Masaccio and Masolino
Masaccio  
NG 5962  
Saints Jerome and John the Baptist  
Masolino  
NG 5963  
A Pope (Saint Gregory?) and Saint Matthias

Dillian Gordon, 2003

Extracted from:
Dillian Gordon, The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2003).

NG 5962 and 5963 come from a double‐sided altarpiece painted by Masaccio and Masolino for Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, probably in 1428–9.

Masaccio 
NG 5962 
Saints Jerome and John the Baptist

c. 1428–9

Egg tempera on poplar (identified), 125.0 x 58.9 cm

Saint Jerome is dressed as a cardinal and holds an open inscribed book in one hand and a miniature church in the other; at his feet is his attribute of a lion, raising the paw from which the saint removed a thorn. Saint John the Baptist is slightly behind him, dressed in a pink cloak over a camel skin; with one hand he makes the gesture he typically makes when pointing to Christ, and in the other he holds a scroll and a staff surmounted by a cross. The two figures stand on a sloping terrain (fig. 3), barren except for a number of flowers, which include strawberries (fruit and flower), dandelion, daisy, scilla and violets; the elongated cones on either side of Saint John’s foot could be grape hyacinths, and by his instep is a fern.¹

Saint John’s curling scroll is inscribed EC CE… (AGN)VS D(E)I (‘Behold… the Lamb of God’, John 1:29).

Saint Jerome’s book is marked with various letters, and with the inscription IN PRINCIPIO. C/REAVIT. DEVM / CELVM. ETTERRA’ / TERRA[M]. AVTEM / ERAT INNANIS / ET VACVA. ET / SPIRITVS . DOM/MINI. FEREBA/TVR . SVPER. AQVAS. E[T]CETE/RA, derived from the first two verses of Genesis (‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void;… And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, etc.’).

Technical Notes

Panel construction

Dimensions: height 125 cm; width 58.9 cm; depth, including panel tray, 3.4 cm. The original sight size of the painted surface is 113.3 x 55 cm (as shown here), excluding the painted strip at the base and added top. The rectangular panel has been cut, trimming the internal arch by about 3 cm at the top. In 1950 the poplar panel was planed down. Before this, it was 1.2 cm thick and consisted of two vertical planks of unequal width; it was then thinned to 0.6 cm, and the left (seen from behind) section of the panel was removed and a balsa‐wood backing glued to the back.

A small rectangle cut into the wood, where a mortise to fix the panel to an adjacent one was removed, is visible in the photograph of the back (see fig. 1).

On the back was once the seal of the Farnese Collection and labels from the Fesch sale, 864.1315 and written in the paint N° 759.d.C. and 65 (see Provenance and fig. 1).²

The spandrels have been made up with later gesso. New gold covers the areas where original capitals have been removed.

As in NG 5963 and the related panels in Philadelphia and Naples, horizontal bands of linen were applied to each individual panel before the application of gesso (visible in the X‐radiograph, fig. 2).³

Restoration

Cleaned and restored in 1951.

Condition and technique

The paint surface is in good condition, with minor losses along the back of the neck of Saint Jerome and the tip of his beard, from the pink of the folds of John the Baptist’s drapery, and from below his right wrist. There are some scratches in the chest of the lion and to its right.

The haloes (see details on pp. 228 and 229) have an outer ring of triple dots made by repeating a single punch. Foliate patterns were incised within them, with rather random cross‐hatching. John the Baptist’s halo seems originally to have been cut at the right by the frame, although it is difficult to be certain, since this part has now been restored.

The outlines of the figures were incised. There are no pentimenti or changes of identity of the kind observed in the Philadelphia panels (see below). Investigation by the National Gallery’s Scientific Department has shown that the flesh painting has an underlayer of green earth throughout, similar to that in the Pisa altarpiece (NG 3046; see p. 205). Technical analysis has also shown that the medium differs from that used in NG 5963: the pigments used for Saint John’s flesh and for his red cloak have been bound with egg, with a trace of drying oil possibly added to the cloak (although this may be contamination from a later varnish), while in NG 5963 the flesh painting is done with tempera grassa and in the draperies the pigments were bound mainly with oil.⁴

The vermilion modelling of Saint Jerome’s robe has darkened, particularly in the mid‐tones, creating false shadows, and the green may also have darkened. The red lake of John the Baptist’s robe has probably suffered some fading.

The lion was always allowed for, but was clearly painted after the red robe of Saint Jerome; the flowers are painted over the red of the robe and over the gold background. The sloping landscape is incised and was therefore planned from the start.

It is common for the model church held by Saint Jerome to have rays emanating from its doorway,⁵ but here there is no trace of any such lines. Either they were applied with mordant gilding, which has come off (although it is unusual for mordant [page 225][page 226][page 227][page [228]][page [229]][page 230]gilding to leave no trace), or none may ever have been applied, since mordant gilding is applied only in the final stages; other features of the painting, such as the lack of a clasp on John the Baptist’s robe, also suggest that this panel may be not quite finished.⁶

Relationship to NG 5963

NG 5962 and NG 5963 once formed a single panel painted on both sides. At the time of acquisition, the various knots in the wood visible on the back corresponded precisely⁷ and it is therefore certain that the two pictures were originally painted on a single panel constructed from two vertical planks of wood, subsequently sawn apart.

