The Coronation of the Virgin:
Catalogue entry

Catalogue contents

About the catalogue

Full title: The Coronation of the Virgin
Artist: Bernardo Daddi
Inventory number: NG6599
Author: Dillian Gordon
Extracted from: The Italian Paintings before 1400 (London, 2011)

Bernardo Daddi active 1312/20; died 1348
NG 6599
The Coronation of the Virgin

Dillian Gordon, 2011

Extracted from:
Dillian Gordon, The Italian Paintings Before 1400 (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2011).

c. 1340–5

Egg tempera on wood, 111.7 × 75.5 cm

Christ and the Virgin are seated on a white marble throne decorated at the sides with crockets and a dentil moulding, and hung with a dark pink textile embroidered with a blue, green and gold trefoil pattern. Thin black lines which would once have been crowned by slender finials (now cut off) rise from bases on the tops of the pilasters of the throne.¹ The Virgin wears a white dress patterned with gold and a mantle of the same fabric. Folding her arms in humility, she leans towards Christ, who places a jewelled crown on her head.

Technical Notes

Panel structure and condition

The painting is on a single board of wood with a vertical grain. The panel has been cut on all sides (see fig. 7). Whole height (including non‐original extensions) 111.7 cm, original picture height 75.5 cm; total width (including non‐original extensions) 65.2 cm. Thickness of panel 1.8 cm. On the right‐hand side a barb follows the curves of the cusping where the engaged frame has been removed. The current frame is not original.

The panel has undergone two interventions. The base with Four Musical Angels was cut from the bottom of the Coronation of the Virgin at some date before 1828 – the year in which the panel entered the Christ Church Collection in Oxford (see below).

A second intervention occurred sometime after the cutting, when the top and bottom additions were made to the panel. A polygonal piece 28.2 cm high has been added with a half‐lap join at the top, a strip 7.6 cm high added with a half‐lap join across the base, and a strip of 3.2 cm added at the left‐hand side.

[page 117] [page 118]

**Fig. 1**
The seal of Horatio Granville Murray‐Stewart on the back of NG 6599. © The National Gallery, London

The paint on the extension at the bottom contains ‘chrome green’, a manufactured mixture of chrome yellow (lead chromate) and Prussian blue. Chrome green is likely to have been introduced soon after the commercial production of chrome yellow in about 1818; the extension also contains the pigment French (synthetic) ultramarine, invented in 1827, published in 1828 and in commercial production by 1830, which gives a terminus post quem for the addition, possibly an approximate terminus ad quem.² The extension was certainly made before the painting was sold in 1944 (see Provenance), when it had a different frame from the present one which included the extension. Simona Di Nepi has noticed that the present frame was modelled on that of a painting by a follower of Bernardo Daddi in the Pinacoteca in Siena.³

The panel has a split down the middle and is held together with two old and two new butterflies; two new butterflies in the addition at the base and two in the addition at the top have been inserted for other splits. The back has been very roughly finished with a hand tool. The top and bottom modern pieces of wood are worm‐damaged. The additions have a thin layer of gesso, and brown paint has been applied to the whole of the back.

On the back are the traces of two rectangular labels which have been removed. Also on the back are:

1. A red wax seal with a griffin sergeant and a pelican in its piety (fig. 1), belonging to Horatio Granville Murray‐Stewart (see Provenance);
2. Stencilled 781HG, followed by the remains of further lettering.
3. A circular serrated paper label with H 711, possibly a label of the picture restorer Horace Buttery (1846–1900);
4. A paper label on which is written in ink: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Inv. No. L992, Andrea Orcagna Marienkrönung, and across this in a different hand (written with a ballpoint pen?): gestrichen von Dr. E. Rettich 6.5.81.

Painting condition and technique⁴

A simple underdrawing done with a brush is revealed with infrared reflectography. The painting follows the underdrawing very accurately. The Virgin’s left hand was drawn to extend under her drapery. A similar type of underdrawing is visible in the companion panel in Christ Church, Oxford, where there is a small change in the left hand of the angel playing a tambourine.⁵

An incised line was ruled up the centre of the painting. The straight lines of the throne have been incised with a straight edge and the crockets also incised.

The original gilding is in good condition. The punching is elaborate. The Virgin’s halo (fig. 2) consists of an inner band of roses with incised petals and a stippled centre, on a stem of leaves, the intervening spaces densely stippled; this is bordered on both sides by a five‐petal rosette punch mark (Skaug no. 390) and a so‐called ‘string of pearls’ created with a series of simple rings with a dot in the centre (Skaug no. 3). The first few leaves to the left of the Virgin’s neck have finely stippled central stems, which were not continued in the rest of the halo. The Virgin’s crown has been outlined in black paint and decorated with white dots for pearls, and with jewels painted with red lake and the same green as that used for the lining of the cloak, which have darkened. The ‘flowers’ of the crown have been skilfully placed to merge with the incised roses of the halo.

