Pseudo-Dalmasio, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels

Art market, Italy; Maitland Fuller Griggs (1872–1943), New York, 1926

The panel support, 2.7 centimeters thick, has been neither thinned nor cradled, but all four edges have been beveled slightly at the back. A split rising the full height of the panel, approximately 25.5 centimeters from the left edge (viewed from the front), has been repaired and strengthened on the reverse with the insertion of sections of new wood. Two dowel holes have been drilled into the right edge of the panel, 7 and 37.5 centimeters (on center) from the bottom edge; the left edge of the panel shows no trace of dowel holes nor any other form of attachment to another adjacent structure. Three prominent candle burns interrupt the surface along the bottom edge, 24, 29.5, and 37.5 centimeters from the left edge of the panel. The gilding and paint surface have been severely and extensively abraded, as can be seen in photographs following the 1964–67 cleaning by Andrew Petryn (fig. 1). The painting was most recently restored and some of the losses reintegrated by Daniele Rossi in 2012.

The painting, heavily retouched at an unknown date before entering the collection of Maitland Griggs and subsequently subjected to harsh “cleaning” in 1964–67, was restored to some semblance of its original appearance in 2012. Notwithstanding the significant losses—most noticeable in the heads of the Virgin and of the angels in the background but also extending to surface decorative effects—the image still retains much of its original charm, derived from the unusual composition and palette. Referred to by Roberto Longhi as the Madonna “of the flying carpet” (“del tappeto volante”),¹ the panel depicts the Virgin and Child “seated” on a brocaded cloth of honor held aloft by four angels rather than on a solid throne. Conceived with a close attention to naturalistic detail, two kneeling angels, dressed in brilliant orange robes with yellow highlights, are shown holding onto the edges of the heavy material, sagging under the weight of the bodies. Judging from old photographs (fig. 2), the other two angels, standing in the background, may originally have been depicted holding up the other end of the cloth, now seemingly suspended in midair. The figures are placed above the kind of marble platform usually reserved for a throne, its edges carefully painted to evoke the rich veining of the material. The Virgin, wearing an exquisite mauve-colored mantle lined with green over a white gown, supports the half-naked Christ Child on her lap; a diaphanous veil is draped over His left shoulder and a brilliant red blanket covers His lower half. With His right hand—whose present form is a modern restoration—the Child gestures toward the words, no longer legible, in a small volume held open by the Virgin, perhaps a book of hours. The precious, enamel-like quality of the panel was undoubtedly once magnified by the gilt borders that formerly decorated the figures’ robes and by the gilt sgraffito designs incised over the cloth of honor.

The painting was acquired by Griggs in Italy in 1926 as a work of the Giottesque Northern school of painting and reportedly attributed by Bernard Berenson to Vitale da Bologna.² In 1927 Richard Offner assigned it more generically to the Bolognese-Romagnole school around 1350,³ and it was exhibited as such in the 1930 exhibition of the Griggs collection in New York.⁴ Subsequent scholarship ignored the Yale Virgin, until Wilhelm Suida published it for the first time among the works of Vitale da Bologna, highlighting its distinctive qualities: “This fascinating small painting . . . is as unique in its composition as it is in its coloristic character. It unites solidity of structure with grace and sensitiveness and a preference for rare and exceptional colors. . . . I believe that when [it] is exhibited together with the primitives of the Jarves collection, it will be one of the favorite treasures of the Yale University Museum.”⁵

Suida’s appreciative assessment of the Yale Virgin was composed on the eve of Longhi’s groundbreaking exhibition of Bolognese trecento painting, held from May to July 1950. Among Longhi’s major contributions was a first effort to delineate the personality of the mysterious Bolognese painter then known as “Dalmasio,” under whose name he exhibited a stylistically coherent group of images headed by the Crucifixion in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (fig. 3), and including the Yale panel.⁶ In addition to the latter, the same hand was identified by Longhi in the following works: the Crucifixion previously attributed to Vitale in the Acton Collection, Villa la Pietra, Florence; the Virgin and Child formerly in the Kirk Askew collection, now in the Alana Collection, Newark, Delaware; the Flagellation formerly in the Kress collection, now in the Seattle Art Museum (fig. 4); the Descent from the Cross formerly in the Visconti di Modrone collection, Milan, now in a private collection, New York; and a series of quadrilobes with saints, presently divided among the Richard Feigen collection in New York, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, and an unknown collection.⁷ For Longhi, these works were the product of a Bolognese follower of Vitale, strongly influenced by Tuscan Orcagnesque models. Based on the recognition of the same hand in a series of frescoes in the Saint Gregory Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and in the church of San Francesco, Pistoia, Longhi tentatively proposed that the artist be identified with Dalmasio degli Scannabecchi, the only Bolognese painter recorded in Tuscany around the middle of the fourteenth century. Although no signed works by him survive, archival evidence testifies to Dalmasio’s presence in Bologna from 1350 to 1356; in Pistoia in 1359 and 1365; and again in Bologna from 1369 to 1373, the year he composed his will.⁸