Iconography

The left‐hand page of Saint Jerome’s book contains illegible letters, presumably intended to represent the opening verses of the Greek or Hebrew version of the Bible, which he has begun to translate into the Latin shown on the curved right‐hand page. Millard Meiss pointed out the grammatical error in writing DEUM in the accusative rather than the nominative case.⁸ Carl Strehlke notes that the iconography of Saint Jerome holding a model church is more common in Venetian painting, but cites a Florentine example in the altarpiece by Mariotto di Nardo for Florence cathedral, dated 1398.⁹

The cross carried by Saint John the Baptist is unusual in that it is supported on a column‐shaped shaft, generally thought to be a reference to the armorial device of the Colonna family (see below).

Attribution

NG 5962 was first attributed to Masaccio by Kenneth Clark.¹⁰ Despite Martin Davies’s reluctance to accept the attribution,¹¹ and Decio Gioseffi’s attribution of part of the painting to the young Domenico Veneziano,¹² it is now generally agreed that this panel is largely by Masaccio.¹³ Meiss saw the intervention of a second painter (possibly not Masolino): he was adamant that parts of NG 5962 were not by Masaccio.¹⁴ Cesare Brandi thought it impossible that the flowers could be by Masaccio,¹⁵ although one might argue that the starkly barren earth, bereft of any grass, and the extraordinarily geometric flowers are exactly what one might expect of Masaccio, particularly in view of the type of plants found in the Crucifixion (Naples, Capodimonte) in the Pisa altarpiece (see fig. 9 on p. 210). Moreover, the setting echoes that found in the thirteenth‐century apse mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, from where the painting comes. The painting is a display of brilliant virtuosity, particularly in the foreshortened hand of Saint Jerome holding a book, the pages of which fall forward, opening up at the corners, with the backward‐curling clasp and his fingertips just catching the light, in the unfurling lettered scroll of the Baptist, and in the monumental yet minuscule sculpture above the doorway of the model church (see fig. 4).

Provenance

Originally from the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. See further under NG 5963 below.

Dillian Gordon, 2003

Masolino
c. 1383– c. 1436

Tommaso di Cristofano Fini da Panicale, known as Masolino, was born in Panicale, near San Giovanni Valdarno. He has been identified as the Maso di Cristofano who, around 1403, was working in the workshop of Ghiberti, which was run by Ghiberti’s stepfather until 1409. Masolino is first certainly documented, as a painter, in 1422, and matriculated with the Arte dei Medici e Speziali in 1423. Attributed to him is the Virgin and Child (Bremen, Kunsthalle), dated 1423, which bears the arms of the Carnesecchi and Boni families. His earliest documented work was for the Holy Cross Chapel for the Compagnia della Croce in Santo Stefano, Empoli, for which he received a payment on 2 November 1424. It is not known when he began his collaboration with Masaccio (see biography, p. 201), with whom he painted the Sant’Anna Metterza (Florence, Uffizi), probably c. 1423–4, and the Brancacci Chapel frescoes in Santa Maria del Carmine, probably c. 1424–5, left unfinished when Masolino went to Hungary to work for Pippo Spano. He had left Florence by 1 September 1425 and returned after July 1427. At an unknown date, probably 1427/8, he went to Rome, where he probably began the double‐sided altarpiece for Santa Maria Maggiore (see NG 5962 and 5963) with Masaccio; he certainly completed it after Masaccio’s death in 1428/9(?). In Rome he painted the frescoes for San Clemente commissioned by Cardinal Branda Castiglione, probably before 1431, and (now lost) frescoes for the Orsini Palace by 1432. In 1432–3 he painted in San Fortunato, Todi, and in 1435 he worked on frescoes in the Baptistery in Castiglione d’Olona, where he died, probably in 1436.¹

Note

Masolino 
NG 5963 
A Pope (Saint Gregory?) and Saint Matthias

c. 1428–9

Tempera grassa and oil on poplar,¹⁶ now transferred to fibreboard, 126.3 x 59.1 cm

The pope, wearing a papal tiara, holds a book in his left hand and blesses with his right. His (now tarnished) silver and fringed cope is lined with green and has golden decorated orphreys. He is probably Saint Gregory the Great. Saint Matthias, wearing a green robe, holds a book and an axe stained with blood. They stand on a green foreground which reads ambiguously as either grass or Antique Serpentine.

Technical Notes

Panel construction

Dimensions: height 126.3; width 59.1 cm; depth, including panel tray, 2.4 cm. Sight size of painted surface (as shown here): 113.4 cm high (excluding gilded top and added strip of approximately 1 cm at bottom), 55 cm wide. The rectangular panel originally had an inscribed pointed arch, which has been cut approximately 3 cm from the top. The spandrels have been regessoed and regilded.

Transferred to fibreboard in 1951. Before the transfer the panel was 1.2 cm thick. The original wood was removed, exposing the back of the canvas, and a new support of fibreboard was applied. A photograph of the back of the panel before treatment is in the National Gallery archives (fig. 6). Davies¹⁷ reports that indentations left by the removal of the mortises which fixed this panel to the central panel are sited 111 cm from the (uncut) lower edge. Measurements for NG 5962 were not taken, but can be seen from the photographs to correspond. On the back were originally the Farnese seal and labels from the Fesch sale with the numbers 865‐1340 and, written in paint, N° 754.d.C. and 64 (see Provenance and fig. 6).

Restoration

Cleaned and restored in 1951.

