Crucifixion Tempera on Panel Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti Philbrook Art Museum

The cardinal Madonna and Child of this triptych A picture consisting of three parts. The term denotes both the object itself and its compositional course. As an object, the triptych may vary in size and material, but usually consists of a fundamental panel flanked past wings (or shutters), which may be hinged; as a compositional class information technology is a tripartite structure, often with an emphasized central chemical element. Although its imagery was, until the 19th century at least, predominantly religious, the object every bit such was not tied to a specific function. —Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press , which besides includes Saint Mary Magdalene, with an Angel [left panel] and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with an Angel [right console] , proposes a peculiar variant of the so-called Hodegetria type. The Christ kid is supported on his mother's left arm and looks out of the painting directly at the observer, whereas Mary does not point to her son with her right hand, as is usual in like images, but instead offers him cherries. The kid helps himself to the proffered fruit with his left paw, and with his other is about to pop 1 of them into his mouth. [1] [1]
On the iconography of the Virgin of Hodegetria type, see note 1 in the entry on Enthroned Madonna and Child . Cherries, symbols of the Announcement 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. However, cf. some versions of the Madonna and Child painted by painters agile in Pisa, such every bit Francesco Neri da Volterra in his console 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 like console in the church of San Torpè at Pisa: cf. Mariagiulia Burresi, ed.,Pisa east l'expanse pisana, I luoghi della fede (Milan, 2000), 137–138; and Andrea De Marchi, inItalies: Peintures des musées de la région Eye, 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; encounter Enzo Carli,La pittura senese del Trecento (Milan, 1981), 212–214. Dorothy C. Shorr (1954) interpreted the motif as "fruit of Sky"; Dorothy C. Shorr,The Christ Child in Devotional Images in Italia during the Xiv Century (New York, 1954), 112.  Another unusual feature of the painting is the smock worn by the infant Jesus: information technology is embellished with a decorative band around the breast; a long, fluttering, pennant-like sleeve (so-called manicottolo); [2] [2]
In Tuscan panels of the early fourteenth century, the child at times appears naked, at times dressed in a tunic and pallall'antica, or a garment that recalls the shirt or dalmatic used by celebrants on sure liturgical occasions. Sometimes, however, as in theMaestà by Simone Martini (Sienese, active from 1315; died 1344) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, or in theMadonna and Child by Pietro Lorenzetti himself in the pieve of Castiglione d'Orcia, the child wears a wearing apparel that bears no relation to the liturgical conventions of the day, such equally 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 5th decades of the fourteenth century onwards, images representing the kid dressed in smocks with short just very wide sleeves, such as that illustrated in our painting or in some panels pastBernardo 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 style of themanicottolo and its reflections in painting of the early fourteenth century, run into Luciano Bellosi,Buffalmacco e il Trionfo della morte (Turin, 1974), 41–54.  and metallic studs around his shoulders. The group of the Madonna and Kid is flanked past ii female saints. The saint to the left tin be recognized as Saint Mary Magdalene by the cylindrical pyx of ointment in her manus, [3] [3]
Cf. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. one, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 717–720.  while Saint Catherine of Alexandria is identified by her crown and by the wheel of martyrdom she supports with her correct hand, one-half concealing it below her mantle. [4] [four]
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.  Both this saint and the two angels in the gable above Mary's caput comport a palm in their hand. [5] [v]
Apart from the scene of the Proclamation of the Death of Mary, in which Gabriel more often than not hands a palm branch to her, this attribute is alien to the iconography of the angels; cf. "Engel," inLexikon 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, forty), or an important military victory of Simon Maccabeus (ane Mac 13:51), or the entry of Christ into Jerusalem (Mt 21:viii; Jn 12:12).

