Andrea di Bartolo, Virgin and Child with Fourteen Saints; The Annunciation

Carlo Angeli, Lucignano, Val di Chiana, by 1921; Luigi Grassi (died 1937), Florence; from whom purchased by Maitland Fuller Griggs (1872–1943), New York, 1926

The panel, of a vertical wood grain, has been thinned to a depth of 2 centimeters. The reverse was scored with a series of parallel, 5-centimeter-wide channels running the full height of the panel, spaced 7 centimeters apart across the full width of the panel and cut to just over half of the panel’s depth. These were filled with slats of new wood to block the natural warpage of the support, which was then waxed and cradled. The cradle has provoked five prominent vertical splits, the most conspicuous of which run through the Virgin’s left eye and the bridge of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary’s nose. These splits have not resulted in any appreciable loss of gilding or paint, but the larger central split has dislodged a 12-centimeter-long section of molding from the top of the engaged framing arch, now lost. The engaged molding once framing the panel on all four sides was removed at an unknown date, but a prominent barb surrounding most of the paint and gilded surfaces indicates that the composition has not been truncated.

The flesh tones of all the figures have been significantly abraded: in most instances, little more than the terra verde underpaint is still visible. Most of the draperies are much better preserved, with the notable exception of the Virgin’s blue mantle, which has been heavily disfigured by solvent damage. The Baptist’s hair shirt, Saint Francis’s brown habit, and the rose-colored cloths draped over the Christ Child, Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria are more worn than the other colors, having been painted more thinly from the outset. The Annunciation roundels in the spandrels of the frame are less worn than is the rest of the paint surface and retain vestiges of oil glazes, although it has not been determined if these are original or remnants of early restorations. The gold ground is lightly abraded throughout but not marred by any consequential losses.

Considerably larger than any other figure in this painting, the Virgin is seated (though not on any visible throne or stool) in the center of the composition supporting the Christ Child, who stands on her left knee. Fourteen saints are arranged in three rows on either side of the Virgin and Child: in the front row (left to right) are Saint John the Baptist, Saint Mary Magdalen, Saint Paul, an unknown bishop saint (possibly Sabinus),¹ Saint John the Evangelist, and Saint Ambrose; in the second row are Saint James Major, Saint Francis, an Augustinian hermit(?),² and Saint Anthony Abbot; in the back row are Saints Helen, Catherine of Alexandria, Elizabeth of Hungary,³ and Agatha. The foreground is completed by a marbleized dais with a complex, mixtilinear profile to its front edge and riser. In the spandrels outside the wood and pastiglia arch that frames the composition are two roundels containing images of the half-length Annunciatory Angel, holding an olive branch, and the Virgin Annunciate, holding an open book in her left hand and touching her right hand to her breast in a gesture of submission to the will of God.

First brought to the attention of scholars by Giacomo de Nicola in 1921, when he listed it in the Angeli collection “in Florence [sic],”⁴ the present painting has always been known under its correct attribution to Andrea di Bartolo, except for its inexplicable inclusion by Raimond van Marle, in his discussion of the followers of Simone Martini, as a possible work by Giovanni di Nicola da Pisa.⁵ It has otherwise been substantially ignored in the subsequent literature on Sienese late trecento painting in general and on Andrea di Bartolo in particular, notwithstanding its unusually imposing size and its notable quality, still evident despite the harsh and disfiguring cleaning to which it was subjected in 1964.⁶ With the loss of its outermost frame moldings, it is uncertain whether the panel was intended to function as a self-contained devotional image or whether it might have been the center of a folding triptych or of a horizontal retable-style altarpiece. The center panel of a triptych by the Master of Panzano formerly on the art market in London is closely related to the present work in format and design and could indicate a possible reconstruction of its original appearance.⁷ Hinges for such a triptych, however, would have been driven through the outer frame moldings so that evidence of their possible existence has been lost. Also, no smaller narrative panels or standing figures of saints (as in the wings of the Master of Panzano triptych) have come to light that could plausibly be associated on stylistic grounds with the Yale panel. Miklós Boskovits has posited the reconstruction of a well-known series of four narrative panels by Andrea di Bartolo showing scenes from the life of the Virgin⁸ as parts of an altarpiece retable on the model of the San Geminianus altarpiece by Taddeo di Bartolo in the Museo Comunale at San Gimignano or a similar altarpiece by Andrea di Bartolo formerly in the Adolphe Stoclet collection.⁹ The missing central panel of this hypothetical reconstruction could well have been of the same size and shape as the Yale panel, but the vertical wood grain of the Washington panels and the profile of the frame moldings inscribed on their gold grounds imply that these may have had a Venetian rather than Tuscan provenance, whereas the pastiglia moldings on the Yale panel are typical of Tuscan practice, and its first appearance in the possession of the dealer Carlo Angeli suggests that it was made for a patron somewhere in the Sienese territories.