Condition and technique

The condition is reasonable, but there are widespread small losses. Saint Matthias’s robe has been painted with brown on green, possibly in an attempt to achieve a cangiante effect. The brown robe beneath the green cloak is very damaged.

The pope’s cope is of silver leaf (now tarnished) which has been incised for texture and painted with a red lake glaze;¹⁸ some of the paint has flaked off the silver, especially where the axe handle overlaps it, creating a noticeable lacuna. The red vermilion of the fringe of his cope and his shoes has blackened. There may be a pentimento in the painting of his toe.

The gold of the tiara is water‐gilded. The X‐radiograph (fig. 5) shows that the mordant‐gilded morse was originally smaller and water gilded, and extended with mordant gilding. The gold border of the silver cope was glazed with green and the pope’s rings have been modelled with a brown glaze.

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The punching is somewhat erratic. The left side of the pope’s halo (see detail opposite) is different from the right side and appears to be a clumsy attempt to imitate the composite petalled punch used on that side, which was also used for all of Saint Matthias’s halo in clusters of four. This particular punch is not used elsewhere on the altarpiece and may have been lost.¹⁹

NG 5963 is painted in a different technique from NG 5962, with the result that the flesh tones are ruddier in appearance. A sample of the flesh painting examined in cross‐section showed that it had been done with a solid, very pale underlayer made up mainly of lead white with a trace of red lead, and there is no sign of any green earth underlayer. Furthermore, scientific analysis has shown that for painting the flesh of Saint Matthias tempera grassa (egg tempera admixed with oil) was used, while the pigments for painting the olive‐green robe and the pinkish‐cream robe of Saint Gregory(?) were bound with linseed oil.²⁰ Due to the use of oil, the paint strokes are more blended than in NG 5962. The hands and feet, although damaged, seem to be more crudely painted than the faces, and may perhaps have been painted by an assistant.

The figures stand on a green foreground which reads ambiguously as either Greek porphyry (known in Italy as Antique Serpentine), represented by long jagged strokes of pale green on a dark green matrix, or as grass.

There are no changes to the identity of the saints, of the kind observed in the Philadelphia panels.²¹

Iconography

Saint Matthias holds his attribute of an axe: he was martyred by having his head hacked in half.²² The saint beside him, wearing a papal tiara, has been said to be either Pope Liberius, the founder of Santa Maria Maggiore, or, more probably, Pope Gregory the Great (see below).

[page 238]

Attribution

It is generally agreed that this panel is largely by Masolino,²³ but for a fuller discussion of the attribution of the altarpiece, see below, pp. 243–4.

Provenance

Originally from the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, where seen by Vasari in 1568 (see below). From an unknown date, in the Farnese Collection in Rome, together with NG 5962.²⁴ By 1644 the three pairs of panels of the double‐sided triptych to which NG 5962 and NG 5963 belonged had been sawn into six pictures – Farnese seals were placed on the backs of each at an unknown date.²⁵ They are still recorded in the Farnese Collection in inventories of 1653 and 1697.²⁶ The two central pictures were moved from the Farnese Palace to Naples in 1760, but it is not known what happened to the four other pictures in the eighteenth century: from 1815 at the latest, all four were in the collection of Cardinal Fesch in Rome.²⁷ NG 5962 and NG 5963 were in the Fesch sale, Rome, 1845, lots 864‐1315 and 865‐1340.²⁸ Bought by Baseggio with the two pictures now in Philadelphia (for which see below). They were in the Adair Collection at Flixton Hall, probably acquired c. 1850 by Sir R. Shafto Adair, 1st Bart.²⁹ Purchased, Colnaghi Fund, with a contribution from the NACF , from Major‐General Sir Allan Adair, through Christie, Manson & Woods, 1950.

Other Related Panels and Original Location

NG 5962 and NG 5963 come from an altarpiece in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome. Vasari, who viewed the altarpiece [page 239] in the company of Michelangelo, saw only one side of it, which he described in his Life of Masaccio as follows:³⁰ Fece ancora a tempera molte tavole, che ne’ travagli di Roma si sono tutte o perse o smarrite. Una nella chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore, in una cappelletta vicina alla sagrestia; nella quale sono quattro Santi tanto ben condotti, che paiono di rilievo; e nel mezzo Santa Maria della Neve; ed il ritratto di papa Martino di naturale, il quale con una zappa disegna i fondamenti di quella chiesa; ed appresso a lui è Sigismondo II imperatore…(He also painted several panels in tempera, which in the troubles of Rome have all been lost or displaced. One in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in a little chapel near the sacristy, in which there are four saints so well executed that they seem to be in relief; and in the centre the Miracle of the Snow; and the portrait of Pope Martin as if from life, who is drawing out the foundations of the church; and near him is the Emperor Sigismund II…) The constituent panels of the altarpiece were first reconstructed by Clark in 1951 on the basis of Vasari’s description and their common provenance, dimensions and stylistic congruence.³¹ They all survive in separated pairs, and are identifiable in the Farnese inventories, having been sawn into six pictures by 1644.

In addition to NG 5962 and NG 5963, they are: Saints Paul and Peter (fig. 10) and Saint John the Evangelist(?) and Saint Martin (fig. 11) – both Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection; The Foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore (The Miracle of the Snow;fig. 8) and The Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 9) – both Naples, Capodimonte. Their association has been confirmed by technical evidence.

