Hans Memling
NG 747 
Saints John the Baptist and Lawrence

Lorne Campbell, 1998

Extracted from:
Lorne Campbell, The Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Schools (London: National Gallery Publications and Yale University Press, 1998).

(wings of a triptych)

Oil on oak panels, 59.2 × 19.2 cm and 59.2 × 19 cm, painted surfaces 57.5 × 17.3 cm and 57.5 × 17.1 cm; reverses 57.4 × 17.2 cm and 57.7 × 17.2 cm

On the reverses, a coat of arms and nine cranes.

Provenance

The two panels were purchased in 1865 from Emmanuel Sano (1823–78), a Belgian settled in Paris who was a painter and collector¹ as well as a dealer, ‘intimement lié avec M. Otto Mündler’. Sano had been in Florence in 1864² but told Eastlake that the pictures came from Spain.³

Exhibition

(Saint John the Baptist only), ‘The Artist’s Eye: R.B. Kitaj’, NG 1980 (12).

Copies

1

The landscapes behind the Baptist and Saint Lawrence are copied in the background of a tondo of the Madonna adoring the Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist attributed to Biagio di Antonio (in 1988 in the possession of the dealer Bruno Scardeoni, Lugano; fig. 6).⁴

2

The landscape behind Saint Lawrence is copied in the background on the left of the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, thought to be an early work by Fra Bartolomeo, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 7).⁵

Technical Notes

In 1865 Eastlake recorded that ‘Both pictures are, dirt excepted, in an almost perfect state’. Some ‘partial splits’ were repaired by Morrill and the paintings were cleaned by Rafaelle Pinti.⁶ The paintings were again cleaned in 1956. There is an old vertical split, now mended, in each of the two panels and there are small losses along both splits. Otherwise the obverses are well preserved, though the face of Saint Lawrence seems rather worn and the red lake of his dalmatic appears to have faded so that the pattern of the textile may be less visible than it originally was.

The panels, which are single boards of oak, vertical in grain, measure 59.2 × 19.2 cm and 59.2 × 19.0 cm and are about 7 mm and 8 mm thick. The unpainted edges survive on all four sides of the fronts and backs. There are chalk grounds. In reflectograms of the Baptist panel (fig. 4), underdrawing is visible in the figure, the lamb and the landscape. Though much of it seems to be in a dry material, there may be some brush drawing, to correct and reinforce certain lines. In the Saint Lawrence, however, there is very little clear underdrawing in the figure (fig. 8). Lines for the book extend into his right hand, which may have been slightly altered, and other drawn lines, which may be in a dry(?) material, are visible outside the painted contours of his alb where it meets the floor. No drawing of any kind is seen in the reflectograms of the reverses (figs 2, 3) but they are underpainted in dark grey, perhaps because the landscapes are in semi‐darkness, at sunrise or sunset. The grey layer has been applied in sweeping brushstrokes which do not look entirely random but which have nothing to do with what is represented on the painted surface. On the obverses there is a very thin white or light grey priming.

Ultramarine is present, mixed with red lake and white, in the upper layer of the Baptist’s purple mantle; the underlayer here is azurite mixed with red lake and white. In a sample from Saint Lawrence’s dalmatic, there is an opaque underlayer of vermilion and red lake and over it are three layers of red lake. The pattern is painted in the red lake layers, the uppermost of which appears slightly paler in colour and may have faded: that would explain why the pattern is now rather indistinct. In the landscapes, mixed greens and browns have been employed: azurite and lead‐tin yellow on the obverses; but more complex mixtures on the reverses. Azurite, lead‐tin yellow, red lake and white are found in one area; azurite, vermilion, red lake, black and white in another. These dark brown‐greens and browns are not discoloured greens but are deliberately used, presumably to suggest a semi‐nocturnal scene. The medium is linseed oil.

In the Saint John the Baptist, the lamb was at first drawn lower and smaller but the larger painted lamb is also underdrawn. The saint’s ear and right hand were drawn in slightly different positions and there is much hatching in the flesh and in the drapery (fig. 4). The reflectograms also reveal slight changes in the architecture in both panels but these were evidently made at the painting stage. The foliage on the reverses is very much more freely painted than the foliage on the obverses but the cranes, particularly their eyes, are executed with great skill and delicacy.

