For more on this painting, see Nardo di Cione, Saint John the Evangelist.
Probably Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence, to 1808; Booth Tarkington (1869–1946), Indianapolis, Indiana, 19071; Silberstein & Co., New York, after 1936 and before 1945; Hannah D. and Louis M. Rabinowitz (1887–1957), Sands Point, Long Island, N.Y., by 1945
The painting was transferred from panel to canvas at an unknown date and subsequently mounted on a modern, soft wood (pine?) support, 1.4 centimeters thick, with a vertical grain. Two horizontal battens are inset in the support on the reverse, possibly to give it an appearance of greater age. The paint surface and gilding have been badly burned by solvents. Total losses of pigment and gesso, exposing the relining canvas, are prominent in the Virgin’s blue draperies, across the Christ Child’s arm and shoulder, to the right of the Virgin’s halo, and along the gilt margin of the panel, especially where it was cut into an arched shape in the upper half of the composition. The flesh tones have been severely abraded. Fragments of the lavender robes and punched haloes of two flying angels are still apparent at the upper right and left, and the black outline of a crown that they place on the Virgin’s head is intact. Horizontal breaks in the gold and paint surface, presumably indicating seams or splits in the original panel support, occur at 22.5 and 38.5 centimeters from the bottom edge of the panel. The painting, already extensively damaged, was harshly cleaned in 1965, revealing the extent of earlier damages and, in some cases, exaggerating them by cutting away the exposed canvas or excavating exposed gesso.
Published References
Berenson, Bernard. Pitture italiane del Rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opera. Trans. Emilio Cecchi. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1936., 143; Venturi, Lionello. The Rabinowitz Collection. New York: Twin Editions, 1945., 5; Offner, Richard, and Klara Steinweg. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Sec. 4, vol. 4, Giovanni del Biondo, pts. 1–2. New York: Locust Valley, 1967., 27n4; Seymour, Charles, Jr. Early Italian Paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1970., 28–29, no. 12; Boskovits, Miklós. Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400. Florence: Edam, 1975., 312; Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century. Sec. 3, vol. 9, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency. Ed. Miklós Boskovits. Florence: Giunti, 1984., 72, 359, 360n1, pl. 185; Offner, Richard. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century. Sec. 3, vol. 3, The Works of Bernardo Daddi. Ed. Miklós Boskovits. Florence: Giunti, 1989., 84; Skaug, Erling S. 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: International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works—Nordic Group, 1994., 1:101, 110; Passeri, Irma. “Un trittico smembrato di Bernardo Daddi.” Kermes: La rivista del restauro 73 (January–March 2009): 5–7., 5–7; Laurence Kanter, in Kanter, Laurence, and John Marciari. Italian Paintings from the Richard L. Feigen Collection. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2010., 10–11, fig. 1; Gordon, Dillian. “The Paintings from the Early to the Late Gothic Period.” In Santa Maria degli Angeli a Firenze: Da monastero camaldolese a Biblioteca Umanistica, ed. Cristina De Benedictis, Carla Milloschi, and Guido Tigler, 188–225. Florence: Nardini, 2022., 190–91, 220n7
Notes
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Venturi, Lionello. The Rabinowitz Collection. New York: Twin Editions, 1945.; see also Woodress, James. Booth Tarkington, Gentleman from Indiana: A Biography. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1954., 138ff. ↩︎