Other fragments associated with the altarpiece in the past have now been shown, through technical investigations by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro in Florence, not to belong with the altarpiece.³² They are a pinnacle panel showing the Crucifixion (31.5 x 53.1 cm);³³ andapredella panel showing the Burial of the Virgin (19.7 x 48.3 cm), both in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome (inv. nos 260 and 245). Also associated with the latter was a Marriage of the Virgin (48.3 x 19.7 cm) destroyed in the Second World War.³⁴

Reconstruction

Reconstruction of the original juxtaposition of scenes and saints is not possible on the internal evidence of the physical features of the altarpiece. The rectangular hollows left by removal of the mortises, visible in X‐radiographs of the central panels showing the Assumption and the Miracle of the Snow, are almost level on either side and difficult to match with any one individual side panel. The rectangular hollow left by the removal of mortises on the Miracle of the Snow occurs 111 cm from the bottom, as in NG 5963. In the Assumption the marks occur 107 cm from the bottom (but this panel has been cut).³⁵ Reconstruction of the altarpiece has therefore to be hypothesised on the evidence offered by Vasari, the iconography and the patronage.

Vasari can have seen only one side of the altarpiece, since he describes it as having only four saints. From his description it is clear that he saw the scene with the Miracle of the Snow. He may have elided his notes, because he identified the pope drawing the foundations of the church with a hoe as Pope Martin, and he says that the portrait of the pope is ‘di naturale’ (‘as if from life’) – a phrase which seems not to be applicable to the face of the pope in the Miracle of the Snow, whereas the facial features of the Saint Martin in the Philadelphia panel have been said to resemble those of Pope Martin V (fig. 14).³⁶ Furthermore, Vasari describes Martin as having Emperor Sigismund beside him, and in fact the saint beside Martin in the Philadelphia panel resembles the iconography of Sigismund (see below).³⁷ Vasari must therefore almost certainly have seen the Philadelphia panel with Saints Martin and John the Evangelist(?). Since Saints Jerome and John were on the back of Saints Gregory(?) and Matthias, and Saints Martin and John the Evangelist(?) had Saints Paul and Peter on the back, the only remaining pair of saints facing towards the right, to balance Saints Martin and John the Evangelist facing to the left, are Saints Jerome and John the Baptist. If the arrangement of the altarpiece had not been altered by the time Vasari saw it, then one side originally showed Saints Jerome and John the Baptist, the Miracle of the Snow, and Saint John the Evangelist(?) and Saint Martin. On the other side were Saints Paul and Peter, the Assumption, and A Pope (Saint Gregory?) and Saint Matthias (see the reconstruction, fig. 7). Furthermore, it has been proposed that the ground on which stand Saints Peter and Paul and Saints Gregory and Matthias slopes up towards the Assumption (Heaven), while on the other side it slopes down towards the Miracle of the Snow (Earth).³⁸

Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, and the Identity of the Saints

Martin Davies pointed out that the iconography of the altarpiece locates it in Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome: the Miracle of the Snow shows the foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore itself, while the two central scenes of the altarpiece represent two of the three main feasts that were celebrated at the church: the Nativity, the Feast of the Snow (5 August) and the Assumption (15 August).³⁹

The choice in NG 5963 of Saint Matthias – a saint rarely represented – is specifically linked to Santa Maria Maggiore, since his were among the church’s principal relics.⁴⁰

The identity of the papal saint shown with Saint Matthias is uncertain. He was identified as Liberius (elected pope 22 May 352, died 24 September 366) by Clark and by Meiss.⁴¹ However, it has been plausibly suggested that he could represent Pope Gregory the Great (590–604). Lajos Vayer argued that the cult of Liberius, who had been an ineffectual pope, was a weak one, and also that his image in NG 5963 did not resemble his image in the Miracle of the Snow, either in facial features or in the papal tiara and cope, which differ in the two representations. Liberius in the Miracle of the Snow is not shown with a halo, whereas in the full‐length panel the blessing pope clearly has one. Liberius was not a saint. Vayer further argues that Gregory the Great had strong links with Santa Maria [page 241]Maggiore: at the time of the plague in 590, Gregory carried the icon of the Virgin, supposedly painted by Saint Luke, in a procession which terminated in Santa Maria Maggiore, and according to his legend, one Easter, when Gregory was saying Mass, a chorus of angels joined in. Furthermore, his cult was promoted by Martin V, who was pope when the altarpiece was painted, and possibly its patron (although see below). The iconography of the saint blessing and holding a book resembles that recorded in a drawing of the image of Gregory in the Codex Ciacconius (Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana), shown in now destroyed frescoes in the Benedictine monastery of Sant’Andrea in Clivo Scauri, traditionally the home of Pope Gregory.⁴² Lee Roberts⁴³ further added that the iconography of the Assumption follows the traditional Tuscan formula, except for the angels, who are unusual in that they represent the nine hierarchies as ranked by Gregory the Great, who was probably appositely placed beside the Assumption.⁴⁴

Saints Peter and Paul are canonical for a Roman basilica, and are the titular saints of two of the other papal basilicas. Paul balances Matthias, possibly because they shared a similar type of martyrdom – Paul was decapitated with a sword.⁴⁵

