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The Virgin and Child:
Catalogue entry

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Entry details

Full title
The Virgin and Child
Artist
Masaccio
Inventory number
NG3046
Author
Dillian Gordon and Susanna Avery-Quash

Catalogue entry

, 2003

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

NG 3046: The Virgin and Child (© The National Gallery, London)

Egg tempera (identified)1 on wood, 139.0 x 76.0 cm

The Virgin is seated on a throne of grey stone (pietra serena) ornamented with classical columns with capitals of the Ionic, Corinthian and Composite orders. She is clothed in a voluminous blue cloak, with a transparent veil over her head and hair, and wearing a dress of red glazed over silver. On her knee is the naked Child, sucking his fingers and reaching for the bunch of grapes which his mother holds in her hand. At the base of the throne two seated angels are playing lutes, and at the sides kneel two more angels with their hands joined in prayer. This was the central panel of an altarpiece painted by Masaccio in 1426 for the family chapel of Ser Giuliano degli Scarsi in Santa Maria del Carmine, Pisa.

Technical Notes2

Panel construction

Height, including false strips, 137.5 cm on left edge, 139.2 cm on right edge; width, including false strips, 76.0 cm. Painted surface: height on left edge 134.8 cm, on right edge 136.0 cm; width 73.5 cm. Thickness of panel 3.0/3.5 cm.

The grain of the wood runs vertically. The panel, constructed of three planks, has two vertical joins: the left plank (seen from the back) is 15.1/15.4 cm wide, the centre plank 46.1/46.4 cm, and the right‐hand plank 11.4/11.7 cm. All the butterfly keys are modern and were inserted in 1920 (see conservation dossier). The present frame is modern.3 The panel has been cut on all sides. The tip of the exposed arch left by the removal of the original frame is missing, but the gilded background finishes in a point. The arcs of the pointed arch show that the panel has not been greatly reduced at the sides. On the back, a band 18.5 cm high, situated 14 cm from the top, has been planed level to accommodate a horizontal batten. A second recess 10 cm high runs along the base, which indicates that the panel has lost probably at least about 8 cm of planed area, plus possibly several more centimetres of panel from the bottom. This would allow space to complete the feet of the seated angels. When the bottom edge of the panel was cut off, a great deal of paint was lost. This has been made up with a band of later grey and brown paint.

Four nails fixing the battens along the back were hammered in at regular intervals from the front. The two nail‐heads under the picture area are covered with diamond‐shaped patches, probably parchment4 (visible in the X‐radiograph, fig. 1).

[page 202]
Fig. 1

X‐radiograph of NG 3046 (© The National Gallery, London)

[page 203] [page [204]]

The Virgin and Child (NG 3046), detail (© The National Gallery, London)

[page 205]

A space was left for a capital at each side, as indicated by renewed gold at capital level and the edge of the canvas at the left side (visible in the X‐radiograph), which was not taken up over the frame.

Condition and technique

The history of the panel is complicated, as several campaigns of restoration have evidently been carried out. All the picture sight surfaces of the surviving fragments of the altarpiece, including NG 3046, were at one stage made up into rectangles and this would seem to account for the strip of gilded gesso on the left‐hand side, which runs under a later gilding of the spandrels. This was probably done before 1640, since by then the altarpiece had been dismembered and probably dispersed. Subsequently the pictures were restored to their present shapes. In NG 3046 the border around the spandrels was regilded and toned. The innermost punched part of the gilded spandrels is original: the gold leaf is the same as that of the main panel. The punching in the left and right spandrels has been done with different tools and follows a different approach: the foliage in the right‐hand spandrel has been outlined with a small star punch and the intervening gaps then densely punched, whereas the stippling in the left‐hand spandrel merely fills the gaps. If the two spandrels had been a later restoration, they would probably have been identical.

Numerous incised lines have been drawn for the architecture of the throne. In the throne step, indented dots mark off the spacing between the strigillations; these dots do not appear in the sections to the left and right sides between the angels and the side of the panel, where the strigillations become wider and change direction.

A small amount of underdrawing has been detected with infra‐red reflectography (fig. 2). The Virgin’s right eye was originally drawn lower down, and smaller. The painted surface is much damaged, as is patently visible in the infra‐red photograph and the X‐radiograph (fig. 1).

The Virgin and Child: The flesh in both figures (see detail opposite) is considerably abraded, and the paint is particularly thin at the junction between highlight and mid‐tone, resulting in false highlights of exposed gesso. The green earth shows through more than was originally intended – for example, in the centre of the Virgin’s right cheek. The Virgin’s hair is abraded, especially in the strands superimposed on the robe to the right of her left eye. So, too, is the lead white of her veil. The blue of her cloak is disfigured by discoloured retouchings which seem to have been made with Prussian blue (a pigment introduced in the early eighteenth century). The reconstruction of the missing parts of the Child’s feet and the Virgin’s left hand has darkened.

The mordant gilding around the Virgin’s neckline is well preserved and has retained the red lake glazes indicating shadow at the left (fig. 3). Only small fragments survive of the original line of mordant gilding on the blue cloak over her head; that around her cuffs is completely modern and that of the blue cloak has been reinforced in parts. The gold hem along the bottom is largely original, with small passages of restoration.

Much of her dress, which is of silver leaf glazed with red lake and incised with small vertical strokes, probably intended to suggest a textured fabric,5 has survived, but most of the red of her left sleeve is restored. This sleeve was never covered with silver leaf – perhaps forgotten.

Her halo, which is in good condition, contains lettering in pseudo‐kufic approximating very vaguely to the words AVE GRATIA PLENA. The Child’s halo is also well preserved, with only some losses of the red paint in the lozenges; its front edge is more densely punched in order to create the seeming rim of a disc. The reflection of the Child’s hair in the golden disc is indicated with yellow‐brown paint.

Fig. 2

Infra‐red reflectogram mosaic detail of the Virgin’s face (© The National Gallery, London)

[page 206]
Fig. 3

Detail of the Virgin’s robe from NG 3046 (© The National Gallery, London)

The kneeling angels: The left‐hand angel is in reasonable condition: the face is relatively well preserved, but the hands are damaged. The robe has only a few retouchings, and the mordant gilding around the neck is original. The face of the right‐hand kneeling angel is probably the best preserved part of all the angels, and the hands, mordant gilding and robe are all in good condition except for a damage down the edge of the panel, which has also affected the back of the head.

In both kneeling angels, the wings and haloes are entirely false: they go over new gold and the haloes are punched into new gold.

The seated angels: The seated angel on the left has suffered considerable damage: most of the left side of the face, the whole of the left shoulder and most of the upper arm have been repainted. The halo is regilded. Both hands and the lute are relatively well preserved, particularly the left hand with the outlining of the fingernails, and the plectrum is still visible.

The face of the right‐hand angel (see detail opposite) is fairly well preserved with the exception of the profile, which has been affected by the regilding of the halo, as has the outline of the hair. The right hand is extensively damaged, the left hand better preserved. The robe below the slit has been repainted, falsifying the form of the leg and the fall of the drapery. The neckline has been water‐gilded, painted with ochre and incised freehand. The lute is comparatively well preserved. In both angels the wings retain their original painted feathers, although there are some retouchings.

The throne: The throne is fairly abraded and has suffered large losses. Much of the detail of the architecture has been lost, particularly the bottom right‐hand capital. The base of the throne has suffered few losses but is somewhat rubbed.

Attribution and Identification of the surviving parts of the altarpiece

It is accepted on stylistic grounds that NG 3046 is by Masaccio, and that it formed the centre of an altarpiece seen and described by Vasari in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Pisa, before it was dismembered.

Vasari referred to the altarpiece in general terms in the 1550 edition of the Vite.6 However, the 1568 edition contains a more detailed account, and it is this which provides the basis for identifying the surviving panels and reconstructing the original appearance of the altarpiece:7 Nella chiesa del Carmine di Pisa, in una tavola che è dentro a una cappella del tramezzo, è una Nostra Donna col Figliuolo, ed a’ piedi sono alcuni Angioletti che suonano: uno de’ quali, sonando un liuto, porge con attenzione l’orecchio all’armonia di quel suono. Mettono in mezzo la Nostra Donna, San Pietro, San Giovanni Battista, San Giuliano e San Niccolò; figure tutte molto pronte e vivaci. Sotto, nella predella, sono di figure piccole storie della vita di quei Santi, e nel Mezzo i tre Magi che offeriscono a Cristo; ed in questa parte sono alcuni cavalli ritratti dal vivo tanto belli, che non si può meglio desiderare; e gli uomini della corte di que’ tre re sono vestiti di vari abiti che si usavano in que’tempi. E sopra, per finimento di detta tavola, sono in più quadri molti Santi intorno a un Crucifisso.(In the church of the Carmine in Pisa, in a panel which is in a chapel of the choir screen, is a Virgin and Child, and at her feet are some little angels playing music; one of them, playing a lute, is listening intently to the harmony of the sound. In the centre are the Virgin, Saint Peter, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Julian and Saint Nicholas; the figures are very alert and lively. Below, in the predella, are small figures with stories from the lives of those saints, and in the centre the three Magi making their offerings to Christ; and in this part are some depictions of horses done from life and very beautiful, so that one could not desire better; and the courtiers of the three kings are dressed in the fashions of those times. And above, completing the altarpiece, are many saints in several panels around a Crucifixion.) It is also accepted that the altarpiece is identifiable with that commissioned from ‘Maestro Mazo dipintore di Iohanni da Firenze del popolo di San Michele Bisdomini’ (that is, Masaccio) for the family funerary chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine of the Pisan notary Giuliano di Colino degli Scarsi da San Giusto (1369–1456), who kept detailed records of the payments for the commission.8 No contract survives, but according to Ser Giuliano’s records, Masaccio began the altarpiece on 19 February 1426 and the first payment for it was made on 20 February 1426,9 the final one on 26 December 1427 (1426 modern).10

NG 3046 was first published by Berenson in 190711 as being the centre of the altarpiece seen by Vasari in the Carmine, and this has since been accepted by all scholars, bar two.12 The four full‐length standing saints on either side of the Virgin and Child, identified by Vasari as Peter, John the Baptist, Julian and Nicholas, are all now lost.

[page [207]]

The Virgin and Child (NG 3046), detail (© The National Gallery, London)

[page 208]
Fig. 4

Reconstruction of the predella of Masaccio’s Pisa altarpiece. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders

Fig. 5

X‐radiographs of the predella reconstruction ( © The National Gallery, London Photo: Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin )

Fig. 6

Masaccio, The Adoration of the Magi. Tempera on wood, 22.5 x 61.5 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz ( © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Berlin State Museums, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders Public Domain Mark 1.0 )

The predella has been identified as three panels: the Adoration of the Magi (fig. 6), singled out for admiration by Vasari, and two panels showing paired scenes corresponding, as Vasari said, to the saints in the main tier – The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (fig. 8) and Saint Julian killing his Parents and Saint Nicholas dowering the Three Daughters (fig. 7).13 (All three panels are now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. nos 58A, 58B and 58E.)