Description

Saint John the Baptist, wearing a hair shirt and a purple mantle, holds his attribute the lamb. Saint Lawrence, who was a deacon, is accordingly dressed in a dalmatic and an alb; he holds a book and the grill on which he was martyred. In the background are two small figures but there are no indications of their identities and they seem to have no narrative significance. On the reverses of the panels, nine cranes stand in a dark landscape lit by the rising(?) sun. The foremost crane in the left wing holds a polished stone in its upraised foot and is the vigilant crane of legend, which stood guard in this manner. If it fell asleep, it would drop the stone and instantly waken.⁷ The fox on the upper right side of the right wing may represent the dangers from which the sentinel crane is protecting the others. A brown animal in the left wing has been altered by retouching and cannot now be identified. Hanging from a tree directly above the sentinel crane is a shield decorated with the arms of the Florentine family of Pagagnotti and surmounted by a helmet with mantling, torse and crest.

Reconstruction

The panels are the wings of a small triptych. As Rohlmann has demonstrated, the centre panel is the Virgin and Child with Two Angels now in the Uffizi (painted on oak, 57 × 42 cm; fig. 5).⁸ The architectural settings, the step, the patterns of the tiled floors and the landscapes are continuous from the wings to the centre panel. Fleurs‐de‐lis appear not only in the traceries of the arches in the wing panels but also in the decoration of the spandrels in all three panels and on Saint Lawrence’s dalmatic. The open triptych represents the Virgin and Child enthroned on a dais; the two saints stand on the same dais and, though all three panels are framed by arches, the principal figures inhabit the same open edifice (fig. 5). It is not entirely logical in its construction.

The Uffizi Virgin and Child was first recorded in Florence in 1767⁹ but, like the wing panels, it was demonstrably in Florence by the end of the fifteenth century, for the landscape backgrounds were frequently copied by Florentine artists of that time.¹⁰ In one of the copies after the London panels already listed, the Madonna and Child attributed to Fra Bartolomeo (fig. 7), the fields, trees and tower on the left are taken from the Saint Lawrence but the water‐mill on the right comes from the Uffizi Virgin – which provides further confirmation that the London wings and the Uffizi Virgin belong together. The earliest datable copies after the Uffizi Virgin are the wing panels of Saints Benedict and Apollonia and Saints Paul and Frediano by Filippino Lippi (Pasadena, Norton Simon Foundation). They are from an altarpiece commissioned for a church in Lucca in 1482 and finished in 1483, and they include copies of the castle on the left and the water‐mill on the right of the Uffizi Virgin.¹¹ The triptych was therefore in Tuscany by 1482–3 and was probably commissioned by or for a Tuscan. The fleurs‐de‐lis may conceivably allude to the lily of Florence.

The Patron

The coat of arms on the reverse of the left wing, Gules two chevrons argent between three compasses proper, reappears on a Virgin and Child attributed to the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula, now at Cherbourg,¹² and is that of the Pagagnotti of Florence.¹³ They also used the arms Gules two chevrons argent and it has not been established when, why or by whom the compasses were added.¹⁴ The compasses, held in a right hand, recur as the crest of the helm surmounting the shield. A prominent member of the family was Sandro Pagagnotti (1422?–1500), who enjoyed the favour of both [page 367] branches of the Medici dynasty. He had no children but adopted his nephew Paolo Ulivieri, who took the name and apparently also the arms of Pagagnotti. He travelled widely, may well have visited Bruges and probably commissioned the Cherbourg Virgin.¹⁵ Another relation of Sandro Pagagnotti was Benedetto, who used the name Pagagnotti. In 1486 he was described as Sandro’s brother but he was in fact the son of ‘Christophorus de Opera’ and had taken his mother’s name.¹⁶ Benedetto entered the Dominican convent of San Marco in 1460 and became, evidently in 1482, coadjutor to the absentee archbishop of Florence Rinaldo Orsini, who was Lorenzo the Magnificent’s brother‐in‐law and who resided in Rome.¹⁷ In 1485 Benedetto was made Bishop of Vaison but he remained in Florence and in 1486 was given the title of ‘suffragan and lieutenant general of the Archbishop’.¹⁸ A figure of very considerable importance in Florence, he moved in 1486 from San Marco to the less austere Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella, where he occupied the papal apartments and where in 1523 he died and was buried.¹⁹ Like his relative Sandro Pagagnotti, Benedetto was closely associated with the Medici. In 1485, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici referred to him as ‘tale homo quale io amo grandemente per le sue virtu et per essere mia antiqua creatura’;²⁰ and in 1491 he addressed Lorenzo the Magnificent as his ‘benefactor’.²¹ He left San Marco partly because of Savonarola, at whose execution in 1498 he had to officiate.²² Benedetto, who seems to have used the vigilant crane as his emblem, was almost certainly the first owner of the triptych.