The relics of Saint Jerome had been translated to Santa Maria Maggiore by the end of the thirteenth century and an altar there was dedicated to him.⁴⁶ The model of the church held by Saint Jerome may symbolise Santa Maria Maggiore with its campanile and lunette windows, but with the entrance at the wrong end and lacking the thirteenth‐century façade mosaics.⁴⁷ Jerome and the Baptist both appear individually in the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore (see below), John the Baptist in the apse and on the façade, and Jerome at the left of the apse. Allan Braham pointed out that Jerome was baptised by Pope Liberius, the founder of the basilica.⁴⁸ It may also be relevant that Saint Augustine, while meditating on the respective glory of saints, had a vision of Saints Jerome and John the Baptist together.⁴⁹

Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, in the right‐hand panel, whose crozier contains a mitre held by an angel, almost certainly represents Pope Martin V (elected on Saint Martin’s Day, 11 November 1417; d. 1431), whose portrait was said by Vasari to be in the altarpiece; Mario Salmi, and then Meiss,⁵⁰ argued that the full‐length figure of Saint Martin is an authentic portrait of Martin V. A breviary acquired probably in Avignon shows two angels holding a shield to which has been added his device of a crowned column with the papal tiara above (Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana, Vat. lat. 14701; fig. 15).⁵¹

Braham implausibly argued that the figure beside Saint Martin is a portrait of the Emperor Sigismund (perhaps Saint Sigismund),⁵² mentioned by Vasari as having been in the altarpiece.⁵³ However, the figure is more likely to represent Saint John the Evangelist, who commonly balances John the Baptist. Meiss and Perri Lee Roberts⁵⁴ suggested that John the Evangelist could be there for the pope’s brother, Giovanni, with John the Baptist included because the Colonna family chapel was dedicated to him.

The four figures on this side of the altarpiece are linked by their significance for the beginning of Christianity and the Church. Jerome’s text is from the beginning of the Bible and describes the creation of the world. John the Baptist carries the text of his words at the Baptism of Christ, an episode that marked the beginning of Christ’s mission. The saints flank the depiction of the founding of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, symbolically set against the Sabine hills, and Braham pointed out that with Martin V the Great Schism finally ended and the renewal of the Church began.⁵⁵

Which side of the altarpiece faced the front is nowadays impossible to say with certainty. Meiss argued that the Miracle of the Snow faced the front.⁵⁶ A compelling argument in support of this theory is that the Miracle of the Snow is on the front of the marble ciborium commissioned for the high altar by Cardinal d’Estouteville, while the Assumption is on the back.⁵⁷ It would therefore probably follow that the panels with the armorial devices, namely NG 5962 with Saints Jerome and John the Baptist and the panel with Saint John the Evangelist(?) and Saint Martin, were prominent on the front face of the altarpiece,⁵⁸ which seems likely.

High Altar or Canons’ Choir?

The problem of which side of the altarpiece faced the front and which the back is in part linked to the question of whether it was designed as a high altarpiece or for a side chapel.

The Sacristy was in Vasari’s time approximately on the site of the present Cappella Paolina, and Procacci identified the ‘cappelletta’ as one near this and near the apse of the church, described as between columns and situated between the choir and the south aisle.⁵⁹ The ‘cappelletta’ was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and was under the patronage of the Colonna family.⁶⁰

Discussion of the original site of the altarpiece has parallels with the debate over the site of Giotto’s Stefaneschi altarpiece, commissioned in the fourteenth century by Cardinal Jacopo Stefaneschi (d. 1343).⁶¹ The two altarpieces have roughly similar dimensions, and both are triptychs painted on two sides for a papal basilica. Hitherto it has been widely accepted that the Stefaneschi altarpiece was on the high altar of Old St Peter’s, as discussed by Julian Gardner.⁶² Consequently it has been argued by Miklós Boskovits, Fabrizio Mancinelli, Paul Joannides and Lee Roberts⁶³ that the Masolino/Masaccio altarpiece was painted for the high altar, although Martin Davies objected on the grounds of the small size of the triptych.⁶⁴ However, the church of Santa Maria Maggiore had a (probably) unbroken tradition of a ciborium placed on the high altar: a ciborium decorated with silver was first placed there in 793–4, to be replaced in 808–9 by Leo III with another from Old St Peter’s, which was itself replaced in the fifteenth century by the one commissioned by d’Estouteville.⁶⁵ Sible de Blaauw convincingly argues that the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece stood not on the high altar, but in the canons’ choir: he argues that because only the pope could say Mass at the high altar, the canons had their own choir with altar and altarpiece, situated in the south part of the transept, which doubled as the Colonna family chapel dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, and that this explains the Colonna arms, the presence of Saint John the Baptist, and the double‐sided nature of the altarpiece, which would have been [page 242] isolated in the transept (see the plan of Santa Maria Maggiore by Sible de Blaauw, fig. 16).⁶⁶

If the Miracle of the Snow as the ‘public’ aspect of the altarpiece, with the Colonna arms and the foundation of the church itself, faced the nave, the concentric circles framing the Virgin and Christ in the Miracle would have provided a visual link with the high altar in the two circles framing Christ crowning the Virgin and the Agnus Dei in the apse mosaics.⁶⁷ For the canons, the link with the high altar would have been in the subject of the Assumption itself, since the inscription beneath the central apse mosaic of the Coronation of the Virgin refers to the Assumptive Virgin: Maria Virgo Assu[m] [?]ptae ad Etherev[m] [?] Thalamv[m] [?],⁶⁸ while the angels in the Assumption echo those on either side of the mosaic of Christ crowning the Virgin.⁶⁹

The Patron and Circumstances of the Commission

It is not certain who the patron of the altarpiece was. The heraldic references are all to the Colonna family: in NG 5962 John the Baptist’s cross is, unusually, supported by a column; the cope of Saint Martin, embroidered with ‘M’s, is decorated with the Colonna arms on the orphreys, and the saint’s face is said to resemble that of Pope Martin V (see fig. 14), himself a member of the Colonna family and hitherto considered by most scholars to be the patron.⁷⁰ Martin returned to Rome in 1421 and concerned himself with the refurbishment and redecoration of Roman churches (hence the theme of renewal).