Vasari describes the upper tier as the Crucifixion surrounded by several saints: the Crucifixion (fig. 9) is now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (inv. no. 36),14 the extreme foreshortening of the body of Christ confirming that it was an upper tier panel. The structure of the panel is identical to that of NG 3046, in that it consists of three planks of which the width of the central one is identical to the width of the central plank of NG 3046 (46 cm). X‐radiographs confirm that the vertical pattern of the grain of the wood is continuous through both panels and that the Crucifixion and the Virgin and Child were painted on the same planks of wood.15

Although Vasari does not identify the saints surrounding the Crucifixion, it is accepted by most scholars that two saints of similar format to that panel came from the upper tier:16 Saint Paul (fig. 10), Pisa, Museo Nazionale di San Matteo (inv. no. 27)17 and Saint Andrew (fig. 11), Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. no. 79.PB.61).18 None of the other upper tier saints, who probably numbered four, is known to survive. It has been proposed by Christa Gardner von Teuffel that the missing figures could be Saint James, for Giuliano’s wife, Iacopa, and Saint Mark, included for Giuliano’s nephew, who, together with Giuliano, is thought to be one of the two lay figures in the predella (see below).19 Four small panels with Saint Augustine (fig. 15) and Saint Jerome (fig. 12) and two [page 209] unidentified Carmelite saints (figs 13 and 14), now in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (inv. no. 58D), are also thought to have come from the altarpiece, although opinions differ as to their position.20 Missing are probably the other two Doctors of the Church, Saints Gregory and Ambrose.

Fig. 7

Masaccio, Saint Julian killing his Parents and Saint Nicholas dowering the Three Daughters. Tempera on wood, 22.3 x 61.5 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Photo: Berlin State Museums, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders Public Domain Mark 1.0

Fig. 8

Masaccio, The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. Tempera on wood, 22.3 x 62 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Photo: Berlin State Museums, Gemäldegalerie / Jörg P. Anders Public Domain Mark 1.0

The total height of the predella, Virgin and Child and Crucifixion panels combined gives a minimum projected height of about 262.6 cm. The total height of the altar and altarpiece together is given in the documents as 8⅔ braccia, that is, about 506 cm; Gardner von Teuffel estimates the average Tuscan altar as about 120 cm high, plus altar‐step 17 cm. This allows approximately 106 cm for framing elements, and an inscription socle.21 The predella gives a minimum width of 195 cm.22

NG 3627 has also been said to have come from the Pisa altarpiece, although this is unlikely.23

The Original Appearance of the Altarpiece

The exact date when the altarpiece was dismembered is unknown. It must have been after 1568, when Vasari described it in such detail – possibly before 1574, when the church was being remodelled.24 The altarpiece is not mentioned in the description of the Carmine in Pisa by Tronci, c. 1635,25 and the Saint Paul panel, which was itself first documented in the Tronci Collection in 1640, was said to have been previously in another private collection, implying the passage of years since the dismemberment.26

The component panels of the altarpiece are not generally doubted. However, the form the altarpiece took – whether it was a multi‐tiered polyptych of several compartments or an altarpiece with a unified main picture surface – and the related question of how the upper tier was completed have been the subject of debate.27 It is curious that no altarpiece survives, [page 210][page 211] either preceding or subsequent, which appears precisely to correspond with any of the proposals put forward for the original design. Relevant to this issue is whether Masaccio was or was not involved in the design ab initio.

Fig. 9

Masaccio, The Crucifixion. Tempera on wood, 82.5 x 64 cm. Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. © Photo: SCALA, Florence

Fig. 10

Masaccio, Saint Paul. Tempera on wood, 61.5 x 34.3 cm. Pisa, Museo Nazionale di S. Matteo. © Gabinetto Fotografico Soprintendenza per i beni ambientali, architettonici e storici per le provincie di Pisa, Livorno, Lucca e Massa Carrarra Photo: Scala, Florence - courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali e del Turismo

Fig. 11

Masaccio, Saint Andrew. Tempera on wood, 45.09 x 30.8 cm. Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 79.PB.61. © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Most reconstructions of the altarpiece have proposed that it was a polyptych with the main tier divided into three distinct parts.28 For example, Mario Salmi in 1948 and Ugo Procacci in 1951 showed the main tier side saints as paired under a double arch, each pair surmounted by two half‐length saints, including the surviving Saint Paul and Saint Andrew on either side of the Crucifixion, the small‐scale saints in the lateral pilasters, and Scenes from the Lives of Saints Peter and John the Baptist and Scenes from the Lives of Julian and Nicholas on the left and right sides respectively of the Adoration of the Magi (fig. 16).

The arguments for the altarpiece having had a unified pictorial surface were put forward by John Shearman in 1966 (fig. 17).29 He argued that the Virgin and Child panel was originally part of a single unified surface because NG 3046 has been cut on all sides, that the horizontal batten helped to hold firm the full width of the altarpiece, and that the centre was marked off by pendant capitals at the sides. He considered that the unified space and light with cast shadows drew the centre figures and side saints into a form of sacra conversazione, which was later to become common. He showed the throne steps extending across the entire picture surface, and the main tier saints spreading down the steps on different levels. Shearman conceded that reconstruction of the upper tier is ‘wholly mysterious’ and that the ‘upper profile of the whole altar [piece] was substantially gothic in form, with a broken cresting of [page 212] semi‐isolated panels punctuated by finials’.30 Everett Fahy has suggested that a small panel (81 x 43 cm) showing the Virgin and Child with Saints Paul, Nicholas of Bari, Catherine of Alexandria(?), Francis, John the Baptist, and Peter with the Crucifixion above (Athens, Byzantine Museum), attributed to Borghese di Piero, was influenced by Masaccio’s altarpiece, particularly in its design, and that it confirms Shearman’s hypothesis.31

Fig. 12

Masaccio, Saint Jerome. Tempera on wood, 38 x 12.5 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Photo: Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

Fig. 13

Masaccio, A Carmelite Saint. Tempera on wood, 38 x 12.5 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Photo: Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

Fig. 14

Masaccio, A Carmelite Saint. Tempera on wood, 38 x 12.5 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Photo: Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

Figs. 15

Masaccio, Saint Augustine. Tempera on wood, 38 x 12.5 cm. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Gemäldegalerie. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Photo: Jörg P. Anders Photo: Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

However, Gardner von Teuffel argued, against Shearman, that the altarpiece was a traditional multi‐tiered polyptych, while pointing out that one cannot be sure of its original appearance. Her reconstruction represents a refinement of that made by Salmi, based on a detailed analysis of the measurements, examination of the carpentry of the panels, the documents, an analysis of Masaccio’s compositional methods, and placing the altarpiece in the context of contemporary Tuscan altarpiece design. She outlined the various possibilities for a reconstruction of the altarpiece as a unified surface beneath a corbelled arcade, or with saints paired under arcades, or as separate figures in a pentaptych.32 She argued persuasively for the central panel having been separated from the side compartments by some sort of framing elements, noting the self‐enclosed design and the niche‐like effect of the throne (although her argument that the central composition is self‐contained because of the upward‐folding angels’ wings is now negated by the fact that the wings have been found to be false).33 She put forward the possibility of separate figures in a pentaptych, but also wrote that ‘we cannot be sure if the saints were themselves in separate picture fields or divided by consoles’,34 and ‘that discrete vertical members were set over a unified panel after the completion of the painting… cannot be excluded’. She pointed out that the incidence of the incised parallel and diagonal lines of the throne must have occurred beyond the present picture surface, and therefore considered it likely (although not certain) that the throne step appeared completed in the side panels.35 She also noted that ‘it is very rare to find a simple [read ‘single’] half‐length figure in the upper zone surmounting paired full‐length saints in the main register. This convention suggests that there were originally four half‐length figures above four distinctive side divisions in the main storey.’36 Gardner von Teuffel suggested that five upper pinnacle panels complemented the five surviving predella scenes, and were either separate from each other and narrower than the main tier panels below, or of the same width and contiguous.37

[page 213]
Fig. 16

Masaccio’s Pisa altarpiece. Reconstruction by Mario Salmi. © The National Gallery, London

Fig. 17

Masaccio’s Pisa altarpiece. Reconstruction by John Shearman. © Courtesy of John Shearman, Cambridge, MA

[page 214]
Fig. 18

Masaccio’s Pisa altarpiece. Reconstruction by Jill Dunkerton and Dillian Gordon. Drawing by Jim Farrant. © The National Gallery, London

(The outline drawings of the missing saints have been taken from other figures by Masaccio and Masolino and represent their possible locations, not their poses. The simplified mouldings are intended only to indicate the architectural division of the frame, and the termination of the upper part of altarpiece has been left unresolved. The projecting platforms in the side panels have been taken from an altarpiece by Zanobi Machiavelli (NG 586) which may have been influenced by the Pisa altarpiece.)

Fresh examination of the surviving panels has made it possible to suggest that the form of the altarpiece is more likely to have been a triptych and to propose some refinements to the reconstruction (fig. 18).38

The predella

The predella panels were not painted on a single plank of wood, and the wood grain is not continuous. The top frame moulding of the panels was formed of rectangular dentellations, visible in the X‐radiographs.39 X‐radiographs of the panels (fig. 5) reveal where nails originally secured the planks to vertical struts or to one horizontal batten, fixing them within a containing frame. Because it was not painted on a single plank, the predella cannot be reconstructed with absolute certainty. However, the distribution of the nails40 suggests that the panels were positioned as follows: left, Scenes from the Lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas; centre, the Adoration; right, Scenes from the Lives of Saints Peter and John the Baptist[page 215](fig. 4). This sequence places the titular saints of the altar on the Virgin’s proper right.41 Although John the Baptist is usually found on the immediate left or right of the Virgin, three contemporary altarpieces show him positioned at the outside, in all three cases paired on a single panel with another saint, and therefore in a position which has never altered.42 In previous reconstructions the predella has been reconstructed with the Scenes from the Lives of Saints Peter and John the Baptist on the left (the Virgin’s proper right), and the Scenes from the Lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas on the right (the Virgin’s proper left), presumably on the assumption that Vasari was describing the saints in a sequence from left to right. However, placing Saints Julian and Nicholas on the Virgin’s proper right would fit with Vasari’s sequence if he was describing the saints in pairs from the centre outwards to the right, and then from the centre outwards to the left – that is, Saints Peter and John the Baptist (to the right) and Saints Julian and Nicholas (to the left). Vasari names the saints from the centre outwards when describing the Trinity altarpiece by Pesellino (see p. 287, note 94), the altarpiece then in the Certosa which he attributes to Fra Angelico (it is in fact by Starnina), and Fra Angelico’s San Pier Martire altarpiece. All these altarpieces show the saints in positions which cannot have been changed.43

The main tier and the pinnacles

The fact that the panels with the Virgin and Child and the Crucifixion were painted on the same planks, together with the position of the joins of the three planks that make up the central panel, with the widest plank centrally placed, suggests that this was an independent section,44 with columns applied to the surface after final assembly of the altarpiece. The corners of the throne steps and probably the angels’ wings (assuming that they had wings like those of the seated angels) would have encroached into the painted area of the side panels.

The two main tier side panels, each containing two saints, would have been the same width as the centre panel (about 76 cm): this is suggested by the fact that all three predella panels are approximately the same width (about 62 cm).45 The fact that the paired scenes from the lives of each saint are separated only by a thin gold band, rather than by a projecting frame moulding, indicates that the full‐length pair of saints above were not materially separated from each other – Vasari described them as ‘pronte e vivaci’ (‘alert and lively’); see extract above. Moreover, even allowing for the same kind of discrepancy in scale between the side saints and the Virgin as is found in the Cascia di Reggello altarpiece (fig. 19), the saints would have been implausibly thin if they had each had to be squeezed into a panel that was half the width of the central panel, as would be the case if the altarpiece had been divided into a pentaptych.