While unanimously acknowledging the homogeneity of Longhi’s grouping, later critics have remained divided over the dating of these works and their proposed association with the historical Dalmasio. In the first lengthy examination of the problem, Gian Lorenzo Mellini essentially concurred with Longhi’s assessment and traced the artist’s career from the Pistoia frescoes, securely dated 1343, to the later Santa Maria Novella frescoes, for which he proposed a date between 1353 and 1356, to the series of panel paintings, including the Yale Virgin, which he dated in the 1360s.⁹ Writing around the same time, Charles Seymour, Jr., on the other hand, put the execution of the Yale Virgin at around 1340, arguing that it appeared to be “far more Tuscan in style” than the Bologna Crucifixion and Seattle Flagellation and strongly influenced by Giotto’s models.¹⁰ Anticipating a hypothesis later developed by Michel Laclotte, Seymour cautiously speculated whether the young Dalmasio might in fact have had firsthand contact with Giotto’s workshop, possibly as one of the local assistants involved in the execution of Giotto’s signed polyptych in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna.¹¹

Seymour’s precocious dating of the Yale Virgin, reiterated by all subsequent scholarship, was consistent with the radical revision of Longhi’s chronology that would be undertaken by Luciano Bellosi in two fundamental studies in 1974 and 1977.¹² Casting serious doubts on the identification with Dalmasio degli Scannabecchi, Bellosi confined the production of the artist—to whom he assigned the label of convenience “Pseudo-Dalmasio”—to the first half of the fourteenth century and viewed him as a precursor rather than a follower of Vitale. If the majority of critics embraced Bellosi’s arguments, some authors continued to leave open the possibility of an attribution to the documented Dalmasio,¹³ but acknowledging the likelihood of an early career in the fourth decade.¹⁴

In the most recent and comprehensive reexamination of the “Dalmasio” question to date, Damien Cerutti focused extensively on the importance of the Yale panel in the debate, while presenting new evidence about its original provenance and structure.¹⁵ Following upon the intuition of previous scholars,¹⁶ Cerutti convincingly demonstrated that the Yale Virgin was originally included in the same complex as the Bologna Crucifixion (see fig. 3) and the Seattle Flagellation (see fig. 4), two paintings that Longhi had already considered part of a single altarpiece.¹⁷ As Cerutti noted, an examination of the carpentry of each panel confirms that the Bologna Crucifixion was the central element of a pentaptych, with the Yale Virgin on its outer left, followed by the Seattle Flagellation. To the right of the Crucifixion would have been two other scenes, possibly showing other events from Christ’s Passion, such as the Descent from the Cross and Entombment.¹⁸ The placement of the image of the Virgin and Child on one end rather than in the center of the altarpiece would have been unthinkable in a Tuscan context but was perhaps less so in Bologna, under the influence of Venetian and Riminese models. In this instance, as noted by Cerutti, the Virgin’s position would be consonant with the narrative thrust of the altarpiece and its Eucharistic content, highlighting her role in offering up her Son for sacrifice—a notion perhaps alluded to by the no-longer-legible text in her book. Based on the early provenance of the Crucifixion from the Carmelite church of San Martino Maggiore in Bologna, which also contains a fresco attributed to the artist, Cerutti reasonably concluded that the complex was most likely commissioned for that institution.

Cerutti, who preferred the label “Pseudo-Dalmasio,” dated the artist’s activity between around 1330 and the end of the 1340s. His study traced the gradual evolution of the artist’s approach from an initial adherence to Bolognese formulas, reflected in the ex-Askew Virgin and Child, considered his earliest work, toward an increasing “Tuscanization,” influenced by direct contact with Giotto, that reaches its fullest expression in the Yale Virgin. Cerutti placed the execution of the San Martino Maggiore altarpiece between 1338 and 1342, immediately after the Santa Maria Novella frescoes, which he dated around 1336–37, and just before the 1343 Pistoia cycle. His reconstruction and dating of the complex rightfully acknowledged the stylistic continuity between these panels and both Tuscan fresco cycles, often placed at opposite ends of the artist’s activity.

Crucial to the debate over the painter’s identity until now has been the interpretation of a 1336 document recording the transfer of patronage of the Saint Gregory Chapel in Santa Maria Novella to the heirs of Riccardo di Ricco de’ Bardi. While Bellosi considered this date a terminus ante quem for the decoration of the chapel, others, like Mellini and Miklós Boskovits, viewed it as a terminus post quem in favor of a much later chronology, after the Pistoia cycle.¹⁹ As demonstrated by Irene Hueck, who pointed out that the dedication of the chapel to Saint Gregory predates 1316 at the latest and is unrelated to the Bardi patronage, the conclusions that can be drawn from Riccardo’s will are, in fact, very fluid.²⁰ What may be inferred from other records is that the new decoration, replacing an earlier cycle (surviving fragments of which are now attributed to Duccio), was most likely undertaken sometime between 1336 and 1346.²¹ Stylistic considerations, moreover, suggest that the involvement of the Pseudo-Dalmasio in the execution of the predella of Giotto’s altarpiece in Bologna, painted around 1333, is not as self-evident as is sometimes maintained in current scholarship. Since the attribution to the artist of the dated 1333 triptych in the Musée du Louvre, Paris,²² has been questioned by most recent authors, including Cerutti,²³ it is perhaps worth reconsidering the presumed fixed points for the artist’s activity, aside from the 1343 Pistoia frescoes. —PP