According to a manuscript of 1604, Benedetto’s coat of arms showed a crane:²³ the writer seems to have confused his arms with his emblem. According to another seventeenth‐century source, Benedetto was to have had a magnificent tomb, which was never erected.²⁴ Rohlmann, however, has advanced the very plausible argument that part of the abandoned tomb was incorporated into the Minerbetti monument, set up at Santa Maria Novella in 1530. Here compasses are found in association with a ‘vigilant crane’. As the compasses and crane have nothing to do with the Minerbetti family, this part of the Minerbetti monument seems clearly to have been taken from the unfinished tomb that was to have commemorated Benedetto Pagagnotti, the only member of the Pagagnotti family buried at Santa Maria Novella.²⁵ Benedetto Pagagnotti’s emblem was therefore a vigilant crane and the cranes and coat of arms on the reverses of the London panels allow them to be associated with him. The fact that he was a Dominican friar, and not yet a bishop, when the triptych was painted and that the Pagagnotti arms are there surmounted by a helm and crest, may seem a little surprising. The heraldic conventions followed by Florentine friars should be further investigated. It is not entirely clear why Benedetto took the vigilant crane as his emblem. His reputation as an astrologer, vigilant by night, may have influenced his choice;²⁶ later it would have been appropriate to his status as bishop (=episcopus = overseer).²⁷

Benedetto Pagagnotti is not known to have visited the Low Countries. The triptych was presumably commissioned, either on his behalf or as a gift for him, by a well‐informed associate.

Paolo Ulivieri‐Pagagnotti, who probably did visit Bruges, may have been involved; or the Bruges branch of the Medici bank may have intervened. The saints represented in the wings, John the Baptist and Lawrence, had no connection with the Pagagnotti, who appear not to have used the names Giovanni or Lorenzo, but they were the patrons of several members of the Medici family. The inclusion of these two saints may imply that the Medici were in some way involved in the commission: they were, of course, enthusiastic collectors of Netherlandish paintings.

Attribution

There has been general agreement that the wing panels, and indeed the Uffizi Virgin and Child, are by Memling, who has here re‐used many of his workshop patterns. Similar Baptists occur, for example, in the left wing of the Donne Triptych (NG 6275), in the centre panel of the Triptych of the Two Saints John of 1479, in the Vienna triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints, Angels and a Donor and in the Lübeck polyptych of 1491.²⁸ The lamb’s head is so similar to the lamb in the Munich Saint John the Baptist that both may depend on the same drawing.²⁹ The pattern of stars and lozenges on the tiled floor recurs in similar forms in pictures from all stages of Memling’s career³⁰ as well as in paintings from the circle of Rogier van der Weyden.³¹ Fragments from comparable tiled floors are still in existence.³² The Uffizi Virgin, Child and angels reappear in several other pictures by Memling,³³ while the pattern on the cloth of honour is found again in the Virgin and Child with Saint Anthony and a Donor, dated 1472 (Ottawa).³⁴ The Saint Lawrence, however, though it bears a very distant resemblance to a Saint Stephen attributed to Memling (Cincinnati),³⁵ is the one figure for which no prototype may have been available.

There is a dramatic contrast between the infra‐red reflectograms of the Saint Lawrence, which show very few changes, and those of the Baptist, which reveal rather free underdrawing. The surprising contrast may be explained in terms of the circumstances of the commission. Benedetto Pagagnotti’s representative or benefactor, placing the order for the triptych, would have specified that these two saints should be included. Memling could have shown him many Baptists, but not a Saint Lawrence, and would therefore have prepared a preliminary design for the Saint Lawrence to be approved by his client. He would merely have assured him that the Baptist would follow the usual scheme. The underdrawing of the Saint Lawrence would consequently be a rendering of an approved preliminary design, whereas the underdrawing of the Baptist would be a creative variation on a theme already established in patterns and in other paintings.

Date

The panels have been variously dated but, as they were in Tuscany by 1482–3, when Filippino Lippi copied the landscapes in the Uffizi Virgin and Child, they cannot have been painted any later than c. 1480.³⁶

General References

Friedländer , vol. VI, no. 19; Davies, 1954, pp. 166–9; Davies, 1968, p. 124; Rohlmann 1990/4, pp. 67–83; De Vos 1994, pp. 210–11; Rohlmann 1995.

Notes

Thanks are due to Alison Brown, Salvatore I. Camporeale and Rosalia Manno Tolu and particularly to Michael Rohlmann for help in the preparation of this entry.