Doubts have been raised as to whether the Saint Paul and Saint Andrew panels originally belonged with the altarpiece, principally on the basis of the thinness of their planks ( c. 1.8 cm) compared with the 3.0/3.5 cm of the central planks. However, in many other respects they match the other panels of the altarpiece and seem to have been part of it. The Saint Paul and Saint Andrew pinnacle panels both have an off‐centre join. Assuming that the side panels of the main tier below were painted on the same planks as the pinnacles and that above each was a pair of pinnacle saints, the pinnacle with Saint Paul can be placed immediately to the left of the Crucifixion, and that with Saint Andrew to the right. The position of the joins in the planks indicates that the structure of the panels was probably tripartite, with a wide central plank and two narrower lateral planks, similar to the panel with the Virgin and Child and the Crucifixion. This further suggests that the pinnacle saints were contiguous, and this is confirmed by the dimensions of the two surviving pinnacle panels (each c. 35 cm wide), which roughly correspond to half the width of the predella panels (each c. 62 cm wide).

The batten marks on the back of the panel with Saint Paul cannot be matched up with the one on the back of the Crucifixion, which is toward the top.46 Moreover, aligning the three panels showing Saint Paul, Saint Andrew and the Crucifixion, or placing them immediately side by side on the same level, would present a bizarre and incongruous juxtaposition of arches, and Saint Andrew seems to be looking up at the Crucifixion. The panels with the main tier saints were therefore lower than the central panel. It would have been most unusual for the arches of the side panels to be level with that of the central Virgin and Child.

How the altarpiece was terminated at the top seems impossible to resolve. Salmi’s second reconstruction of 1967 showed a fourth tier consisting of five crowning gables,47 also proposed by Gardner von Teuffel. She argued that the measurements given for altar and altarpiece together could accommodate such a tier, and that it is unlikely that the altarpiece would have finished with flat pinnacles, as in Procacci’s reconstruction of 195148 and in Salmi’s first reconstruction.49 Whatever the case, Berti and Foggi’s reconstruction of 1989,50 which shows at the top of the altarpiece the four small‐scale saints (a reconstruction first tentatively suggested by Shearman),51 is probably wrong. These small‐scale saints are more likely to have come from lateral pilasters, as in numerous contemporary Tuscan altarpieces, than to have perched on the very top of the altarpiece. Not only are there no precedents for such an arrangement in Tuscan altarpiece design, but the fact that three of the saints face to the right and only one to the left results in an extremely awkward and unbalanced design.52

The altarpiece was probably a hybrid, halfway between a Gothic polyptych and a Renaissance pala with a unified surface. It was probably constructed in three vertical units and one horizontal unit (the predella panels united in a single frame), easy to transport, and not impossibly painted in Florence and shipped to Pisa along the Arno (although see also below).

The decision about the form of the wooden structure of the altarpiece was probably arrived at by members of the Order, together with the patron, painter and carpenter.53 Indeed, the involvement of the prior, Fra Antonio, is documented twice: the completed altarpiece had to meet with his approval, as did the marble vault.54 The altarpiece was carpentered by a Sienese carpenter resident in Pisa, a certain Maestro Antonio di Biagio da Siena della Cappella di Santa Cristina, at a cost of 18 florins;55 in addition, he made a wooden step (‘predella’) [page 216]for the altar,56 and also the altar frontal and altar cover. A coperchio was to go on the altar together with a painted altar frontal: ‘lo pectorale dell’altare et lo coperchio di sopra al altare, incollati et con spranghe et paracintule et chiavati in sul’altare colli orli da lato infine alle colonne dell taula’ (‘the altar frontal and the cover above, [both] glued and [strengthened] with bars and crossbars and [both] keyed to the altar with the side edges reaching to the columns of the painting’).57 The altar frontal and cover are mentioned in two different places in Ser Giuliano’s records as being made by woodworkers.58 Every time the coperchio is mentioned in the documents, it is in conjunction with the wooden altar frontal that was eventually carpentered by Antonio di Biagio, who made the altarpiece, and painted by Cola d’Antonio: the two items were commissioned together and delivered together, then glued and nailed to the altar, reaching to the side columns.59 The coperchio must therefore have been made of wood.60 Unfortunately, no altarpiece documented as having been carpentered by Antonio di Biagio survives.61 Joannides points out that the payments to the carpenter are not listed in the account books, but only in the subsequent résumé, where Ser Giuliano appears to group items by function rather than chronologically,62 so the fact that the payment to the carpenter for the altarpiece is listed before the payment to Masaccio does not necessarily mean that Masaccio had no hand in the design of the wooden structure. In fact, the hybrid nature of the structure rather suggests that he did.63

Subject and Iconography

The choice of saints in the altarpiece was presumably determined by Ser Giuliano degli Scarsi in collaboration with the prior of the Carmine. Giuliano’s name saint was Julian, and Nicholas was the name saint of both his parents, whose remains were buried in the chapel together with those of his sister Bacciamea, his nephew Marco, his daughter Nanna, and his nieces Teccia and Lucretia. It is worth noting that the scenes chosen from the lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas both involve ‘family’ incidents, connected with parents and with daughters. The altar itself was dedicated to Saints Julian and Nicholas.64 It has been suggested that John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence, was included because Florence at that time controlled Pisa, and that Peter was included as a reference either to Giuliano’s grandfather or to the papacy.65 Eliot Rowlands has suggested that Saint Andrew was chosen for Andreuccia, Giuliano’s sister‐in‐law, and that John the Baptist held a special relevance for the Carmelites.66 It has also been proposed that Giuliano and his nephew Marco, who was also a notary (d. 1421), are the two figures in contemporary dress in the Adoration of the Magi.67 This would have obviated the need to include Giuliano as a miniature and therefore unrealistic donor figure in the main panel, which was still a current device, as can be seen, for example, in an altarpiece of 1426 by Bicci di Lorenzo.68 The small‐scale Carmelite saints thought to be from the pilasters localise the altarpiece within the convent of Santa Maria del Carmine.69

Although Gardner von Teuffel fully explores the significance of the eucharistic symbol of the grapes in the context of the theme of the Virgin as a vine in Carmelite litany,70 she also points out that the same motif is found earlier in the Cascia di Reggello altarpiece of 1422 (fig. 19).71 This has no Carmelite connections, and indeed the several surviving examples of the motif suggest that it evolved independently of a Carmelite context, even if it was chosen in this instance as peculiarly apposite to the Carmelites’ liturgy. The motif of the Child sucking his index finger first occurs in Giotto’s Stefaneschi altarpiece (Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana) and it may have been a Florentine motif adopted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in his altarpiece of the Purification of the Virgin (Florence, Uffizi) painted for Siena Duomo in 1342.72 In the Cascia di Reggello altarpiece it was extended by Masaccio to involve the eating of grapes. A roughly contemporary example of the Child putting his fingers in his mouth while eating grapes occurs in a painting of the Virgin and Child attributed to Arcangelo di Cola da Camerino (Bibbiena, Propositura dei Santi Ippolito e Donato), where the Child is standing on his mother’s lap with one hand in his mouth, the other reaching down for the bunch of grapes she holds in her left hand.73 Maetzke74 has related this to the Cascia di Reggello altarpiece rather than to the Pisa polyptych. It is a difficult painting to place chronologically: Berti assumes that it comes after the Pisa polyptych.75 The motif of the Child with grapes is also found in a painting (private collection) seemingly heavily influenced by the Pisa Virgin and Child. This is sometimes considered to be an early work by Fra Angelico, although not all scholars agree with the attribution;76 in the painting the Child is reaching out for a bunch of grapes held by the Virgin, but leaning back at the same time as if reluctant to take them.

The eucharistic symbolism of the grapes is part of the strong symbolism that runs vertically through the altarpiece, from the Crucifixion with the Tree of Life in the upper tier, through the main tier with the Child eating grapes (symbols of his blood shed on the cross), to the throne step, which alludes to Roman and Early Christian sarcophagi (see below). This sort of symbolism is found also in Masaccio’s fresco of the Trinity in Santa Maria Novella.77

Location, Context and Commission

The altarpiece by Masaccio was part of a comprehensive programme undertaken in the Carmine in Pisa between 1414 (1415 Pisan style) and 1429 by Giuliano degli Scarsi, which involved the construction of a family burial chapel by Pippo di Giovanni di Ghante, an altar with a consecrated stone, a curtain painted by Mariano di Maestro Piero della Valensana, a wooden step, iron torch‐holders painted red with yellow stripes, and seats to the sides and in front of the altar. A wooden cover or coperchio (see above), as well as a wooden altar frontal painted red with a surrounding fringe, containing the half‐length figure of Saint Julian within a quatrefoil, painted by Cola d’Antonio, also decorated the altar.78 Because the Carmine – a single‐aisled, extremely tall church with main chapel and two side chapels at the east end – was remodelled in the late sixteenth century,79 it is impossible to be certain of the exact location and form of Ser Giuliano’s chapel.

[page 217]
Fig. 19

Masaccio, The Virgin and Child with Saints Bartholomew, Blaise, Juvenal and Anthony Abbot, dated 1422. © Photo: SCALA, Florence

Gardner von Teuffel has argued (probably wrongly) that the chapel was one still extant to the right of the choir. She writes that the ‘most probable interpretation of cappella in the Pisan documents would appear to be a marble framework around the wooden altarpiece set within a pre‐existing architectural structure’. The context of the documents she sees as indicating an identification of this architectural setting as the chapel to the right of the main choir acquired by Ser Giuliano after 1414.80 However, it seems more likely that the ‘cappella’ made by Pippo di Giovanni di Ghante was not a marble framework, but a small marble vaulted structure projecting into the nave, placed on the tramezzo (choir screen) next to the choir,81 as argued by Hall on the basis of Vasari’s statement that the altarpiece was in ‘una cappella del tramezzo’.82 According to Giuliano’s account books, the chapel, which was constructed by Pippo at an initial cost of 100 florins, rising to a final 140 florins, was begun on 29 November 1425. The vault was made by the mason Bartholomeo da Montemagno. Pippo di Ghante provided a drawing of the proposed structure, which had been approved by the prior, Fra Antonio.83 The chapel was to be ‘nella nave d’essa chieza dirimpetto al choro, cio[è] colle reni al choro, che duri dalla porta, cio[è] dalla [e]ntrata del coro, insine al muro laterale della chieza di verso mezo dì’ (‘in the nave of this church in front of the choir, that is, with its back to the choir, extending from the door, that is, from the entrance to the choir, up to the side wall of the church on the south side’).84 It consisted of a white marble groin‐vaulted structure resting on two columns and a half‐column above an altar: ‘una volta cio[è] due crociere in su due colonne e mezo di marmo bianche’ (‘a vault, that is to say, two crossings above two columns and a half [column] in white marble’), described elsewhere as ‘una crociera di marmo in colonne di marmo biancho, alta che vi chappia sotto una taula sopra l’altare che è alta la taula coll’altare braccia octo e due terzi, o circa’ (‘a marble vault [supported] on white marble columns, high enough to surmount the altarpiece above the altar, and the altar with the painting are together eight and two thirds braccia [high] or thereabouts’).85 The payments made on 17 March 1427 to Pippo for moving the sepulchral monument to the family chapel also suggest that it was in the nave set against the tramezzo, since the original monument had to be moved from the centre of the church to the side, a little further forward, but still nearby: ‘Lo quale monumento era posto nel mezo proprio d’essa chieza, donde io il feci levare et fare dinanzi al mio altare quine presso, un pocho più da lato et più inanzi a quello’ (‘The which monument was in the exact centre of the church, whence I had it taken up and replaced in front of my altar which is nearby, a little more to the side and a little further forward’).86 Joannides makes the point that the light in the altarpiece, which emphatically comes from the left, would have been inappropriate in a chapel to the right of the choir, but appropriate on a tramezzo lit from the clerestory on the north side of the nave.87