Christ’s halo has an incised leaf pattern with the intervening spaces densely stippled; the bars of the cross are decorated with jewels which, like those in the Virgin’s crown, have darkened. The borders are punched with a trefoil cusp, tipped with a fleur‐de‐lis (Skaug no. 205), and a ring with a dot in its centre – the same punch as that used for the ‘string of pearls’. The outer border has quatrefoils which have been created by stippling around an outline, decorated with two concentric rings at the centre and the ring/dot punch.

The mordant gilding is also in good condition. Different mordants have been used for different parts of the painting. A greyish mordant has been used for the gilding of the border of Christ’s blue mantle, while a creamy white mordant has been used for the fleur‐de‐lis pattern and for the border and fringe of the cloth of honour. The mordant gilding of the pattern on the Virgin’s dress and mantle is less well preserved and has flaked in places, revealing a pinkish‐brown mordant not found elsewhere on the painting.

Mordant silver is normally used for relatively small areas. Unusually (for such a large area), the linings of the Virgin’s mantle and of Christ’s blue cloak are silver leaf, applied over an oil mordant rather than water‐gilded, which could suggest that this was a late decision made after all the water gilding had been done, especially since the organ pipes on the Christ Church panel are of silver leaf over bole. The paint layer of copper‐containing glazes applied to the silver has darkened to a deep brown.⁶

The overall condition of the painted surface is generally good, although compromised at present by dirty varnish and discoloured retouchings. There is some damage and retouching towards the margins: the added strips are evidently modern repaints and the false craquelure of the gold on the top addition has been made with black paint.

There is no canvas beneath the gesso layer. Daddi applied a thin layer of pure lead white paint to the gesso ground, [page 119] presumably in order to provide a smoother and more reflective surface for the paint layers.⁷ The flesh tones have green earth underpainting. There has been some fading of pigments. The cangiante of Christ’s pinkish lilac robe, which is red lake mixed with white with ultramarine in the shadows, may have faded slightly. It may originally have looked like the Baptist’s cloak in the companion panel in Christ Church. The Virgin’s mantle, which seems not to have faded, is at present, like the rest of the surface, disfigured by dirt and retouching. The details of the mordant‐gilded pattern have been picked out in ultramarine and vermilion. The jewels decorating the border of the Virgin’s mantle and robe have darkened like those in her crown.

**Fig. 2**
Detail of the Virgin. © The National Gallery, London

The pink of the cloth of honour is a combination of red lake pigment with white, possibly in two layers. The design of the fleur‐de‐lis was incised in the wet pink paint, and the ‘petals’ then painted with blue made of high‐quality ultramarine, and green made of a strongly toned mineral azurite mixed with white. The green ‘petal’ has a miniature fleur‐de‐lis applied with mordant gilding and golden leaves have been applied over the blue ‘petals’.

[page 120]

Companion Panel and Function

In 1961 Klara Steinweg reconstructed the Coronation of the Virgin and the panel with Four Musical Angels (Oxford, Christ Church; fig. 3).⁸ In the Oxford panel are the fragmentary figures of John the Baptist on the left, wearing a rich lilac cloak over his camel‐hair tunic, and a deacon saint carrying a banner, who is almost certainly identifiable as Saint Stephen.⁹

Further technical investigation has enabled Steinweg’s observations to be confirmed and refined. The panel with the Four Musical Angels was cut from the base of the Coronation of the Virgin at some date before 1828, when the panel entered the Christ Church Collection.¹⁰ It was presumably at the time of cutting that the fragmentary heads of the saints in NG 6599 were suppressed. This was done by scraping out the areas covered by the gold of their haloes and the paint of their faces, re‐gessoing the ground and repainting part of the Virgin’s mantle, part of Christ’s cloak and part of the brocaded floor covering. The punching of the outline of the saints’ haloes is visible in the X‐radiograph, and the craquelure where the faces would have been is revealed by infrared reflectography to be slightly different from that of the main panel. Traces of John the Baptist’s fingers are still visible on the Virgin’s mantle (fig. 4), and his whole hand is visible with infrared reflectography (fig. 5).

Further examination of the X‐radiograph of NG 6599 has revealed that above the halo of the right‐hand saint (Stephen?) are the outlines of part of a second halo, inexplicably not mentioned by Steinweg. This halo has in fact been punched with the same punch as that used for the halo below it. There may originally have been a second saint or angel above and to the right of Saint Stephen, whose face was partly obscured by Saint Stephen’s halo. By following and completing the punched border where it begins to curve at the right‐hand side to complete the arcs of the circle which formed the sides of the cusps, Rachel Billinge has reconstructed the original width of the panel, extending the right‐hand side in order to accommodate a second figure behind Saint Stephen (fig. 8). Widening the panel correspondingly at the left‐hand side [page 121] requires the addition of a fourth saint or angel behind the Baptist. The addition of two saints results in a satisfactory composition with a circle of figures around the throne.