The association of the Colonna family with Santa Maria Maggiore dated back to the thirteenth century. Cardinal Jacopo Colonna (d. 1318), cardinal deacon of Santa Maria Maggiore, who with Pope Nicholas IV added the transept, rebuilt the apse, embellished the façade and founded two family chapels in the left transept, is shown kneeling beside the Coronation of the Virgin opposite Pope Nicholas in the apse mosaic of 1295 by Jacopo Torriti. He was buried in Santa Maria Maggiore and bequeathed most of his possessions to the church.⁷¹ Jacopo Colonna is shown also on the mosaics of the façade – which include the Colonna arms and the scene of the Miracle of the Snow⁷² – kneeling opposite his brother, Pietro (d. 1326), who was also buried in Santa Maria Maggiore; according to a seventeenth‐century drawing and a description of 1741, the mosaics also included Saints Jerome and Matthias.⁷³ There was therefore an early and close association of the Colonna family with the scene of the Miracle of the Snow. In the sixteenth century the altarpiece was situated in a Colonna chapel in the church.⁷⁴ Martin V is therefore a possible patron of the altarpiece.

It has also been suggested that it could have been commissioned by Cardinal Rinaldo Brancacci (d. 1427), who was archpriest of the church from 1411.⁷⁵ But if one accepts that the altarpiece was painted after Masolino’s return from Hungary (see below), this patronage is excluded by Brancacci’s death.

Carl Strehlke has put forward the proposal that the altarpiece was commissioned by Cardinal Antonio Casini of Siena, Brancacci’s successor to the post of archpriest in Santa Maria Maggiore. Casini had already commissioned a small painting of the Virgin and Child (Florence, Uffizi) from Masaccio and was close to Martin V; he wanted to be buried in Santa Maria Maggiore, and Strehlke has suggested that his portrait may be found in the cardinal holding the pope’s robes in the Miracle of the Snow. He suggests that the altarpiece was paid for out of 25 florins which Brancacci left for a chalice the church did not need (having already at least ten or twelve) and the bequest of Cardinal Pietro Morosini (d. 1424), who left 100 florins for a silver reliquary to house the relics of Saint Jerome; on 28 May 1428 the canons of the basilica and one of its archpriests, Jean Rochetaillé, successfully appealed to the pope to convert these two bequests for uses other than those intended by the testors.⁷⁶

Altarpiece Design

Equivalents for this type of altarpiece have been cited by Meiss and by Longhi: the former cites Paolo di Giovanni Fei’s triptych showing the Birth of the Virgin in the Siena Pinacoteca⁷⁷ and the latter proposes Vecchietta’s Assumption in Pienza as a derivative.⁷⁸ The most important prototype is undoubtedly Giotto’s Stefaneschi altarpiece. However, the panels of the Masaccio/Masolino altarpiece were probably originally rectangular: the curved shoulders of the panels in Naples may be the result of later cutting. It is therefore legitimate to seek the prototype for the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece in the [page 243]local thirteenth‐century tradition in Rome and Lazio of large triptychs painted on both sides, with a central enthroned Christ (here adapted to fulfil a different narrative need and the particular iconography of Santa Maria Maggiore) and full‐length standing figures in the rectangular side panels. An example is that in Santa Maria Nuova, Viterbo, where the central enthroned Christ is flanked by the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist on one side and a cherub with Saints Paul and Peter on the other.⁷⁹ It is not impossible that the altarpiece by Masaccio and Masolino replaced an earlier altarpiece of this type in Santa Maria Maggiore,⁸⁰ the basic structure being updated with an inscribed pointed arch within the rectangular panels.

Attribution, Division of Labour and Date

The key questions regarding the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece are whether it was painted before or after Masaccio’s Pisa altarpiece of 1426, and whether there was a time lapse between the activity of the two painters or they were collaborating simultaneously, as they seem to have done on the Brancacci Chapel and the Sant’Anna Metterza altarpiece;⁸¹ in other words, did Masaccio begin the commission alone and Masolino complete it after his death, or did the two artists execute it as a joint commission? There is also the related question of whether the altarpiece was painted in Florence or Rome.

Most scholars consider the two faces of the central panels to be by Masolino.⁸² Martin Davies gives a full account of scholarly opinion regarding the date and attribution of the paintings until 1961.⁸³ Kenneth Clark, who attributed NG 5962 and parts of Saint John the Evangelist(?) and Saint Martin and of the Miracle of the Snow to Masaccio, considered that Masaccio received the commission in 1425/6, began the altarpiece and then left it unfinished, and that the commission was completed by Masolino c. 1428.⁸⁴ Longhi, who attributed NG 5962 only to Masaccio, also thought that the commission dated from 1425 and that the altarpiece was completed by Masolino and an assistant in 1428/31.⁸⁵ Salmi considered that the commission post‐dated the Pisa altarpiece and that the painting was begun in 1428 by Masaccio and Masolino together, with only NG 5962 being solely by Masaccio, and Boskovits likewise argued that it was begun by Masaccio alone.⁸⁶ Procacci proposed that the altarpiece was begun by the two painters together in 1428.⁸⁷ Hartt considered it to have been painted c. 1423, and NG 5962 to be by Masaccio.⁸⁸ Significant contributions to advancing the argument have been made since 1964 as the result of technical investigation.