The first payment to Masaccio (10 florins) was made in Pisa in the presence of the prior of the Carmine, with Masaccio himself present, on 20 February 1426,88 and a month later, on 23 March, also in Pisa, he was paid 15 florins. On 24 July 1426 (1427 Pisan style) he received 10 florins; on that occasion he was with Donatello, who was working in Pisa (see below). On 15 October, when he was paid 25 florins, Masaccio promised not to undertake any other work until he had completed the commission, which suggests that he may have [page 218]been engaged on another project; this payment was received by his brother Victorio, called Giovanni (Lo Scheggia),89 and the mason Maestro Leonardo. On 9 November 1426 Masaccio received three lire, which he owed to a tailor. On 18 December 1426 he was present in Pisa when he received a payment of four lire. On 24 December 1426 his garzone, Andrea di Giusto, received the sum of eight lire and five soldi, and on 26 December Masaccio received the final payment of 16 florins and 15 soldi to complete the payment of 80 florins initially agreed. He received this in the Chapter House of the Carmine in Pisa in the presence of the prior, on what one may assume to have been a fairly formal occasion when he agreed to hand over the altarpiece after its approval by the prior.90

Fig. 20

Workshop of Donatello, The Virgin and Child, with Saint Bartholomew, a Crowned Saint and Angels, c. 1426. Polychrome stucco, 42 x 32 cm. London, The Victoria and Albert Museum, 93‐1882. © The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Masaccio and his Workshop

The Pisa altarpiece is the only surviving one by Masaccio, apart from the Cascia di Reggello altarpiece, which he painted without the collaboration of Masolino (see also p. 244): Masolino was in Hungary throughout the duration of the commission, from 1 September 1425 to around the middle of 1427.91

No one has ever questioned that Masaccio himself was responsible for the central panel. The outstanding quality is apparent, notwithstanding its damaged condition, and the central panel alone is revolutionary in many ways. It brings to fruition the nascent qualities of the Cascia altarpiece: the strong unifying directional light flooding from the left, found even in the predella;92 the cast shadows noted by Shearman, which are to be found not only on the throne steps, but also in the glazes over the shadowed part of the mordant‐gilt neckline of the Virgin’s dress and on the back of the throne, and in the reflection of the Christ Child’s hair in his halo; the sense of three‐dimensional space, most obvious in the (unprecedented) elliptical halo of the Child, and the classical architecture of the throne. The quality of painting in the Crucifixion and in the Adoration of the Magi is also particularly high, with dramatic lighting from the left, and again both works are attributable to Masaccio himself. Masaccio must have designed the whole ensemble, but some parts of the side predella panels show a drop in quality of execution. As stated above, the documents reveal that Masaccio’s garzone was Andrea di Giusto da Firenze, who collected a payment ‘per sua commissione’ on 24 December 1426 (1427 Pisan style), that is, when the altarpiece was nearing completion.93 The painting of the Scenes from the Lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas has been attributed to Andrea by Douglas and de Nicola.94 Some of the small‐scale figures in the Scenes from the Lives of Saints Peter and John the Baptist are comparable to those in the predella of an altarpiece attributed to him (Prato, Galleria Communale, inv. no. 8) dated 1435.95 Andrea had been in Bicci di Lorenzo’s shop from 1420 to 1424, together with Masaccio’s brother, Victorio Lo Scheggia, documented there 1420–1, who collected a payment in Pisa in 142696 and may therefore also have been involved in the commission. The pilaster panel with the younger Carmelite saint has been attributed to Filippo Lippi.97

Florence or Pisa?

One of the unknown factors in the commission is whether Masaccio painted the altarpiece in Florence or in Pisa. Sassetta painted his double‐sided altarpiece for San Francesco in Borgo San Sepolcro in Siena (see p. 347), and it is not impossible that Masaccio painted the Pisa altarpiece in Florence. Ser Giuliano’s insistence on 15 October 1426 (1427 Pisan style) that Masaccio undertake no other work until this commission was complete98 might suggest that he was not in Pisa, possibly because he was engaged on the Carmine frescoes.99 The nature of the wooden structure of the altarpiece proposed here would have been easily transportable. However, it seems clear from the documents that all the other wooden furnishings for the chapel were made in Pisa, and the carpenter of the altarpiece was resident there.100 Is it possible that Masaccio rented the shop of the local painter Turino di Vanni in which to paint the altarpiece? The altar frontal and coperchio were originally to be made by the carpenter Bartolomeo Angeli, who had collaborated with Turino di Vanni on an altarpiece in 1403, as mentioned in a document drawn up by Ser Giuliano on 18 June 1429 (1430 Pisan style).101 It may be that Turino, who was aged 77, hired out the use of his shop for all the painted items for Ser Giuliano’s chapel that were to be made by Antonio di Biagio and Bartolomeo Angeli, who seem to have been compagni, and then painted by Cola d’Antonio and Masaccio respectively.

The Influence of Sculpture and Architecture

The profound influence of sculpture on Masaccio has been remarked upon by numerous writers, Beck even suggesting that Masaccio was himself a sculptor in his early years.102 It is evident in NG 3046 that Masaccio had looked at local [page 219]sculpture in Pisa. The pattern of the throne step derives from Roman and Early Christian sarcophagi,103 of which there were numerous examples in the Pisan Camposanto (fig. 21).104 Eve Borsook has pointed out the influence of the local sculptures of Giovanni Pisano, particularly in the figures of the Virgin and Child in both the main panel and the central predella,105 while Joannides shows that some motifs have been taken from the Pisa pulpit of Nicola Pisano.106 Burns also makes the observation that rosettes like those on the throne are to be found in the bronze doors of the Pisa Duomo.107 Boskovits made the point that much of the classicising influence was transmitted through a Tuscan ‘proto Renaissance’, particularly in the sculpture of the Pisani; he makes an apt comparison with a statue of a Virgin and Child enthroned (Detroit, Ford Collection) attributed to the school of Nicola Pisano, and also notes the derivation of the throne from the Santa Cecilia altarpiece in the Uffizi.108 The Corinthian and Ionic columns, and the use of pietra serena for the throne, also reflect the interest in classical architecture of the contemporary architect Brunelleschi.109 Beck takes this further, noting that the classical orders are used in a way corresponding to Brunelleschi’s practice in San Lorenzo and the Ospedale degli Innocenti, and pointing out that, like Donatello, Brunelleschi was present in Pisa in 1426.110 In fact, the throne resembles a building more than a throne.

The Child in NG 3046 is developed from that in the Sant’Anna Metterza altarpiece in the Uffizi,111 which Offner convincingly suggested was modelled on an Etruscan bronze, either the figure in the Museo Gregoriano in the Vatican or one similar to it.112

However, the influence of sculpture is not confined to a superficial adoption of individual motifs. The figures themselves are extraordinarily three‐dimensional. Comparisons with Donatello’s sculpture are significantly close, particularly in the upper tier figures, where Saint Paul has been compared to Donatello’s Jeremiah. Some similarities have been noted with reliefs, one in terracotta, possibly by Donatello himself, and two from his circle in marble and pigmented stucco respectively, showing the Virgin and Child with angels, and with angels and saints (fig. 20).113 Kreytenberg has suggested that, among other things, the predella of Donatello’s Saint George was an influence on the central predella panel.114 Donatello was working in Pisa at the same time as Masaccio,115 preparing the tomb of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancacci for shipment to Naples.116 On 24 July 1426 he was with Masaccio when he collected a payment for the Pisa altarpiece, and on 18 December 1426 he witnessed one of the payments due to Masaccio.117 Berti has suggested that the influence was two‐way and that Donatello was influenced by Masaccio.118 Sir John Pope‐Hennessy suggests that Masaccio’s Pisa Madonna was based on sculpted models made by Donatello and that this explains the payment, which he interpreted as being due to Donatello for his direct involvement.119

The monumentality of the figures and the coherence of the composition in NG 3046 are, however, not merely attributable to the influence of sculpture. They are also the result of Masaccio’s experience as a fresco painter and as Masolino’s collaborator in the probably more or less contemporaneous Brancacci Chapel – painting on a monumental scale with all the discipline of design, lighting and perspective that such a complex scheme entailed.120

Provenance

Santa Maria del Carmine , Pisa, until at least 1568 (when recorded by Vasari; see above). Belonged to Miss E. Woodburn in 1855;121 Samuel Woodburn Sale, 9 June 1860 (lot 21), bought by Clarke;122 stated to have belonged to the Revd F.H. Sutton by 1864;123 in the collection of the Revd A.F. Sutton, Brant Broughton, 1907;124 purchased Temple‐West Fund, from Canon Sutton, with the aid of a contribution from the NACF , 1916.

Exhibited

London 1911, Grafton Gallery (7);125 London 1945/6, NG , Exhibition in Honour of Sir Robert Witt… of the Principal Acquisitions made for the Nation through the National Art‐Collections Fund (28); London 1975, NG , The Rival of Nature – Renaissance Painting in its Context (145); London 1982, NG , Watch this Space – an Exhibition about Perspective in Painting (no catalogue); London 1985, NG , The Artist’s Eye – Francis Bacon ; London 1998, NG , Henry Moore and the National Gallery (no catalogue); London 2001, NG , Masaccio: the Pisa Altarpiece (no catalogue).

Select Bibliography

Notes

2. For a detailed account of the technique, see Dunkerton and Gordon 2002, pp. 88–109. (Back to text.)

3. A frame ordered from the Sienese firm of Giovacchino Corsi, visible in old photographs, was subsequently discarded. See N. Penny, ‘The study and imitation of old pictureframes’, BM , 140, no. 1143, 1998, pp. 375–82 at p. 377. (Back to text.)

4. The X‐radiograph suggests that the neatly cut pieces are parchment rather than tin, the latter a process described by Cennino Cennini in Il Libro dell’Arte. The Craftsman’s Handbook, trans. D.V. Thompson, Jr, New York 1933 (paperback edn), p. 69. (Back to text.)

5. This technique was current in Florentine painting of the 1420s and may have been introduced into Florence by Gentile da Fabriano. See Bellucci and Frosinini 2002, pp. 39–40. (Back to text.)

6. Vasari, Vite , I, 1550, pp. 285–6: ‘in una cappella del tramezzo una tavola con infinito numero di figure piccole e grandi, tanto accomodate e si ben condotte.’ Vasari, Vite, eds Bellosi and Rossi , 1986, pp. 268–9 and n. 8. (Back to text.)

7. Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi , II, 1878, p. 292; Vasari, Vite, eds Bettarini and Barocchi , III, 1971, p. 127. Davies 1961 , p. 350, n. 5, and Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 23, n. 2, point out that between 1558 and 1568 Vasari was himself working in Pisa and would have had greater opportunity to study the altarpiece. Davies ( 1961 , p. 349) further points out that the altarpiece is also mentioned by Borghini (1584, Il riposo di Raffaello Borghini, reprinted 1967, ed. Rosci, p. 314) and Baldinucci (Notizie dei Professori del Disegno, I, 1845, p. 475 – the first edition of this part of Baldinucci’s work was published in 1728) as being in the Carmine, but that they probably based themselves on Vasari. Given the documentation, there can be no doubt that this is the altarpiece from the Carmine. (Back to text.)

8. The documents concerning the commission were published by L.T. Tanfani Centofanti in Donatello in Pisa: Documenti, Pisa 1887, and selectively under the heading for Donatello by the same author in Notizie di artisti tratte da documenti Pisani, Pisa 1897, pp. 176–81. The documents, with some additional ones, were selectively published by Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, appendix, pp. 63ff., and more fully by Beck 1978, pp. 17–24, and appendix, pp. 31–50, docs 1–14. There are a few minor, and mostly insignificant, variations in their transcriptions. A selective transcription of the documents is given in Joannides 1993, pp. 382–3. Two kinds of documents survive: Ser Giuliano’s Possessioni, debitori e creditori e ricordi (1422–54) and Debitori e creditori (1425–33), the first a personal account book, the second a record of daily outgoings and income. Beck (p. 33) comments that the notations to the Libro di possessioni were probably made after the commission had been completed, ‘quite likely in 1433’. This seems plausible in view of the fact that the information is not always complete in the summary – see, for example, the payment recorded for the coperchio (see note 60 below). For biographical information on Giuliano degli Scarsi, see Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, pp. 24–6, and M. Battistoni, Giuliano degli Scarsi. Operaio del Duomo di Pisa (1435–56), Opere della Primaziale Pisana, Quaderno no. 13, Pontedera 1999. (Back to text.)

