaug’s conclusion that “in Florence extensive punch work was introduced only about 1333–1334” was perhaps excessively cautious, since it was based only on securely dated paintings. Even so, Skaug admitted the occasional use of punches by Giotto before his terminus post quem, for example in the Stefaneschi altarpiece now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana (on which see the following note) and in that of the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce. See 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), 1:34–36. This latter chapel was founded, according to the inscription on its external wall, in 1328; see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO, 1982), 88. In any case, the fact that the gold ground of the Goldman Madonna is totally devoid of punched decoration might be an indication that it predates both the Roman and Florentine polyptychs.

The Stefaneschi altarpiece has lost its original frame, which probably bore the signature of Giotto and the date of execution. The fourteenth-century Liber benefactorum in the Basilica Vaticana did not hesitate to identify Giotto as the artist of the polyptych, while the manuscript of the canon Giacomo Grimaldi, dating to the early seventeenth century, said it was “circa annum MCCCXX depicta.” Cf. Wolfgang Fritz Volbach, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Vaticana, vol. 1, I dipinti dal X secolo fino a Giotto (Vatican City, 1979), 45–51. There are no good reasons to doubt the reliability of this affirmation, probably based on an inscription partially legible on the original frame. In addition, a punch mark is used in the Ognissanti crucifix, which is probably earlier than the Stefaneschi altarpiece. See Miklós Boskovits, “Il Crocifisso di Giotto della chiesa di Ognissanti: Riflessioni dopo il restauro,” in L’Officina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti, ed. Marco Ciatti (Florence, 2010), 47–62.

Giotto had already used Kufic-type lettering in the halos of the mourners in the Santa Maria Novella crucifix, a painting generally recognized as one of the master’s earliest works, datable to c. 1290. Motifs similar to those of Mary’s halo in the Washington panel—interlaced motifs that are repeated in equal form from right to left, with the exception of two different decorative elements incised in the gold ground above the Madonna’s right shoulder—are matched in Christ’s halo in the Giottesque crucifix in San Felice in Piazza, Florence (figs. 5 and 6). Tracing based on Magnolia Scudieri, ed., Lacroce giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: Storia e restauro (Venice, 1992), 146. Invariably discussed as a product of Giotto’s shop and thought to be painted mainly by the master’s assistants, this work was dated to the early years of the fourteenth century by Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 137–138; Carlo Volpe, “Sulla Croce di San Felice in Piazza e la cronologia dei crocefissi giotteschi,” in Giotto e il suo tempo: Atti del congresso internazionale per la celebrazione del vii centenario della nascità di Giotto, Assisi, Padova, Firenze (Rome, 1971), 253–263; and Giorgio Bonsanti, “La bottega di Giotto e la Croce di San Felice,” in La croce giottesca di San Felice in Piazza: Storia e restauro, ed. Magnolia Scudieri (Venice, 1992), 53–90; and toward 1310 or shortly after, i.e., the time of the Peruzzi Chapel, by Luciano Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 69; and Miklós Boskovits, “Una vetrata e un frammento d’affresco di Giotto nel museo di Santa Croce,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Federico Zeri, 2 vols. (Milan, 1984), 1:44, the latter of whom considered the crucifix an autograph painting by Giotto. Similar ornamental motifs also appear in the frescoes of the Saint Nicholas chapel in the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi, painted, according to the more recent studies, no later than c. 1300; cf. Brigitte Klesse, Seidenstoffe in der italienischen Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1967), 192, no. 53 of the repertoire. For the dating of the Uffizi Maestà to the end of the first decade of the fourteenth century, cf. Giorgio Bonsanti, “La bottega di Giotto,” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 66; and Miklós Boskovits, “Giotto: Un artista poco conosciuto?” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 85. Adriano Pero­ni, “La Maestà di Ognissanti rivisitata dopo il restauro,” in La Madonna d’Ognissanti di Giotto restaurata (Florence, 1992), 30, argued, however, that the painting should date to the early years of the century.