It was pointed out in 1964 by Meiss⁸⁹ that in both Philadelphia panels the saints’ identities were changed in the early stages of execution. By examining incised lines, Meiss showed that Saints Peter and Paul had been reversed by changing their attributes and physiognomies, and from those incised lines which were not taken up in the final painting of Saint John the Evangelist(?) and Saint Martin he deduced that this panel had originally been intended to show Saints Gregory and Matthias. His observations were further developed and refined by Strehlke and Tucker, who, with the benefit of technical analysis, demonstrated that the identities of the saints were simply switched within the Philadelphia panels at an early stage in their execution (figs. 12 and 13).⁹⁰ In accordance with contemporary practice, those areas that were to be gilded or silvered (keys, sword, crozier) were executed before painting began. In X‐radiographs, Paul’s silver‐leaf sword can be detected beneath the present Peter’s robe painted over it; the sword was originally held in the hand which now holds the keys. Similarly, it is possible to detect the shape and incisions of Peter’s gilded keys held in the hand in which Saint Paul now holds his sword.⁹¹ Strehlke and Tucker further showed that Saint Martin’s mitre was painted over a tooled halo, and that in John the Evangelist(?) the halo has been additionally tooled where a gap was left for the mitre; therefore, the figure was once intended to carry a crozier and wear a mitre, indicating that he was originally to be Saint Martin, and the present Saint Martin was originally John the Evangelist. Although they rule out the possibility that John the Evangelist(?) and Martin were originally to have been Gregory and Matthias, as argued by Meiss, they use tracings of the original incised lines to show that the design for Gregory is identical to that for Martin and that therefore the same cartoons were used for both. Similarly, Matthias’s hands are the same as those of Saint Martin, while Saint Gregory is a beardless version of Saint Peter and Matthias is the same as Saint Paul.⁹² Strehlke and Tucker claim that this indicates that the Philadelphia saints were finished before their features were adapted for the London saints – but the reverse is also possible.

Pigment and media analysis carried out by the National Gallery’s Scientific Department and the Philadelphia Conservation Department has revealed differences in technique in the painting of the flesh areas, which can be correlated with the changes in identity, supported by evidence derived from stylistic analysis. Most critics agree that the whole of NG 5962 is attributable on stylistic grounds to Masaccio. As discussed above, the flesh is painted with an underlayer of green earth and the binding medium is principally egg. This classic egg‐tempera technique is used throughout the panel. But in NG 5963 the faces have no green underpaint; instead, they have an underlayer of lead white with a trace of vermilion, and the binding medium is egg and oil (tempera grassa), and oil for the draperies (see Condition and Technique above). These differences in technique imply that a different painter is involved, who, on the basis of stylistic comparisons, is considered to be Masolino.

In the Philadelphia panel showing Saints Paul and Peter, Strehlke and Tucker observed that the X‐ray density of the paint indicated that an egg‐tempera technique had been used only in the hands and feet, not in the faces, and that the hands had been scraped back in part and repainted in order to adapt them to the different attributes when the saints’ identities were switched. The faces had been painted in the same technique used for those of Gregory and Matthias.⁹³ This was subsequently confirmed by examination of cross‐sections of pigment samples and media analysis.⁹⁴

In the Saint John the Evangelist(?) and Saint Martin panel, X‐radiographs indicated that the faces had first been under‐modelled with a white preparatory layer. Strehlke and Tucker [page 244]concluded that green undermodelling was entirely absent; when the identities were switched, these areas were scraped and repainted in the same technique; their hands were not painted in the first stage.⁹⁵ Again this was confirmed by pigment and media analysis.

Strehlke and Tucker concluded that the whole National Gallery panel with Saints Jerome and John the Baptist was painted by Masaccio, as well as part of the Philadelphia panel with Saints Paul and Peter, which was begun by Masaccio and then completed by Masolino. Masolino had already painted at least the faces of John the Evangelist and Martin in the other panel before the identities were changed.⁹⁶ They considered that these changes were probably made after Masaccio’s death in Rome in 1428.

Strehlke has subsequently argued that Masaccio died in 1429, probably shortly before 18 November of that year, when his death was recorded in Florence.⁹⁷

Strehlke and Tucker imply that the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece was painted in Rome, whereas Joannides and Lee Roberts consider it to have been painted in Florence, in 1423–5.⁹⁸ Subsequent to Strehlke and Tucker’s analysis, Joannides argued for a date before the Pisa altarpiece of 1426, namely c. 1423, and made the unconvincing suggestion that the secular figures in the Miracle of the Snow inspired those in Sassetta’s Miracle of the Host (Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum), completed in 1426. He argued that Masaccio was in a subordinate role and did not paint more of the altarpiece because his style was inimical to Masolino.⁹⁹

One of the most useful contributions to the debate has been Ugo Procacci’s setting out in 1953 of the known fixed dates.¹⁰⁰ Masolino’s involvement means that the altarpiece was painted either before he went to Hungary on 1 September 1425, or after his return; in the latter case it would therefore have been at the earliest after August 1427, when he may have been back in Florence, and at the latest after 11 May 1428, by which time he had certainly returned.¹⁰¹ Procacci, who assumed that the altarpiece was contemporary with the frescoes in San Clemente, Rome (which have a terminus ante quem of 1431), maintained that Masolino and Masaccio could not have painted either Roman commission in 1425.