9. Beck 1978, pp. 17 and 31. Spike (1995, p. 200) and Fremantle (1998, p. 114) are wrong to imply that a contract survives. (Back to text.)

10. On 26 December 1426 (1427 Pisan style) Masaccio was given the final payment on condition that the altarpiece was to be delivered completed according to the satisfaction of the prior of the Carmine (Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 28, and Beck 1978, p. 36, appendix, doc. 2, item 8: ‘riserbandomi ragione contra di lui che la taula mi debbia consegnare a loda di dicto maestro Antone’). M. Burresi and A. Caleca, Nel Secolo di Lorenzo. Restauri di opere d’arte del Quattrocento, exh. cat. (ed. Burresi), Pisa 1992, no. 13, pp. 92–6, concluded that the altarpiece had not yet been completed, on the grounds that Masaccio was still in Pisa on 23 January 1427. The chapel seems not to have been finished until 1428 (1429 Pisan style); Beck 1978, p. 49. Beck suggests that the altarpiece was not installed until after the overhead work had been completed. The altar frontal and coperchio were not brought to the Carmine until 12 July 1428 (1429 Pisan style); see Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 67, and Beck 1978, p. 47, for the payments to the porter who brought them to the Carmine. (Back to text.)

11. B. Berenson in Rassegna d’Arte, 1907, p. 139. Berenson, who saw it in the collection of Revd A.F. Sutton at Brant Broughton, Newark (see Provenance), and immediately recognised it as from the Pisa altarpiece, followed this with a fuller discussion in Rassegna d’Arte, anno VIII, May 1908, no. 5, p. 81–5, in which he considered all the surviving fragments. The component parts of the altarpiece, with the exception of the predella panel with Scenes from the Lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas, were first listed by August Schmarsow, Masaccio‐Studien, II, Masaccio’s Meisterwerke, Kassel 1896, pp. 78–84. (Back to text.)

12. See R. Langton Douglas and G. de Nicola (edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselle), History of Painting in Italy, IV, London 1911, pp. 60–1, n. 1. Their reservations concerning NG 3046 are now disproved by the X‐radiograph, which demonstrates that this panel certainly belongs with the Naples Crucifixion. (Back to text.)

13. 58A and 58B were acquired from the Capponi Collection by the Berlin Museum, 1880. 58E was acquired in 1908. See the Katalog der ausgestellten Gemälde des 13.–18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin‐Dahlem 1975, pp. 255–6. (Back to text.)

14. 82 x 64.5 cm. L. Di Simone Collection, bought by the Museo di Capodimonte in 1901 as anonymous Florentine. P.L. de Castris in Dipinti dal XIII al XVI Secolo, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples 1999, no. 34, pp. 66–8. First attributed to Masaccio and connected with the Pisa altarpiece fragments by Wilhelm Suida, ‘L’altare di Masaccio, già nel Carmine a Pisa’, L’Arte, 9, 1906, p. 126. The panel has been cut at the sides, and along the top, where approximately 2 cm are missing to complete the arch. A slight barbe along the bottom shows that the painted surface has lost nothing from the base; below the end of the painted surface are a few millimetres of exposed wood. I am extremely grateful to Mariella Utili for [page 221]allowing Jill Dunkerton and myself to examine the painting off the wall. (Back to text.)

15. I am grateful to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, for taking the X‐radiograph of the Crucifixion, and to Nicola Spinosa, Soprintendente in Naples, for allowing this to be done. See also Gardner von Teuffel (JBM, 1977, p. 43, n. 60), who first suggested that the Crucifixion and Virgin and Child were on a continuous plank structure. (Back to text.)

16. B. Cole (Masaccio and the Art of Early Renaissance Florence, Bloomington and London 1980, p. 135) doubts that these three panels were part of the altarpiece and makes the unlikely suggestion that they formed a triptych or small polyptych. This view is described as ‘iconographically and circumstantially bizarre’ by Francis Ames‐Lewis in his review of Cole in BM , 950, 1982, p. 301. However, for the view that the panels with Saint Paul and Saint Andrew come from a different altarpiece in S. Maria del Carmine, painted by Masaccio around the same time, see Strehlke 2002, pp. 18–19; see also Bellucci and Frosinini 2002, pp. 53–4. (Back to text.)

17. First recorded in the collection of Canon Paolo Tronci in his Libro di Riccordi in 1640, when said to have come from the collection of Decano Francesco Berzighelli. Burresi and Caleca (exh. cat., 1992, cited in note 10, p. 95) point out that it has been erroneously said to have been part of the collection of Canon Sebastiano Zucchetti (also repeated by Spike 1995, p. 198). The Berzighelli family had the patronage of the second altar to the right in the church of S. Maria del Carmine. Given to the Scuola del Disegno in Pisa before 1828 by Colonello Raimondi; joined the collection of the Museo Civico when it was amalgamated with the Accademia in 1893 (this became the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in 1946; see Burresi and Caleca 1992, pp. 92–6). The provenance of this panel from the Carmine in Pisa therefore seems certain. See also L’Età di Masaccio. Il primo quattrocento a Firenze, exh. cat. (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), eds L. Berti and A. Paolucci, Milan 1990, p. 170, no. 55. (Back to text.)

18. From the A. Bayersdorfer Collection. Given to Count Lanckoroński, Vienna 1892. Bought by the Getty Museum 1979. See Burton B. Fredericksen, Masterpieces of Painting in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu 1988, p. 3. For the problems associated with the pinnacle panels, see Dunkerton and Gordon 2002, pp. 96–7. (Back to text.)

19. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 52. (Back to text.)

20. Butler Collection, London, by 1893, when loaned to the New Gallery Exhibition; bought by the Berlin Museum, 1905 (Berlin‐Dahlem catalogue 1975, cited in note 13, p. 256). First associated with the altarpiece by Suida in L’Arte, 9, 1906 (cited in note 14). (Back to text.)

21. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, pp. 38–44, and Beck 1978, p. 39, doc. 5. It should be noted that only the altarpiece and altar were assessed as 8⅔ braccia, although Gardner von Teuffel takes into account the step and predella. For her painstaking and precise estimate of the original dimensions of each panel, see JBM, 1977, pp. 43–4. (Back to text.)

22. Foggi gives a projected width of 232 cm (see the diagram in Berti and Foggi 1989, p. 47). (Back to text.)

23. See p. 68 of this catalogue. (Back to text.)

24. According to a letter of 21 January 1948 from Professor G. Isnardi, the church, originally called San Lorenzo in Chinseca, was rebuilt by the Carmelites in 1323–9 and enlarged between 1560 and 1590. See also note 79. (Back to text.)

25. See the letter of 21 January 1948 from Professor G. Isnardi in the NG archives, which contains information taken from a copy of Tronci’s MS in the Soprintendenza ai Monumenti at Pisa. According to P. Bacci, Il Duomo di Pisa descritto dal Can. Paolo Tronci (1585–1648) con Note e Documenti inediti, Pisa 1922, p. viii, Tronci finished his MS soon after 1635. See Davies 1961 , p. 350, n. 9. (Back to text.)

26. See note 17. (Back to text.)

27. The earliest reconstruction was that of Suida (1906, cited in note 14, pp. 125–7, fig. 3), made before the central panel with the Virgin and Child had yet been identified. See also Kurt Steinbart, Masaccio, Vienna 1948, p. 29 (Steinbart considered the marble structure commissioned from Pippo di Ghante as the frame for the altarpiece). (Back to text.)

28. Salmi 1948, pp. 182–3, tav. 35; Procacci 1951, p. 27; Berti 1967, pp. 85–91, 144–5, n. 230. See also Berti 1968, pp. 89–91. (Back to text.)

29. Shearman, BM , 1966, pp. 449–55. Recently Joannides (1993, p. 386) suggested that there was a change of plan after work had begun and that the main field was originally intended to be divided by colonettes. He considers both the left‐hand and central predella panels to have an implied viewpoint from the central axis of the altarpiece, while the scene he reconstructs on the right has a viewpoint from its own central axis, the former appropriate to an undivided field (although see note 40 below for a different proposal for the sequence of the predella scenes). (Back to text.)

30. Shearman, BM , 1966, p. 454. In the illustration of the reconstruction he does not complete the upper tier. (Back to text.)

32. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 30, and passim. (Back to text.)

33. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, pp. 45–7. (Back to text.)

34. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 45. (Back to text.)

35. Gardner von Teuffel , JBM, 1977, p. 42, n. 54, and p. 47. The throne step does not continue into the side fields of the Cascia altarpiece. (Back to text.)

36. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 30. (Back to text.)

37. Ibid. (Back to text.)

38. Summarised here are the main points of the reconstruction proposed in Dunkerton and Gordon 2002, pp. 89–109, which is the result of observations made after examination of the panels by the authors, as well as of discussions arising from the reuniting of the surviving fragments for the exhibition Masaccio: the Pisa Altarpiece at the National Gallery in 2001, at which were also present Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Cecilia Frosinini, Roberto Bellucci, Mauro Parri and Christa Gardner von Teuffel. (Back to text.)

39. This was pointed out to me by Dr Erich Schleier, who kindly allowed the Opificio delle Pietre Dure to X‐ray the panels as part of an investigation into the techniques of Masaccio and Masolino. (Back to text.)

40. The panels with the Adoration and the Scenes from the Lives of Saints Peter and John the Baptist have modern countersunk seals (inscribed Königliche Museen Berlin). These seals have not been randomly placed: each is 5.5 cm from the outer edge. Assuming that the seals were placed in the wood where there were already nails or nail holes, then the distribution of nails is entirely regular when the predella is organised as suggested here. The panel with the Scenes from the Lives of Saints Julian and Nicholas has no seal, since it has a different provenance. See note 13 above. (Back to text.)

41. If one reverses the two outer panels, placing Scenes from the Lives of Peter and John the Baptist at the outer left and Scenes from the Lives of Saint Julian and Nicholas at the outer right, the distribution of the nails and supposed nail holes is no longer regular, although there is a possibility that the wood has been reused, as proposed by Jill Dunkerton (Dunkerton and Gordon 2002, p. 97). (Back to text.)

42. In altarpieces attributed to Rossello di Jacopo Franchi (Florence, Accademia, inv. no. 1890.475) and to Lorenzo di Bicci (Empoli, Museo della Collegiata); illustrated in Fremantle 1998 (figs 972 and 837), and in an altarpiece dated 1426 attributed to the Master of the Bracciolini Chapel (Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Museum), which has been shown to come from Santi Filippo e Giacomo, Pistoia, by Maria Cristina Masdea, ‘Vicende storiche di un trittico quattrocentesco del pistoiese’, Arte Cristiana, 87, no. 793, 1999, pp. 261–6. (Back to text.)

43. See Vasari, Vite, ed. Milanesi , II, pp. 506 and 516; Vasari, Vite, eds Bettarini and Barocchi , III, 1971, pp. 269 and 272; and note 94 on p. 287 of this catalogue. (Back to text.)

44. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 39, n. 53. The evidence of the X‐radiographs shows that paired saints could not have been placed between the Virgin and Child and the Crucifixion, as shown by Berti and Foggi (1989, p. 47). (Back to text.)