Though signed and dated by the artist [fig. i] [fig. ane] Sketch of inscription, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Child, with the Approval Christ, probably 1340, tempera on panel transferred to canvas, National Gallery of Fine art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in memory of her married man, Felix M. Warburg. (Joanna Dunn, National Gallery of Fine art, Washington) , [6] [6]
Information technology is not clear when or how the fragment containing the inscription of the lost original frame was removed. Information technology 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 information technology. Its transcription was published for the offset time in the NGA itemize 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 ii, 1946, copies in NGA curatorial files). Parkhurst's reading was published past Fern Rusk Shapley (1979). Run across 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.  the triptych in the National Gallery of Art is rarely cited in the art historical literature. An impressive series of letters from experts whom Felix K. Warburg or Alessandro Contini (later Contini-­Bonacossi) had consulted in 1926 virtually the three panels (and so separately framed) confirmed their fine state, extraordinary historical importance, and attribution to Pietro Lorenzetti. [7] [7]
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 marketplace a piece of 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 virtually important works of the Italian Schoolhouse 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 country of the painting is virtually perfect") and Hammond Smith (oral stance, cited by Contini in a letter to Felix Warburg of January 3, 1927: "he [Smith] considered information technology equally one of the most important works of the 1300 Italian flow in the finest possible state of preservation") were no less fulsome in their praise. Documents in NGA curatorial files.  Nevertheless, the panels were illustrated just cited simply fleetingly in the art historical literature. For case, Ernest De Wald (1929) denied their attribution to Pietro, explaining that "the panels are evidently of Lorenzettian derivation but​ . . . ​the heads are all softer and broader than Pietro'due south style. Much of this [he added] may of course exist due to the clever retouching." [viii] [8]
Ernest T. DeWald, "Pietro Lorenzetti," Art Studies 7 (1929): 162 north. one.  For his part, Emilio Cecchi (1930) included the three panels in his catalog of Pietro's work and defended a cursory annotate to them, emphasizing that their "solemn plasticity" is typical of the painter's last creative phase. [nine] [nine]
Emilio Cecchi, Pietro Lorenzetti (Milan, 1930), 37. Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) Art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United states of america with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin Schoolhouse, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful awarding for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, 'Art prevails in this programme because information technology is there that I feel myself weakest. One tin study literature here . . . just art non at all.' On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed past friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the conclusion to settle in Italian republic and to devote his life to the study of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press (1932, 1936, 1968) concurred with the attribution but cited the panels as dated 1321. [10] [10]
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A Listing of the Main 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 Northward Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 2:221.  Raimond van Marle (1934) besides accepted the attribution and Berenson's reading of the fragmentary date. [11] [11]
Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. two, La scuola senese del XIV secolo (The Hague, 1934), 361.  In the previous yr, Giulia Sinibaldi (1933) had limited herself to citing the paintings among those ascribed to Pietro, but she took no position on the question. [12] [12]
Giulia Sinibaldi, I Lorenzetti (Siena, 1933), 175.  The triptych was ignored by most of the specialized literature in the following decades, with the exception of the successive catalogs of the Gallery itself (1942, 1965, 1968), though curiously they failed to point out the creative person's signature. [thirteen] [thirteen]
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.  Only in the catalog of 1965 was this mentioned: "a worn inscription on bottom of erstwhile part of frame of middle panel," and the date tentatively interpreted equally 1321. [fourteen] [14]
"Reading of the appointment 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.  It was not until the 1970s that the triptych began to exist regularly cited as the work of Pietro Lorenzetti (Fredericksen and Zeri 1972; Laclotte 1976) or, every bit in the case of Mojmir Due south. Frinta (1976), as the work of one of his administration, on the ground of the punch marks that besides appear in paintings by Jacopo di Mino del Pellicciaio. [15] [xv]
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri,Census of Pre-­Nineteenth-­Century Italian Paintings in Northward American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 109, 312, 429, 646; Michel Laclotte, "Un 'Saint Evêque' de Pietro Lorenzetti,"Paragone 27 (1976): 18 northward. seven; 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 twenty (1976): 290.  Frinta conjectured that the triptych could be owing to Mino Parcis, a minor master who was apparently documented in Pietro's store in 1321 and was perhaps the father of Jacopo di Mino. [16] [16]
There is no historical show of this painter other than the fact that he is mentioned in a document drawn upwards at Arezzo on September 21, 1321, in the office 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, equally far every bit 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.  The same scholar reassigned to Mino some works hitherto attributed to Pietro himself in his concluding phase and given by others to an anonymous artist called the "Dijon Master." Fern Rusk Shapley (1979) entertained like doubts: "Whether the attribution to Pietro Lorenzetti can be fully accepted remains somewhat uncertain." [17] [17]
Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, ii vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:269–270.  She wondered whether the Gallery triptych might not have been a work past the same banana of Pietro who had painted a Madonna now in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (donation by Charles Loeser) and some other stylistically akin panels. However, Shapley cited a letter written past De Wald to Charles Parkhurst at the Gallery in 1942, reporting that he had examined the infrared photographs fabricated during restoration at the Gallery and, on that basis, could now confirm Pietro's hand. [18] [18]
Ernest De Wald to Charles Parkhurst, Baronial 25, 1942, alphabetic character in NGA curatorial files.