**Fig. 3**
Bernardo Daddi, *Four Musical Angels*. Tempera on wood, 44 × 53.3 cm. Oxford, Christ Church. OXFORD © By permission of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford

**Figs 4 and 5**
Detail of the Baptist’s fingers showing through the paint of the Virgin’s mantle and infrared reflectogram of the same detail. © The National Gallery, London

Juxtaposition of the two panels of the Coronation of the Virgin and Four Musical Angels in 2005 showed that very little has been lost between the two panels.¹¹ The Baptist’s arm in the Christ Church panel needs very little added in order to complete its joining to the wrist in the National Gallery panel. A very thin strip from the step of the white marble throne and traces of the gold fringe of the floor covering are visible along the top edge of the Christ Church panel (normally concealed by the frame).

Steinweg noted that the painting was innovative in clearly dividing the Virgin and Christ in Heaven from the figures below (although if there were originally more figures stacked up the sides, this division would not have been quite so marked), a division underlined by the turning outwards of the central ring of angels towards the spectator on earth,¹² with the link between the two sections made by one of the angels looking upwards.

Steinweg suggested that missing from the top may have been a trefoil with God the Father, as in the altar piece in the Accademia, Florence (see fig. 9).¹³

It had also been suggested that below the Coronation of the Virgin there was once an unusually large predella panel with Daddi’s Annunciation (Paris, Louvre), whose width (70.8 cm) approximately matches that of NG 6599.¹⁴ However, it is more likely that the Annunciation went below a panel showing the Virgin and Child enthroned, since the Annunciation seems an unsuitable subject to precede the Coronation of the Virgin; the Dormition or the Assumption would be more logical.¹⁵ Moreover, Offner was making the association of the Paris panel with NG 6599 before Steinweg had proposed the reconstruction which completed the base of the painting.

**Fig. 6**
Detail of the cloth of honour. © The National Gallery, London

[page 122]

**Fig. 7**
NG 6599 without its frame. © The National Gallery, London

**Fig. 8**
Reconstruction by Rachel Billinge of NG 6599 with the *Four Musical Angels* in Christ Church, including a hypothetical frame. © The National Gallery, London

Although Steinweg considered that the Coronation of the Virgin was an autonomous panel, Offner described it as the central part of a polyptych and this possibility cannot be ruled out. The presence of nails and the mark of a transverse batten across the top of the Christ Church panel allows for the possibility that it was originally part of a polyptych, although this does not represent conclusive evidence since battens are sometimes used in single panels.¹⁶

There are examples of polyptychs where small‐scale saints are shown in the central panel with the Virgin and Child while large‐scale saints appear in the lateral panels, for example several by Puccio di Simone, a collaborator and probably pupil of Bernardo Daddi,¹⁷ but no surviving versions of the Coronation of the Virgin follow this formula. Boskovits et al. consider that there were groups of saints on either side.¹⁸

Subject and Iconography

The Coronation of the Virgin is not described in the Bible, but passages from the Psalms and the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs) were interpreted as prefiguring the event.¹⁹ In the Golden Legend when, prior to the Assumption, Christ receives the Virgin’s soul in his arms at her death, he tells her: ‘Veni, electa mea, et ponam in te thronum meum’ (‘Come, my chosen one, and I will set you upon my throne’), which is followed by a passage partly derived from the Song of Solomon (4:8): ‘Veni de Libano, sponsa mea … coronaberis’ (‘Come from Lebanon my spouse … thou shalt be crowned’); this passage is included in the liturgy for the Assumption.²⁰

The Coronation of the Virgin was a quintessentially Florentine subject. Daddi’s version derives closely from the altar piece of that subject painted by Giotto and his workshop for the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce, Florence,²¹ but differs from it in a number of ways: in NG 6599 the Virgin’s face is seen in pure profile, her veil is delicately transparent, and Christ leans more closely towards her, making their relationship less [page 123] hierarchical. Daddi developed Mary’s submissive pose, rendering it ambiguous as to whether she is sitting or kneeling, thus alluding to Mary both as the enthroned Bride of Christ and as the Mother of God.