45. The compositions indicate that the predella panels have not been greatly reduced in width: the Julian and Nicholas panel retains a slight barbe at the left edge; all the other vertical edges seem to have been slightly trimmed. (Back to text.)

46. On the back, the level of the two planks that make up the Crucifixion panel is slightly higher than the central plank, but along the top a slight recess 12 cm deep has been planed to accommodate a horizontal batten, which would have prevented the panel from bowing but is too high up to have fulfilled [page 222]any function in attaching it to other panels. For the major problem of the battens, see Dunkerton and Gordon 2002, pp. 96–7. For a discussion of thin upper tier panels, see Kanter in Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300–1450, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1994, p. 259. (Back to text.)

47. Reproduced in Berti and Foggi 1989, p. 46. (Back to text.)

48. Procacci 1951, p. 27. (Back to text.)

49. Salmi 1948, tav. 35. Reproduced in Berti 1964, fig. 58. (Back to text.)

52. For supporting pilasters, see Gardner von Teuffel, ‘The buttressed altarpiece: a forgotten aspect of Tuscan fourteenth century altarpiece design’, JBM, 21, 1979, pp. 21–65 and passim. (Back to text.)

53. Gardner von Teuffel calls the design of the Pisa altarpiece ‘old‐fashioned’ and unlikely to be the choice of Masaccio (JBM, 1977, p. 34); however, not only should it be emphasised that it was for a side altar and not a high altar, but none of the surviving altarpieces by Masaccio is innovative in design. Rather than ‘old‐fashioned’, it should perhaps be termed ‘traditional’. This type of altarpiece, if indeed it was a polyptych, which seems likely, continued well into the middle of the fifteenth century (see, for example, Fremantle 1975 , figs 990, 996, 1002, 1074). Altarpieces with narrative or quasi‐narrative subjects such as the Annunciation or the Coronation of the Virgin, where a unified field was commonplace (see, for example, under NG 1897, p. 185, note 52), seem not to be valid comparisons. (Back to text.)

54. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 28; Beck 1978, pp. 36, doc. 2, and p. 39, doc. 5. (Back to text.)

55. André Chastel (La Pala, ou, Le retable italien des origines à 1500, Paris 1993, p. 265, no. 23) inexplicably says that the altarpiece was gilded ‘par un Siennois’. Presumably he is referring to the carpenter, although there is no documentary evidence as to who carried out the gilding and it is inherently unlikely that it was done by the carpenter, since it could not be carried out until the painter had designated the parameters of the composition. (Back to text.)

56. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 62; Beck 1978, p. 32. (Back to text.)

57. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 64; Beck 1978, pp. 32 and 46–7, with slight variations. (Back to text.)

58. The pectorale and coperchio were to have been made by Bartholomeo da Siena ‘tabularius’‘de avere da me…per fare’ (Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 67; Beck 1978, p. 46, item 4), but in the event were made by Maestro Antonio – ‘item … fe’. (Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 64; Beck 1978, p. 32, item 7). It seems likely that the two carpenters, both Sienese, were compagni. See also note 61. (Back to text.)

59. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 67; Beck 1978, pp. 46–7. Gardner von Teuffel interprets the word coperchio as meaning an altar vestment (JBM, 1977, p. 62, n. 121), citing J , . Braun, Der christliche Altar, II, Munich 1924, p. 10. The examples Braun gives of coopertoria are clearly textiles. However, in this instance the coperchio is clearly made of wood (see note 58 above). Joannides 1993, p. 385, also assumes the coperchio is wood. (Back to text.)

60. Beck (1978, p. 47) speculates whether it could have been ‘some sort of wooden crowning element for the altarpiece’. However, see Strehlke 2002, p. 16. (Back to text.)

61. Joannides (1993, p. 384) is incorrect in saying that Antonio had carpentered an altarpiece in 1403 which was painted by Turino di Vanni. In fact, the carpenter was Bartolomeo di Angelo da Siena (Beck 1978, p. 48). (Back to text.)

62. Joannides 1993, p. 383. (Back to text.)

63. Although it is usually said that the altarpiece was carpentered independently of Masaccio (for example, C. Gilbert, ‘Peintres et menuisiers au début de la Renaissance en Italie’, Revue de l’Art, 37, 1977, p. 10; Beck 1978, p. 34, 1992, p.32; ‘cautiously deduced’ by Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 38), it seems unlikely that Ser Giuliano would have commissioned a wooden structure without having found a painter to paint it, in which case it seems likely that the painter would have been involved (although the altarpiece for Borgo San Sepolcro is a documented instance of such a case – see p. 346 of this catalogue); see Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 34, n. 40 and p. 38, n. 49. See also note 53 above. It has often been noted that Masaccio’s massive painted throne of pietra serena with its classical columns is at odds with the Gothic arch of the frame (see, for example, Beck 1978, p. 34). It may be worth noting that, while we do not know the precise nature of Masaccio’s relations with the Florentine carpenter Zanobi di Michele Canacci, the other painters published from the Catasto by C.R. Mack (‘A carpenter’s catasto with information on Masaccio, Giovanni dal Ponte, Antonio di Domenico and others’, MKIF , XXIV, 1980, pp. 366–8) were by no means in the vanguard of Florentine painting. (Back to text.)

64. See the documents of 1428 for the upkeep of the altar cited by Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 64. (Back to text.)

65. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 52; Beck 1978, p. 34. (Back to text.)

66. Rowlands has also made the interesting observation that 1426 represented the 200th centenary of the foundation of the Carmelite Order. I am grateful to him for allowing me to read the typescript of his forthcoming book on the Pisa altarpiece. (Back to text.)

67. See, for example, Beck 1990, p. 32. Hellmut Wohl, in The Dictionary of Art, 1996, p. 532, says that the figure is Giuliano’s son, but he had no son – see the genealogical table published by Battistoni 1999 (cited in note 8), pp. 28–9. (Back to text.)

68. See L’Età di Masaccio, exh. cat., 1990 (cited in note 17), p. 122, no. 31. Bicci di Lorenzo was working on the altarpiece in 1423 and completed it in 1426. (Back to text.)

69. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 56. (Back to text.)

72. Boskovits, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1966, p. 59. Most recently, see Hayden B. Maginnis, ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Presentation in the Temple, Studi di Storia dell’Arte, 2, 1991, pp. 33–50. Strictly speaking, the scene should be referred to not as the Presentation in the Temple but as the Purification of the Virgin. Ambrogio had been in Florence in 1327. (Back to text.)

73. See L’Età di Masaccio, exh. cat., 1990 (cited in note 17), p. 132, no. 36. (Back to text.)

74. A.M. Maetzke in Boccia et al, Recuperi e Restauri dal 1968 al 1974. Arte nell’Aretino, Florence 1974, pp. 81–5. Annamaria Bernacchioni in Mater Christi, exh. cat. (ed. Maetzke), Milan 1996, cat. no. 13, pp. 44–5, has new information on the patronage and provenance. (Back to text.)

75. L. Berti, ‘Masaccio 1422’, Commentari, anno XII, fasc. II, 1961, p. 86, n. 4, has a discussion of the Child eating grapes and the iconography of the completely nude Child. (Back to text.)

76. Related to the Pisa altarpiece by D. Cole Ahl, ‘Fra Angelico: A New Chronology for the 1420s’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, XLIII, 1980, p. 373; M. Boskovits in Opus Sacrum. Catalogue of the Exhibition from the Collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson (Royal Castle, Warsaw), ed. J. Grabski, Vienna 1990, pp. 56–61. See also Giorgio Bonsanti, Beato Angelico. Catalogo completo, Florence 1998, cat. no. 25, p. 123, and Fremantle 1998, cat. no. A13, p. 122, who attributes it to Masaccio. (Back to text.)

78. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 67; Beck 1978, pp. 46–7, appendix, doc. 12, items 3 and 4. For painted ‘paliotti’ of the late fifteenth century, see B. Markowsky, ‘Eine Gruppe bemalter Paliotti in Florenz und der Toskana und ihre textilen Vorbilder’, MKIF , XVII, 1973, pp. 105–40. (Back to text.)

79. A. da Morrona (Pisa Illustrata, III, 2nd edn, Livorno 1812, pp. 273–4) says that the construction was well advanced in 1568 and finished except for the façade in 1574, and that the church was consecrated in 1612. (Back to text.)

80. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, pp. 57ff., esp. p. 61 and fig. 22. (Back to text.)

81. Canopied wall altars are discussed by Gardner von Teuffel (JBM, 1977, p. 59). (Back to text.)

83. Beck 1978, p. 39. (Back to text.)

[page 223]

84. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 57, and Beck 1978, pp. 36 and 39. (Back to text.)

85. Gardner von Teuffel (JBM, 1977, pp. 60–1) misinterprets these documents as referring to a canopied wall altar within the chapel; Beck 1978, pp. 36, doc. 3, and p. 39, doc. 5. (Back to text.)

86. Beck 1978, p. 42, doc. 8. (Back to text.)

87. Joannides 1993, p. 384. (Back to text.)

88. All these payments are grouped by Beck 1978, appendix, doc. 2, pp. 35–6. (Back to text.)

89. See Beck 1978, p. 35, doc. 2, item 4. (Back to text.)

90. See note 10 above. Cecilia Frosinini (oral communication) has suggested that the word ‘loda’ may in fact read ‘lodo’, commonly used in legal contracts. (Back to text.)

92. For an analysis of the light, see P. Hills, The Light of Early Italian Painting, New Haven and London 1987, pp. 129–31. (Back to text.)

93. Beck 1978, p. 35, appendix, doc. 2, item 7. For Andrea di Giusto, see Fremantle 1975 , pp. 513–22; also L’Età di Masaccio, exh. cat., 1990 (cited in note 17), p. 249. (Back to text.)

94. Edition of the History of Painting in Italy (cited in note 12), IV, 1911, p. 60, n. 1. (Back to text.)

95. See Fremantle 1975 , p. 515, fig. 1074, for an illustration. (Back to text.)

96. For Lo Scheggia, see L’Età di Masaccio, exh. cat., 1990 (cited in note 17), p. 256. Masaccio is also thought to have worked with Bicci di Lorenzo ( ibid. , p. 34). (Back to text.)

98. See note 89. (Back to text.)

99. Bellucci and Frosinini (2002, p. 49) note that although previous authors have considered that Donatello collected the payment on Masaccio’s behalf, and therefore that Masaccio was absent, he was in fact present when the payment was made. (Back to text.)

100. Gardner von Teuffel (oral communication) points out that there are no surviving documents for transport or for the gabella (tax) payable for importing goods from Florence into Pisa. (Back to text.)

101. Vanni, the son and garzone of the painter Turino di Vanni, was an errand boy (Beck 1978, p. 47). He was thirteen in 1427 when Turino di Vanni stated in his Catasto declaration that he was infirm and aged 78 (see Tanfani Centofanti 1897, cited in note 8, pp. 486–8). For the altarpiece of 1403, see Beck 1978, p. 48. For the long‐lived Turino di Vanni ( c. 1348–1444), see Burresi and Caleca 1992 (exh. cat., cited in note 10), p. 129. (Back to text.)

102. J.H. Beck, ‘Masaccio’s Early Career as a Sculptor’, AB , 53, 1971, pp. 177–95. Beck attributes to Masaccio the terracotta relief of the Coronation of the Virgin on the façade of Sant’Egidio, Santa Maria Nuova, dating it 1420–4. For Masaccio and sculpture, see also P. Joannides, ‘Masaccio, Masolino and “Minor Sculpture”, Paragone, 451, 1987, pp. 3–24, esp. pp. 10–14. (Back to text.)

103. Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 50 and n. 75. (Back to text.)