In medieval Byzantine devotional images of the Madonna and Child—and hence also in Italian ones—Mary’s hair is in general hidden within a kind of coif. The color of this article of clothing may vary, but at least in central Italy within the last decades of the thirteenth and first decades of the fourteenth century, it is usually red, as in the Washington Madonna. The Virgin is represented in this way in Giotto’s pre-1300 Maestà now in the Museo Diocesano in Florence, in the fresco on the inner façade of the upper church of the basilica in Assisi, and also in the Uffizi Maestà and in the Stefaneschi altarpiece. In Giotto’s later works, such as the polyptych in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna; the Madonna of Santa Maria a Ricorboli, also in Florence; and the polyptych in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce (c. 1328), the mother of Christ instead wears a wimple and a transparent veil that covers her head but leaves her blond hair visible below it.

Bellosi, who was the first to use the width of the scooped neckline as an indication of dating, compared the neckline of the Washington Madonna with those painted by Pietro Lorenzetti in 1320 in the polyptych of the Pieve of Santa Maria in Arezzo, in Luciano Bellosi, “Moda e cronologia: B) per la pittura di primo Trecento,” Prospettiva 11 (1977): 12–14. Of course, that does not imply a dating ad annum; the fact remains that we find increasingly wider necklines than that of the Goldman Madonna in Giotto’s last decade of activity.

This is the date of the Cappella della Maddalena frescoes proposed by Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 90–94; Lucia­no Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 59; Cesare Brandi, Giotto (Milan, 1983), 115–118; Filippo Todini, “Pittura del Duecento e del Trecento in Umbria e il cantiere di Assisi,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:395; Giorgio Bonsanti, “La bottega di Giotto,” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 69; Miklós Boskovits, “Giotto di Bondone,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2000), 55:411. The Assisi document also seems to confirm this date, asserting that the painter Palmerino di Guido repaid a credit on Giotto’s behalf in January 1309; cf. Valentino Martinelli, “Un documento per Giotto ad Assisi,” Storia dell’arte 19 (1973): 193–208. Evidently, the painter had been present and was working in the Umbrian city until shortly before this date. Francesca Flores d’Arcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 272, proposed a later date (1315–1318) for the Magdalene chapel cycle.

Cf. note 29 above. It cannot be excluded that the Raleigh polyptych belonged to the Peruzzi Chapel. However, the altarpiece is probably earlier than supposed in the past: Miklós Boskovits argued for a dating of 1310 in Miklós Boskovits, “Il Crocifisso di Giotto della chiesa di Ognissanti: Riflessioni dopo il restauro,” in L’Officina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti, ed. Marco Ciatti (Florence, 2010), 52, 61 n. 27.

Most art historians of the period accepted the dating of the Peruzzi Chapel cycle to 1310–1315. Cf. Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 105–107; Luciano Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 62; Cesare Brandi, Giotto (Milan, 1983), 185; Francesca Flores d’Arcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 252–261; Giorgio Bonsanti, “La bottega di Giotto,” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 66; Miklós Boskovits, “Giotto: Un artista poco conosciuto?” in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 86–87. Hayden B. J. Maginnis, Painting in the Age of Giotto: A Historical Reevaluation (University Park, PA, 1997), 131, seemed to prefer a slightly later dating.

See Miklós Boskovits, “Una vetrata e un frammento d’affresco di Giotto nel museo di Santa Croce,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Federico Zeri, 2 vols. (Milan, 1984), 1:39–45; Miklós Boskovits, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 138–140.

The Dormitio Virginis in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, no. 884, is generally dated to c. 1310. See Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 109–112; Luciano Bellosi, Giotto (Florence, 1981), 59; Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 56–61; Francesca Flores d’Arcais, Giotto (Milan, 1995), 237–242. The crucifix in Ognissanti, although commissioned for the same church, is generally thought to be slightly later: according to Previtali 1967, 137–138, in the third decade of the century; according to Bellosi 1981, 69, “di un’epoca assai posteriore” (of considerably later period) than the Peruzzi Chapel frescoes. Miklós Boskovits, “Il Crocifisso di Giotto della chiesa di Ognissanti: Riflessioni dopo il restauro,” in L’Officina di Giotto: Il restauro della Croce di Ognissanti, ed. Marco Ciatti (Florence, 2010), 58, considered the painting executed by the mid-1310s, like Flores d’Arcais (1995), 243–244, who proposed the period 1310–1315, and Giorgio Bonsanti, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 147–150, who preferred the date c. 1315.