Afterwards the catalog entry written by Shapley (1979), with the exception of Frinta'southward volume (1998), in which the triptych continued to exist classified as a product of Lorenzetti's shop, fine art historians seem to have agreed that the Washington paintings should be recognized as an autograph work by Pietro himself. [xix] [xix]
Cf. Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Ornamentation on Tardily Medieval Console and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 61, 97, 336, 483.  Those accepting this position include not merely the catalog of the Gallery (NGA 1985) just also Carlo Volpe (1989), Erling Southward. Skaug (1994), Cristina De Benedictis (1996), Alessio Monciatti (2002), Keith Christiansen (2003), Rudolf Hiller von Gaertringen (2004), Michela Becchis (2005), Ada Labriola (2008), and Laurence B. Kanter (2010). [xx] [20]
National Gallery of Fine 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," inEnciclopedia dell'arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:884, 892; Alessio Monciatti, "Pietro Lorenzetti," inPietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ed. Chiara Frugoni (Florence, 2002), 80, 82; Keith Christiansen, "Paul Delaroche'due south Crucifixion past Pietro Lorenzetti,"Apollo 157 (2003): 14 nn. 17, xix; 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," inDizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2005), 65:809; Ada Labriola, inMaestri 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 50. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 20.

Bearing in mind the triptych's state of preservation, fabricated almost unrecognizable by inpainting Application of restoration paint to areas of lost original paint to visually integrate an area of loss with the color and blueprint of the original, without covering whatsoever original paint. aimed at concealing the damage suffered by the painted surface, information technology is difficult to limited a balanced judgment of its authorship. Even sometime photographs of the panels, fabricated prior to their latest restoration, do not assist much in that regard [fig. ii] [fig. two] Archival photograph of Saint Mary Magdalene, c. 1920–1930, left panel, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Kid with the Approving Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, probably 1340, tempera on panel transferred to sheet, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in memory of her husband, Felix G. Warburg. Prototype: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice [fig. 3] [fig. 3] Archival photograph of the Madonna and Child, c. 1928–1930, fundamental console, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, probably 1340, tempera on console transferred to canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in retentivity of her husband, Felix M. Warburg. Image: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice [fig. 4] [fig. 4] Archival photograph of Saint Catherine, c. 1928–1930, right panel, Pietro Lorenzetti, Madonna and Child with the Blessing Christ, and Saints Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, probably 1340, tempera on panel transferred to canvass, National Gallery of Fine art, Washington, Gift of Frieda Schiff Warburg in memory of her married man, Felix M. Warburg. Paradigm: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice . Some of its general features—the extreme sobriety of the composition, dominated by massive figures presented in virtually frontal pose and filling almost entirely the space at their disposal, and the form of the panels themselves, terminating above in a simple pointed arch—surely are those ane would expect to find in the paintings past Pietro Lorenzetti in the period around 1340, when the artist was manifestly fascinated by the sober grandeur of Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) in his last phase. Undoubtedly "Lorenzettian" is the figures' clothing, made of heavy stuff and with draperies falling perpendicularly in a few simplified or pointed folds, which barely discloses or suggests the class of the underlying trunk. Similar forms and compositional devices tin can be plant in the Birth of the Virgin in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena, dated 1342 merely deputed and planned in 1335; [21] [21]