104. See P.E. Arias, E. Cristiani and E. Gabba, Camposanto monumentale di Pisa. Le Antichità, Pisa 1977 (tav. LV, fig. 112; LXIII, fig. 131; CXI, fig. 233; CXIII, fig. 238), for examples that are particularly close to the throne step in NG 3046, at the central juncture of the strigillations. The strigillated motif as used by Donatello and later Renaissance architects, painters and sculptors is discussed in Francesco Caglioti, ‘Donatello, i Medici e Gentile de’ Becchi: un po’ d’ordine intorno alla “Giuditta” (e al David) di Via Larga. II’, Prospettiva, 78, April 1995, pp. 22–55, esp. p. 37. He draws attention to the use of the motif on dais steps in an altarpiece attributed to Giovanni di Francesco of about 1454, illustrated in L. Bellosi (ed.), Pittura di Luce. Giovanni di Francesco e l’arte fiorentina di metà Quattrocento, exh. cat. (Casa Buonarroti, Florence), Milan 1990, pp. 48–9. H. Burns (‘Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique’, in Classical Influences on European Culture, AD 500–1500 ed. R.R. Bolgar, London 1971, p. 284 and pl.10c) says that the recessed columns of the throne are an accurate quotation from a sarcophagus in the Camposanto. (Back to text.)

106. Joannides 1993, p. 395. (Back to text.)

107. Burns 1971 (cited in note 104), p. 284, n. 3; Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 50. (Back to text.)

108. M. Boskovits, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1966, pp. 60–1. (Back to text.)

109. Burns 1971 (cited in note 104), p. 284. Burns suggests that Masaccio was more accurate in his quotations from the antique than was Brunelleschi. (Back to text.)

110. Beck 1990, p. 34. (Back to text.)

113. Joannides 1993, p. 160. Davies ( Davies 1961 , p. 349–50 and n. 18) saw the relationship as the reverse and ‘not close’. For the terracotta relief, see Andrew Butterfield, Early Renaissance Reliefs, exh. cat., Salander O’Reilly Galleries, New York 2001. cat. no. 1. For the other reliefs, see Anne Jolly, Madonnas by Donatello and his circle, Frankfurt 1998, pp. 109–10, no. 20, and J. Pope‐Hennessy (assisted by R. Lightbown), Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 3 vols, London 1964, no. 73, pp. 91ff. and no. 74, pp. 93–5. Pope‐Hennessy (p. 92) felt that ‘the resemblance…is too slight for a connection between the two schemes to be presumed’. However, as Joannides (Paragone, 1987, cited in note 102, p. 12) points out, these reliefs had been considered to reflect the lost Pisa Virgin and Child on the basis of Vasari’s description even before its discovery by Berenson in 1907. Comparisons with the sculptures of Arnolfo di Cambio (see Joannides, Paragone, 1987, pp. 3–24, esp. p. 11) seem less convincing than those made by Borsook (see note 105 above). (Back to text.)

115. See Gardner von Teuffel, JBM, 1977, p. 50, n. 74. (Back to text.)

117. Beck 1978, p. 35, appendix, doc. 2, items 3 and 6. (Back to text.)

120. For one of the many publications subsequent to the cleaning of the Brancacci Chapel, see U. Baldini and O. Casazza, La Cappella Brancacci, Milan 1990. (Back to text.)

121. On the back is a label with MISS WOODBURN/MARCH 13 1855, and the number 70 added in ink. It was presumably inherited from her brother, the dealer Samuel Woodburn (1786–1853), for whom see D. Sutton, ‘From Ottley to Eastlake’, Apollo, 122, 1985, p. 86. See also p p . xxvii–xxix of this catalogue. Woodburn also owned the Annunciation by Zanobi Strozzi (NG 1406; see p. 417). (Back to text.)

122. A cutting from the sale catalogue is on the back, which makes the identification certain. The picture was then ascribed to Gentile da Fabriano. (Back to text.)

123. This is stated in the catalogue of the Grafton Galleries Exhibition, London 1911. (Back to text.)

124. Rassegna d’Arte, 1907, p. 139. The Revd A.F. Sutton succeeded his uncle, the Revd F.H. Sutton, as Rector of Brant Broughton in 1889. Canon A.F. Sutton also owned NG 4062; see pp. 173 and xxvi of this catalogue. (Back to text.)

125. Label on the back. (Back to text.)

Glossary

barbe
The raised lip of gesso which remains on the painted surface after the removal of an engaged frame moulding when the panel and frame have been gessoed at the same time. Its presence is an indication as to whether the image (but not necessarily the panel) retains its original dimensions
bole
A red clay applied to the gessoed surface of a panel as an adhesive underlayer for gold leaf
Catasto
Records of Florentine tax returns
coperchio
A cover
Divine Office
The cycle of daily devotions consisting of eight canonical hours of prayer
lake
A pigment made by precipitation onto a base from a dye solution, resulting in a comparatively transparent pigment often used as a glaze
liturgy
The formal rites of the Christian Church, such as Mass and Divine Office
Mass
Church service commemorating the sacrifice of Christ with the celebration of the Eucharist
mordant gilding
The process of applying gold leaf to an adhesive or mordant, usually done in the final stages of a painting
pala
An altarpiece with a unified painted surface
pietra serena
Grey sandstone
sarcophagus
A tomb chest
water gilding
Gold leaf applied to wetted bole and then burnished

Abbreviations

Institutions
NG
National Gallery, London
Periodicals
BM
Burlington Magazine, London, 1903–
JWCI
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
NGTB
National Gallery Technical Bulletin
Frequently cited works are given in abbreviated form throughout, as listed below:
Davies 1961
M. Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, 2nd revised edn, London 1961
Fremantle 1975
R. Fremantle, Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: a Guide to Painting in and near Florence 1300 to 1450, London 1975
Vasari, Le Vite, eds Bellosi and Rossi
G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino ai tempi nostri nell’edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino, Firenze 1550/Giorgio Vasari, eds L. Bellosi and A. Rossi, Turin 1986
Vasari, Le Vite, ed. Milanesi
G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architetti, ed. G. Milanesi, 8 vols, Florence 1878–85
Vasari, Le Vite, eds Bettarini and Barocchi
G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 & 1568, eds R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi, vol. II, Florence 1967; vol. III, Florence 1971

List of archive references cited

List of references cited

Ames‐Lewis 1982
Ames‐LewisF., ‘review of B. Cole, Sienese Painting from its Origins to the Fifteenth Century and Masaccio and the Art of Early Renaissance Florence’, Burlington Magazine, May 1982, 124950300–1
Arias, Cristiani and Gabba 1977
AriasP.E.E. Cristiani and E. GabbaCamposanto monumentale di Pisa. Le AntichitàPisa 1977
Bacci 1922
BacciP.Il Duomo di Pisa descritto dal Can. Paolo Tronci (1585–1648) con Note e Documenti ineditiPisa 1922
Baldini and Casazza
BaldiniU. and O. CasazzaLa Cappella BrancacciMilan 1990 (trans., The Brancacci ChapelMilan 1994)
Baldinucci 1845
BaldinucciF.Notizie dei Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua7 volsFlorence 1845–7
Battistoni 1999
BattistoniM.Giuliano degli Scarsi. Operaio del Duomo di Pisa (1435–56)Opere della Primaziale PisanaQuaderno no. 13Pontedera 1999
Beck 1971
BeckJ., ‘Masaccio’s Early Career as a Sculptor’, Art Bulletin, 1971, 53177–95
Beck 1978
BeckJ.Masaccio: The DocumentsNew York 1978
Beck 1990
BeckJ., ‘Masaccio’s Madonnas’, in Ricerche ed ipotesi. Masaccio 1422 / 1989. Dal Trittico di San Giovenale al Restauro della Cappella Brancacci. Atti del Convegno del 22 Aprile 1989, Pieve di San Pietro a Cascia‐ReggelloFigline‐Valdarno 1990, 27–35 (republished, CanevaC., ed., Masaccio 1422. Il Trittico di San Giovenale e il suo tempoMilan 2001, 279–87)
Bellosi 1990
BellosiL.Pittura di Luce. Giovanni di Francesco e L’arte fiorentina di metà Quattrocento (exh. cat. Florence, Casa Buonarroti), Milan 1990
Bellucci and Frosinini 2002
BellucciR. and C. Frosinini, ‘Working Together: Technique and Innovation in Masolino’s and Masaccio’s Panel Paintings’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio: The Role of Technique, eds C. Strehlke and C. FrosininiMilan 2002, 28–67
Bellucci, Frosinini and Parri 2002
BellucciR.C. Frosinini and M. Parri, ‘Technical Catalogue’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio: The Role of Technique, eds C. Strehlke and C. FrosininiMilan 2002, 131–257
Berenson 1907a
BerensonB., ‘La scoperta di un dipinto di Masaccio’, Rassegna d’Arte, 1907, anno VII9139
Berenson 1908
BerensonB., ‘La Madonna pisana di Masaccio’, Rassegna d’Arte, May 1908, anno VIII581–5
Berlin 1975
Katalog der ausgestellten Gemälde des 13.–18. JahrhundertsBerlin‐Dahlem 1975
Bernacchioni 1996
BernacchioniAnnamaria, in Mater Christi, ed. A. M. Maetzke (exh. cat.), Milan 1996, cat. 1344–5
Berti 1961
BertiL., ‘Masaccio 1422’, Commentari, April–June 1961, anno XIIfasc. II84–107
Berti 1964
BertiL.MasaccioMilan 1964 (English trans., University Park and London 1967)
Berti 1966
BertiL., ‘Donatello e Masaccio’, Antichità Viva, 1966, V33–12
Berti 1968
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Berti and Foggi 1989
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Berti and Paolucci 1990
BertiL. and A. Paolucci, eds, L’età di Masaccio. Il primo Quattrocento a Firenze (exh. cat. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), Milan 1990
Boccia et al. 1974
BocciaL.C. CorsiA.M. Maetzke and A. Secchi, eds, Arte nell’Aretino. Recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al 1974 (exh. cat. San Francesco, Arezzo, 14 December 1974 – 2 February 1975), Florence 1974
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Borghini 1584
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Borsook 1961
BorsookE., ‘A note on Masaccio in Pisa’, Burlington Magazine, 1961, 103212–15
Borsook 1981
BorsookE., ‘Cult and Imagery at Sant’Ambrogio in Florence’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1981, XXV147–202
Burns 1971
BurnsH., ‘Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique’, in Classical Influences on European Culture AD 500–1500, ed. R.R. BolgarLondon 1971, 269–87
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Butterfield 2001
ButterfieldA.Early Renaissance Reliefs (exh. cat. Salander O’Reilly Galleries), New York 2001
Caglioti 1995
CagliotiF., ‘Donatello, i Medici e Gentile de’ Becchi: un po’ d’ordine intorno alla “Giuditta” (e al David) di Via Larga. II’, Prospettiva, April 1995, 7822–55
Caneva 2001
CanevaC., ed., Masaccio 1422. Il Trittico di San Giovenale e il suo tempoMilan 2001
Cardile 1984
CardileP., ‘Mary as priest: Mary’s Sacerdotal position in the visual arts’, Arte Cristiana, 1984, 72703199–208
Cennino Cennini 1932–3
CenniniCenninoIl Libro dell’Arte. The Craftsman’s Handbook, ed. Daniel V. Thompson Jr.2 volsNew Haven 1932–3
Chastel 1993
ChastelA.La Pala, ou le retable italien des origines à 1500Paris 1993
Cole 1980
ColeB.Masaccio and the Art of Early Renaissance FlorenceBloomington, Indiana and London 1980
Cole Ahl 1980
Cole AhlD., ‘Fra Angelico: A New Chronology for the 1420s’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 1980, 43360–81
Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1911
CroweJ.A. and G.B. CavalcaselleA History of Painting in Italy, eds R. Langton Douglas and G. de NicolaLondon 1911, IV
Da Morrona 1812
Da MorronaA.Pisa Illustrata, 2nd edn, Livorno 1812, III
Davies 1961
DaviesMartinNational Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, 2nd revised edn, London 1961 (1st edn, London 1951)
De Castris 1999
De CastrisP.L., in Dipinti dal XIII al XVI Secolo, Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di CapodimonteNaples 1999
Dempsey 1972
DempseyC., ‘Masaccio’s Trinity: Altarpiece or Tomb?’, Art Bulletin, 1972, 543279–81
Dunkerton and Gordon 2003
DunkertonJ. and D. Gordon, ‘The Pisa Altarpiece’, in The Panel Paintings of Masolino and Masaccio: The Role of Technique, eds C. Strehlke and C. FrosininiMilan 2002, 88–109
Fahy 1998
FahyEverett, in Sumptuosa tabula picta. Pittori a Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento, ed. Maria Teresa Filieri (exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca, 28 March–5 July 1998), Livorno 1998
Filieri 1998
FilieriMaria Teresa, ed., ‘Sumptuosa tabula picta’. Pittori a Lucca tra gotico e rinascimento (exh. cat. Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi, Lucca), Livorno 1998
Fredericksen 1988
FredericksenB.B.Masterpieces of Painting in the J. Paul Getty MuseumMalibu 1988
Fremantle 1969
FremantleR., ‘Masaccio e l’Antico’, Critica d’Arte, 1969, XVIfasc. 10339–56
Fremantle 1975
FremantleRichardFlorentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: a Guide to Painting in and near Florence, 1300 to 1450London 1975
Fremantle 1998
FremantleR.Masaccio: catalogo completoFlorence 1998
Gilbert 1977
GilbertC., ‘Peintres et menuisiers au début de la Renaissance en Italie’, Revue de l’Art, 1977, 379–28
Grafton Galleries 1911
Grafton Galleriesexhibition catalogueLondon 1911
Hall 1974
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Hills 1987
HillsP.The Light of Early Italian PaintingNew Haven and London 1987
Joannides 1987
JoannidesP., ‘Masaccio, Masolino and “Minor Sculpture”’, Paragone, 1987, 4513–24
Joannides 1993
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Jolly 1998
JollyA.Madonnas by Donatello and his CircleFrankfurt 1998
Kanter 1994a
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Kreytenberg 1986
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Lee Roberts 1993
Lee RobertsP.Masolino da PanicaleOxford 1993
Mack 1980
MackC.R., ‘A carpenter’s catasto with information on Masaccio, Giovanni dal Ponte, Antonio di Domenico and others’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1980, XXIV366–9
Maginnis 1991
MaginnisH.B., ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Presentation in the Temple’, Studi di Storia dell’Arte, 1991, 233–50
Markowsky 1973
MarkowskyB., ‘Eine Gruppe bemalter Paliotti in Florenz und der Toskana und ihre textilen Vorbilder’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1973, XVII105–40
Masdea 1999
MasdeaM.C., ‘Vicende storiche di un trittico quattrocentesco del pistoiese’, Arte Cristiana, 1999, 87793261–6
Offner 1959
OffnerR., ‘Light on Masaccio’s Classicism’, in Studies in the History of Art dedicated to William E. SuidaLondon 1959, 66–72
Penny 1998
PennyN., ‘The study and imitation of old picture‐frames’, Burlington Magazine, June 1998, 1401143375–82
Pilc and White 1995
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Pope‐Hennessy 1993
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RosenauerA., ‘Filippo Lippi giovanissimo’, in Mosaics of Friendship: Studies in Art and History for Eve Borsook, ed. O. Francisci OstiFlorence 1999, 175–85
Rowlands 2003
RowlandsE.W.Masaccio’s Saint Andrew and the Pisa Altarpiece, 2003
Salmi 1948
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List of exhibitions cited