1. Longhi 1950, reprinted in Longhi 1973, 160. ↩︎

2. Maitland Griggs, 1927, recorded in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. ↩︎

3. Richard Offner, verbal communication, recorded in the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. ↩︎

4. Exhibition of Italian Primitive Paintings 1930, no. 28. ↩︎

5. Suida 1950, 52. ↩︎

6. Longhi 1950, reprinted in Longhi 1973, 160. ↩︎

7. Detroit Institute of Arts, inv. no. 37.189.2; and National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, inv. no. NGI.1113. For discussions of these works, see, most recently, Cerutti 2019. ↩︎

8. Cova 2018 (with previous bibliography). For a review of the earliest Bolognese documents, see Cerutti 2019, 18–20. The present author is extremely grateful to Damien Cerutti for sharing several chapters of his thesis. ↩︎

9. Mellini 1970, 49. ↩︎

10. Seymour 1970, 104–5, no. 72. ↩︎

11. Inv. no. 284, https://www.pinacotecabologna.beniculturali.it/it/content_page/item/186-polittico-186. Michel Laclotte went on to suggest that the hand of Dalmasio might be identified in the predella of Giotto’s altarpiece; see Michel Laclotte, in Ressort 1978, 62n7. ↩︎

12. Bellosi 1974, 84; and Bellosi 1977, 24. ↩︎

13. See Benati 1986, 1:220, 2:567; Benati 1994; Volpe 2004, 9; and Strehlke 2004, 108. ↩︎

14. Highlighting the uncertainties that characterize the debate, Daniele Benati (in Benati 2005) and Carl Brandon Strehlke (in Strehlke 2005, 174–75) later revised their initial opinions in favor of Bellosi’s proposal. The attribution to “Dalmasio” was reiterated, however, by Flavio Boggi and Robert Gibbs, as well as by Damien Cerutti; see Boggi and Gibbs 2010, 15–19; and Cerutti 2012, 55. Cerutti modified his opinion in Cerutti 2019. ↩︎

15. Cerutti 2019, 1:36–38, 282–84, 286–89, 295–97; 2: fig. II.2. ↩︎

16. Castagnoli 1978, 98; and De Marchi 2009, 74. ↩︎

17. The idea that the Bologna and Seattle panels must originally have formed part of the same structure, based on stylistic and technical evidence, was put forth by Roberto Longhi as far back as 1937, in an expertise written for Samuel H. Kress, who acquired the panel in 1939 from Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence. See “Dalmasio Scannabeechi, The Flagellation (K1206),” in Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2721; and Shapley 1966, 71–72. ↩︎

18. For a reconstruction, see Cerutti 2019, 2: fig. VII.1. ↩︎

19. Boskovits 1975b, 205n131. Boskovits, who dated the frescoes on a stylistic basis alone between 1350 and 1355, speculated that the commission might have been related to a testamentary bequest of Andrea de’ Bardi (1285–1349), brother of Riccardo and a monk in Santa Maria Novella. In addition to Andrea, two other members from a different branch of the Bardi family were also living within the convent walls at the time of Riccardo’s will: Ranuccio di Bartolo Bardi and his brother Ugo. The latter held the important positions of subprior and convent bursar for long periods between 1333 and 1365; see Ravalli 2015, 199, 244nn96–97. ↩︎

20. Hueck 1976, 264. The mistaken notion that the chapel was dedicated to Saint Gregory on the occasion of the transfer of patronage to the Bardi is, surprisingly, still frequently repeated in the literature. ↩︎

21. See Panella O.P., “Cappella Bardi, o di San Gregorio, o del Rosario, ” January 2007, http://archivio.smn.it/arte/ch11.htm . Panella proposes to identify a now lost “libro di ricordanze” compiled by Fra Giovanni degli Infangati around 1342–46 as the source for the sixteenth-century Dominican chronicler Modesto Biliotti, who alluded to an “old volume” in which it was stated that the frescoes had been commissioned by Riccardo’s sons. Based on Biliotti’s information, Irene Hueck concluded that the frescoes must have been commissioned sometime during the lifetime of Riccardo’s sons, who are named in the will as Piero, Alessandro, and Tommaso; see Hueck 1976, 264n5. ↩︎

22. Inv. no. 20197, https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010065523. ↩︎

23. Cerutti 2019, 1:32–34 (with a review of previous literature). The triptych is currently attributed to an anonymous “Master of 1333.” ↩︎