A clue to the identity of that patron may be provided by the identities of the fourteen saints who accompany the Virgin and Child, not all of whom are regularly encountered in standard Sienese iconography. Saint Ambrose, for example, appears prominently in the right foreground of the painting. Ambrose most commonly appears in Tuscan painting in his role as one of the four Fathers of the Church, but the absence here of Saints Jerome and Gregory, and possibly of Saint Augustine, probably indicates that he is included in this instance as an invocation of personal devotion or a name-saint, commemorating a family member named Ambrogio. The presence of Mary Magdalen, in the front row of saints on the left, and the fact that the back row of saints is entirely female may imply that the original patron of the Yale painting—or its recipient as a gift—was a woman, possibly named Maria or Maddalena. The presence of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, in the back row immediately to the right of the Virgin, and of Saint Francis, in the second row at the left, further suggests that she was a lay member of the Third Order of Saint Francis, of which Elizabeth of Hungary and Louis of Toulouse were the patrons. The fact that Louis of Toulouse does not appear among the saints here supports the contention that the original owner of the painting was a woman rather than a man.

A date for the Yale painting is difficult to establish as no scholarly agreement exists over the probable development of Andrea di Bartolo’s style as a painter. Only one securely dated work by him survives: the four laterals from an altarpiece of 1413, now installed at the basilica of the Osservanza in Siena but painted originally for the church of San Petronilla there. Comparison to Andrea’s probable contributions to the altarpieces commissioned from his father, Bartolo di Fredi, in the late 1380s, or to an altarpiece of the Annunciation in Buonconvento putatively dated 1397 in a now-lost inscription, argue that the Yale painting cannot have been a product from this earlier stage of Andrea’s career. Miklós Boskovits proposed a date of ca. 1405–10 for the scenes from the life of the Virgin in Washington, which relate generically in style to the Yale panel.¹⁰ It is probable that these were painted later than that, and if the proposal to recognize them as part of a Venetian commission is correct, they may even have been among Andrea di Bartolo’s last works, painted after 1424. The present author at one time attributed the Washington panels to Andrea di Bartolo’s son, Giorgio di Andrea.¹¹ While the attribution to Giorgio di Andrea cannot be sustained, it arose initially from a recognition of similarities among a small group of works centered around the altarpieces from Tuscania and Sant’Angelo in Vado that are more likely to have been painted after the 1413 Osservanza altarpiece than before it. Equally close to the Yale painting is a panel now in the Salini Collection at the Castello di Gallico, Asciano, representing the Virgin of Humility with music-making angels, clearly made in Venice for a Venetian patron. Gaudenz Freuler has argued with some plausibility that Andrea di Bartolo was most likely to have been in Venice at the very end of his career, between 1424 and 1428.¹² If this is so, a date for the Yale painting shortly before Andrea’s departure from Siena in the early 1420s would seem most persuasive. —LK

1. This figure was identified by Charles Seymour, Jr., as Augustine, but he does not wear an Augustinian habit; see Seymour 1970, 69. Saint Sabinus, one of the four patron saints of Siena, was a bishop, but he is not generally portrayed with any other distinguishing attributes. ↩︎

2. The habit worn by this figure is clearly Augustinian, but it is unclear what his headdress is intended to indicate. The figure was identified by Seymour as Paul the Hermit, but as he holds a book, this seems unlikely; see Seymour 1970, 69. ↩︎

3. This figure was misidentified by Seymour as Catherine of Siena, who had not yet been canonized by the date of this painting; see Seymour 1970, 69. The figure wears a Clarissan habit, not a Dominican one, and holds a bunch of flowers in its folds. She was correctly identified by Carl Brandon Strehlke in his manuscript notes on Italian paintings at Yale as Elizabeth of Hungary. ↩︎

4. de Nicola 1921, fasc. I, p. 14. ↩︎

5. van Marle 1925, 234, fig. 155. ↩︎

6. The painting is reproduced in Seymour 1970, 69, in its precleaning state, which appears in the photograph to have been quite good. ↩︎

7. Gold Backs 1996, 81–84, no. 10. ↩︎

8. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., inv. nos. 1939.1.41–.43, https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.182.html, https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.183.html, and https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.184.html; and Keresztény Múzeum, Esztergom, Hungary, inv. no. 55.148. ↩︎

9. Boskovits 2016, 14–25. ↩︎

10. Boskovits 2016, 18–19. ↩︎

11. Kanter 1986, 21–22, 24, 28. ↩︎

12. Gaudenz Freuler, in Bellosi 2009, 250–55. ↩︎