Cf. Michael Viktor Schwarz and Pia Theis, Giottus pictor, vol. 1, Giottos Leben (Vienna, 2004), 103–112.

On the much-debated problem of the so-called “Parente di [i.e., relative of] Giotto,” a painter to whom—according to some art historians—the great master delegated much of the actual execution of very important commissions during the second and third decade of the fourteenth century, cf. a summary of the contributions of Giorgio Bonsanti and Miklós Boskovits, in Giotto: Bilancio critico di sessant’anni di studi e ricerche, ed. Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2000), 55–73, 75–94.

In their recent contribution, Maria Clelia Galassi and Elizabeth Walmsley (2009) observed analogies between the painting technique of the Washington Madonna and the panel in the Museo Horne in Florence and differences between the execution of these latter and the Ognissanti Madonna and the Raleigh polyptych. This may be explained, in my opinion, by their different dates of execution. See Maria Clelia Galassi and Elizabeth Walmsley, “Painting Technique in the Late Works of Giotto,” in The Quest for the Original: Underdrawing and Technology in Painting; Symposium 16, Bruges, 21 – ​23 September 2006 [Colloque pour l’Étude du Dessin Sous-­Jacent et de la Technologie dans la Peinture], ed. Hélène Verougstraete (Leuven, 2009), 116–122.

The NGA scientific research department analyzed the wood (see report dated January 11, 1989, in NGA conservation files).

The Duveen Brothers Records contain an entry for restoration by their Paris restorer, Mme Helfer, in 1918 and another entry for restoration in 1919, presumably by a different restorer because the amount is recorded in US dollars (see Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 422). Historic x-radiographs show the panel with the earlier cradle. On Pichetto’s treatment, see Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:221, and see also the exchange of cables between the company’s New York and London offices (Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 89, box 234, folder 23).

Cross-sections taken by the NGA scientific research department in 2012 showed a thin green underpaint layer under the red bole. Joanna R. Dunn, Barbara H. Berrie, John K. Delaney, and Lisha Denning Glinsman, “The Creation of Giotto’s Madonna and Child: New Insights,” Facture 2 (2015): 6. [Editor’s note: This information was not available during Miklós Boskovits’s lifetime and has been added to the technical summary of this Online Edition in an endeavor to make available the most current information about the National Gallery of Art collections.]

Maria Clelia Galassi and Elizabeth Walmsley, “Painting Technique in the Late Works of Giotto,” in The Quest for the Original: Underdrawing and Technology in Painting; Symposium 16, Bruges, 21 – ​23 September 2006 [Colloque pour l’Étude du Dessin Sous-­Jacent et de la Technologie dans la Peinture], ed. Hélène Veroug­straete (Leuven, 2009), 116–122; Joanna R. Dunn, Barbara H. Berrie, John K. Delaney, and Lisha Deming Glinsman, “The Creation of Giotto’s Madonna and Child: New Insights,” Facture 2 (2015): 2–17. This was confirmed by the NGA Scientific Research Department using cross-sections in combination with scanning electron microscopy (see forthcoming report in NGA Conservation department files) and false-color hyperspectral infrared reflectography. The false-color hyperspectral infrared reflectography was captured using a modified 720 Surface Optics Corporation NIR hyperspectral camera. The focal plane has been replaced by a Sensor Unlimited high sensitivity InGaAs camera. The images were collected from 970 to 1680 nm with a spectral resolution of 3.4 nm. The artificial-color images were made using three bands (centered at 1000nm for the blue, 1200nm for the green and 1600 nm for the red) to better show features of interest.

Infrared reflectography was performed with a Vidicon camera, as well as a FLIR / Indigo Alph VisGaAs focal plane array camera, a Mitsubishi M600 PtSi focal plane array camera, and a Santa Barbara InSb focal plane array camera fitted with J and K filters.

At the time of this treatment the painting was analyzed by the NGA scientific research department using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), cross-sections in combination with scanning electron microscopy, fiber optic reflectance spectrometry (XRF), and false color infrared reflectography (see forthcoming reports in NGA conservation files).