For the certificate of the commission, run into Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell'arte senese, 3 vols. (Siena, 1854–1856), 1:194.  the Madonna now in the Uffizi, Florence, with a provenance from Pistoia, whose fragmentary appointment [22] [22]
The date tin can now be read as M.CCC.10, simply the nineteenth-century restoration integrated the inscription, with the outcome that various readings of it take been proposed (1315, 1316, 1340, 1341). In 1799, however, when the painting entered the Uffizi, Florence, the engagement 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 accept been painted around 1340 or shortly later.  has been variously read; and the polyptych Type of object with several panels, usually an altarpiece, although information technology may also fulfil other functions. The polyptych ordinarily consists of a primal panel with an fifty-fifty number of side-panels, which are sometimes hinged to fold. Although in principle every object with 2 panels or more may be called a polyptych, the discussion is normally used as a full general term for anything larger than a triptych. Equally with diptychs and triptychs, the size and cloth can vary. —Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press no. fifty in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, recognized by some (if not all) art historians equally executed by Pietro with studio help and dating to the tardily years of the fourth decade. [23] [23]
Often ascribed to thebottega or school of Pietro Lorenzetti, the piece of work was claimed as an autograph of Pietro himself past Carlo Volpe (1951). In his monograph (1989), Volpe dated the painting to the years 1340–1345, only the close kinship in style with Ambrogio would, in my view, make a dating in the belatedly 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.  Unfortunately, perhaps also because of the Washington triptych's compromised state, the analysis of the punched ornament provides no useful indications to confirm or deny the conclusions reached by an interpretation of the stylistic information, merely information technology should be observed that the decorative motifs of the dress of Saint Catherine are very similar to those of the fabric of honour of the Madonna in the Uffizi and seem to confirm that the 2 works belong to the same period.

A detail that has hitherto escaped attention could offer a clue every bit to the triptych's original destination: information technology was perhaps commissioned for a church non in Siena merely in Pisa, where patently the motif of the Christ child eating cherries was popular in the fourteenth century. Giorgio Vasari (Florentine, 1511 - 1574), who erroneously attributed the fresco of the Lives of the Anchorites in the Camposanto to the painter he chosen "Pietro Laurati" (that is, Pietro Lorenzetti), reported that the creative person spent a period in Pisa, and and then the unusual iconography of the central console of the triptych might accept been adopted in deference to the wishes of a patron in that city. [24] [24]
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. annotation 1 above. Recently, Laurence Kanter noted that five of the six punches used in the Washington painting "exercise not recur in whatever other painting by Lorenzetti, nor in any other Sienese painting," and he wondered if information technology could have been painted in Florence, based on the fact that at least i of the punches is found in that location as early on every bit 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 50. Feigen Collection (New Haven, 2010), 20.  In whatever example, the stylistic grapheme seems to coincide with the show of the signature and the appointment preserved on the fragment of the original frame that has come up downwards to us. As for the possible intervention of studio assistants, the state of preservation of the painting today prevents, in my view, speculations of this kind. Doubts perhaps can exist raised nearly the inscription itself, because we do non know how it was recovered and inserted into the existing frame. But it is hardly probable that the signature of the artist and the engagement 1340 (or 1341 or 1342) would have been added to the painting by some other hand, concordant with the features of this particular phase in Pietro'south career.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016

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Source: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.892.html

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