In the previous years, between 1422 and 1424, Masolino and Masaccio were both engaged on commissions in Tuscany. Arguments concerning the period before 1426 become irrelevant if one accepts the date of the documented altarpiece painted by Masaccio for Santa Maria del Carmine, Pisa (NG 3046; see p. 201), as a terminus post quem. The powerful features of Saint Jerome in the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece (see p. 228) may be considered to reflect those of Saint Paul in the Pisan altarpiece (see fig. 10, p. 211).¹⁰² Taken in conjunction with Masolino’s dates, this would mean that the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece was begun after August 1427, possibly after May 1428. The fact that Masolino undertook to paint a fresco cycle in San Clemente around this date (before 1431), and probably a cycle of ‘Uomini famosi’ for Cardinal Giordano Orsini (completed by 1432), indicates that he stayed on in Rome after completion of the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece;¹⁰³ he was in Todi by 1432.¹⁰⁴

The changes in identity of the saints in the altarpiece may perhaps be explained as resulting from the wishes of the patron. Meiss¹⁰⁵ considered that by moving Peter into the place of honour on the right of the Virgin and moving Saint Martin forward, greater prominence was given to the pope and to the Church. Strehlke has observed that in Rome Saint Paul was traditionally shown on the left and Saint Peter on the right.¹⁰⁶ Certainly the armorial devices achieve greater impact in their present position. It is impossible to be certain at what moment after the cessation of Masaccio’s involvement the changes were made.

Exhibited

London 2001, NG , Masaccio: the Pisa Altarpiece (no catalogue).

Select Bibliography

• K. Clark, ‘An early Quattrocento Triptych from Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome’, BM , 93, 1951, pp. 339–47.
• J. Pope‐Hennessy, letter –‘ The Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece’, BM , 94, 1952, pp. 31–2.
• U. Procacci, ‘Sulla cronologia delle opere di Masaccio e di Masolino tra il 1425 e il 1428’, Rivista d’Arte, XXVIII, 1953 (1954), pp. 3–55.
• M. Meiss, ‘The altered Program of the Santa Maria Maggiore Altarpiece’, in Studien zur toskanischen Kunst. Festschrift für Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, Munich 1964, pp. 169–90.
• L. Berti, Masaccio, Milan 1964, pp. 121–7 and 157 (English trans., University Park, PA, and London 1967).
• L. Vayer, ‘Analecta Iconographica Masoliniana’, Acta Historiae Artium, 11, 1965, pp. 217–39 (219–24).
• L. Berti, L’Opera completa di Masaccio (presented by P. Volponi), Milan 1968, pp. 100–1.
• A. Braham, ‘The Emperor Sigismund and the Santa Maria Maggiore altar‐piece’, BM , 122, 1980, pp. 106–12.
• P. Lee Roberts, ‘St Gregory the Great and the Santa Maria Maggiore altarpiece’, BM , 127, 1985, pp. 295–6.
• M. Boskovits, ‘Il percorso di Masolino, precisazioni sulla cronologia e sul catalogo’, Arte Cristiana, 75, no. 718, 1987, pp. 47–66.
• C. Strehlke and M. Tucker, ‘The Santa Maria Maggiore Altarpiece: New Observations’, Arte Cristiana, 75, no. 719, 1987, pp. 105–24.
• P. Joannides, ‘The Colonna Triptych by Masolino and Masaccio: Collaboration and Chronology’, Arte Cristiana, 76, no. 728, 1988, pp. 339–46.
• L. Berti and R. Foggi, Masaccio. Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1989, cat. no. 25, pp. 138–41.
• P. Joannides, Masaccio and Masolino. A Complete Catalogue, London 1993, cat. 23, pp. 414–22.
• P. Lee Roberts, Masolino da Panicale, Oxford 1993, pp. 86–98 and cat. X, pp. 189–92.
• S. de Blaauw, Cultus et Décor. Liturgia e Architettura nella Roma Tardoantica e Medievale, I, Vatican 1994, pp. 335–447, esp. p. 427, n. 50.
• C. Strehlke, ‘The Case for Studying Masolino’s and Masaccio’s Panel Paintings in the Laboratory’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio: The Role of Technique, ed. C. Strehlke with C. Frosinini, Milan 2002, pp. 12–27.
[page 245]
• R. Bellucci and C. Frosinini, ‘Working Together: Technique and Innovation in Masolino’s and Masaccio’s Panel Paintings’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio, op. cit. , Milan 2002, pp. 28–67.
• C. Strehlke and M. Tucker, ‘The Santa Maria Maggiore Altarpiece’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio, op. cit. , Milan 2002, pp. 110–29.
• R. Bellucci, C. Frosinini and M. Parri, ‘Technical Catalogue’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio, op. cit. , Milan 2002, pp. 218–43.
• C. Strehlke, The Italian Paintings of the John G. Johnson Collection and Philadelphia Museum of Art, vol. I (forthcoming).

Notes