London 1911
London, Grafton Gallery, Exhibition of Old Masters in aid of the National Art‐Collections Fund, 1911
London, National Gallery, Watch this Space – an Exhibition about Perspective in Painting, 1982
London 1985
London, National Gallery, The Artist’s Eye – Francis Bacon, 1985
London, National Gallery, Henry Moore and the National Gallery, 1998
London 2001
London, National Gallery, Masaccio: the Pisa Altarpiece, 2001

The Organisation of the Catalogue
Chronological and geographical limits

Included in this volume are works by artists or workshops the bulk of whose surviving work falls within the first half of the fifteenth century, i.e. around 1400–60: Starnina (d. 1413), Lorenzo Monaco (d. c. 1423), Gregorio di Cecco di Luca (d. c. 1428), Masaccio (d. 1428/9), Masolino (d. c. 1436), Giovanni dal Ponte (d. 1437), Sassetta (d. 1450), Master of the Osservanza (active second quarter of fifteenth century), Francesco d’Antonio (active until 1452), Jacopo di Antonio (Master of Pratovecchio?) (d. 1454), Fra Angelico (d. 1455), Pisanello (d. 1455), Pesellino (d. 1457), Domenico Veneziano (d. 1461), Bono da Ferrara (active until 1461), Apollonio di Giovanni (d. c. 1465), Zanobi Strozzi (d. 1468), Filippo Lippi (d. 1469), Giovanni da Oriolo (d. by 1474), Uccello (d. 1475), Marco del Buono (d. after 1480), Giovanni di Paolo (d. 1482).

The exceptions to this are two paintings whose previous attributions were to artists represented in this catalogue but which are now attributed to artists active primarily in the second half of the fifteenth century. The Virgin and Child with Angels (NG 5581) used to be catalogued as by a follower of Fra Angelico. Now, it is generally accepted as being an early work of c. 1447 by Benozzo Gozzoli, and it is therefore included here. However, his work as an independent painter dates from 1450, and his altarpiece dated 1461 for Santa Maria della Purificazione, Florence, will be considered in a subsequent catalogue. A panel of the Nativity (NG 3648) used to be given to a follower of Masaccio, but technical evidence links it to the altarpiece attributed to the Master of the Castello Nativity (active mid‐fifteenth century), recently identified as Piero di Lorenzo di Pratese – a painter deeply enmeshed in the history of the Trinity altarpiece by Pesellino (NG 727 etc.) considered here.

The majority of the paintings included in this catalogue are from Tuscany, with the exception of those by Pisanello, his pupil Bono da Ferrara and his follower Giovanni da Oriolo. Because so few Venetian paintings in the collection date from the first half of the fifteenth century, those which do will be considered in another volume.

Artists: The artists are catalogued in alphabetical order. Autograph works precede those which are attributed.

Attribution: A painting is discussed under the artist where the attribution is not considered to be in doubt. ‘Attributed to’ implies a measure of doubt. ‘Workshop of’ indicates that the work has been executed by a member of the workshop, sometimes with the participation of the artist concerned.

Title: The traditional title of each painting has been followed, except where further research has made a more precise description possible.

Date: Reasons for the date given in the head matter are explained in the body of each entry.

Medium: This is generally assumed to be egg. Where this has been identified, it is stated.

Support: This is generally assumed to be poplar. Where this has been identified, it is stated.

Dimensions: The overall dimensions are given in the head matter. Height precedes width. More precise dimensions are given in the discussion of each work.

Restoration: The history of the restoration of a painting before it entered the National Gallery is not given unless specifically known.

Technique and condition: These are discussed together, since the condition of a painting is often the result of the techniques employed. Where pigments seemed unusual, samples were examined by Ashok Roy and in some cases the medium has been analysed by Raymond White.

Method: Every painting was examined and measured in the Conservation Department with a conservator – usually Jill Dunkerton, but in some instances Martin Wyld, Larry Keith and Paul Ackroyd. Some paintings were examined by Rachel Billinge with infra‐red reflectography (see p. 478).

X‐radiographs, infra‐red photographs and infrared reflectograms: The reader may find it frustrating that reference is sometimes made to X‐radiographs, infra‐red photographs and infra‐red reflectograms without their being illustrated. This is because once they are reduced to page size they are often no longer decipherable.

Bibliographical information: At the end of every catalogue entry is a Select Bibliography listing the main publications relevant to that entry, in chronological order. The works in this list are cited in abbreviated form in the notes following the entry. Full references to all works cited in the catalogue are given in the List of Publications Cited (pp. 435–55).

Comments: I have attempted to give as full an account as possible with regard to attribution, patronage, date, related panels, original location, subject matter, iconography, etc., and to make this information accessible and interesting to the lay reader as well as to the art historian. Inevitably the text contains some speculation – I have tried to make it clear when an argument is hypothetical. For ease of reference the comments are given subheadings, but their sequence varies according to the requirements of the argument.

Dating and Measurements

Dates – old style and modern

Dates are given in the modern style, but the old style (o.s.) is indicated where pertinent.

Florence:
The calendar year began on the feast of the Annunciation, 25 March.
Pisa:
The year began on 25 March, but anticipated the Florentine year by one year (i.e. 1 January–24 March = modern).
Pistoia (stile della Natività):
The year began on 25 December, anticipating modern style (i.e. 1 January–24 December = modern).
Siena:
The year began on 25 March, but sometimes followed the Pisan system.

(See A. Cappelli, Cronologia Cronografica e Calendario Perpetuo, 2nd edn, Milan 1930, pp. 11–16.)

Measurements

The Florentine braccio (fioretino da panno) was the standard unit of linear measurement in Florence from at least the fourteenth until the nineteenth century and was equal to approximately 58.4 cm. In Siena the braccio (per le tele) before 1782 was 60 cm, although Siena also used the braccio of 58.4 cm.

(See A.P. Favaro, Metrologia, Naples 1826, pp. 85 and 118; R. Zupko, Italian weights and measures from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, Philadelphia 1981, p. 46.)

Infra‐red reflectography

Infra‐red reflectography was carried out by Rachel Billinge using a Hamamatsu C2400 camera with an N2606 series infra‐red vidicon tube. The camera is fitted with a 36mm lens to which a Kodak 87A Wratten filter has been attached to exclude visible light. The infra‐red reflectogram mosaics were assembled on a computer using an updated version of the software (VIPS ip) described in R. Billinge, J. Cupitt, N. Dessipris and D. Saunders, ‘A note on an improved procedure for the rapid assembly of infrared reflectogram mosaics’, Studies in Conservation, vol. 38, 11, 1993, pp. 92–8.

About this version

Version 1, generated from files DG_2003__16.xml dated 07/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Structural mark-up applied to skeleton document in full; entry for NG583, biography for Uccello and associated front and back matter (marked up in pilot project) reintegrated into main document; document updated to use external database of archival and bibliographic references; entries for L2, NG215-NG216, NG1897, NG2862 & NG4062; L15, NG727, NG3162, NG3230, NG4428 & NG4868.1-NG4868.4; NG583; NG663.1-NG663.5; NG666-NG667; NG766-NG767 & NG1215; NG1436; NG2908; NG3046; NG4757-NG4763; NG5451-NG5454; NG5962-NG5963; and NG6579-NG6580 prepared for publication; entry for NG583 proofread and corrected.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EBJ-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version)
https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E69-000B-0000-0000
Chicago style
Gordon, Dillian. “NG 3046, The Virgin and Child”. 2003, online version 1, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EBJ-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style
Gordon, Dillian (2003) NG 3046, The Virgin and Child. Online version 1, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EBJ-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 19 March 2025).
MHRA style
Gordon, Dillian, NG 3046, The Virgin and Child (National Gallery, 2003; online version 1, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EBJ-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 19 March 2025]