**Fig. 9**
Bernardo Daddi, *The Coronation of the Virgin*, c. 1345. Tempera on wood, 186 × 270 cm. Florence, Accademia (inv. 3449) (formerly Florence, Santa Maria Novella). FLORENCE Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence © Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino, Gabinetto Fotografico, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali

NG 6599 is almost identical to the Coronation of the Virgin in the central panel of an altar piece from Santa Maria Novella now in the Accademia, Florence (fig. 9). Mary’s gesture of drawing her mantle around her, with the fabric held between her fingers, seems to have been an invention of Daddi’s and was used by him in both works. The gesture was copied by Puccio di Simone, who also copied the arrangement of the angels in the Santa Maria Novella altar piece: kneeling in a circle around the throne, and all facing it except for one facing out to draw in the viewer.²² It is possible that the Virgin’s white garments with gold decoration, and the smile hovering around her lips, stem from thirteenth‐century French ivories, such as the Coronation of the Virgin in the Louvre, Paris (fig. 11).²³

The Virgin’s halo is decorated with a stem of roses and leaves: roses have a particular significance for the Coronation of the Virgin, and devotional texts describe her as crowned with roses. For example, Mirella Levi d’Ancona cites lines from the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary attributed to Saint Bonaventure (Psalm 47): ‘Thou art gone up … crowned with roses and lilies’, and from a fourteenth‐century Scala Coeli: ‘Gaude rosis coronata’ (‘Rejoice [O Mary] crowned with roses’).²⁴

The fleur‐de‐lis pattern on the cloth of honour in NG 6599 (fig. 6) also appears in Daddi’s San Pancrazio altar piece (Florence, Uffizi), and in his Santa Maria Novella altar piece where it is very similar to the pattern used in the Virgin and Child with Angels for Orsanmichele, painted in 1347, except that the mordant gilding of the latter is more elaborate. Licia Bertani has suggested that it may allude to the Florentine lily.²⁵

John the Baptist, as the main patron saint of Florence, is extremely common in Florentine paintings. It is possible that Saint Stephen, if indeed it is he, has been included because he was patron saint of the Arte della Lana (Wool Guild), although his presence may also be connected with the patron or the original location of the panel (see below).

[page 124]

**Fig. 10**
Detail of punch marks in an angel’s halo in the panel in Christ Church (fig. 3). OXFORD © By permission of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford

Attribution and Date

Richard Offner described the Coronation of the Virgin as ‘Close to the Assistant of Daddi’,²⁶ and attributed the Christ Church Four Musical Angels to the ‘Assistant of Daddi’.²⁷ Steinweg, unable to reconcile the innovative features of the National Gallery/Christ Church painting with a follower of Daddi, considered it to fall within the influence of early Andrea Orcagna.²⁸

Subsequent to its association with the London Coronation, James Byam Shaw catalogued the Four Musical Angels merely as Florentine School 1340–50.²⁹ However, he drew attention to the close resemblance of the London and Oxford panels to the Santa Maria Novella Coronation, attributed by Offner to the Assistant of Daddi,³⁰ and, like Offner,³¹ he related the angels playing portative organs to the angels in the San Pancrazio altar piece, which originally stood on the high altar of the Duomo in Florence.³² Byam Shaw suggested that if Andrea Orcagna was Daddi’s pupil, the painting could be the work of the young Orcagna.

Modern scholars tend to accept that the works attributed by Offner to the Assistant of Daddi are in fact late works by Daddi himself, with workshop collaboration, and the London Coronation of the Virgin is now accepted as autograph,³³ for example by Miklós Boskovits.³⁴

Gaudenz Freuler and Angelo Tartuferi, who both consider the National Gallery/Christ Church painting to be autograph, discuss it in relation to the San Pancrazio altar piece and the Accademia Coronation from Santa Maria Novella. Freuler considers the Santa Maria Novella painting to be close to the San Pancrazio altar piece, dated to a few years before 1338 by Boskovits,³⁵ and therefore dates the National Gallery/Christ Church painting to about 1340.³⁶ Tartuferi, who dates the San Pancrazio altar piece to about 1340, dates the Santa Maria Novella altar piece to about 1340–5, relating it to that from San Giorgio a Ruballa (London, Courtauld Institute Art Galleries) signed by Daddi and dated 1348; he dates the National Gallery/Christ Church painting to about 1345.³⁷

Establishing the relative chronology of NG 6599 and the Santa Maria Novella altar piece is complicated by the poor condition of the latter and by the extent of workshop participation. It is possible that the patron of NG 6599 asked for a copy of the Santa Maria Novella altar piece in modo et forma. On the other hand, if NG 6599 can be identified as one of the two documented altar pieces of 1340 and 1341 by Daddi in the church of Santa Maria a Quarto, near Florence (see under Original Location), then it must presumably have preceded the Santa Maria Novella altar piece.

According to Erling Skaug, the punches in NG 6599 were being used by Daddi in the early 1340s.³⁸ The punchwork of the National Gallery/Christ Church painting and the Santa Maria Novella altar piece relates the two works closely, although the stem of roses and leaves in the Virgin’s halo is more elaborate in the latter,³⁹ the pattern in NG 6599 being closer to that of Saint Francis’s halo in the Santa Maria Novella altar piece. One of Daddi’s apparently unique punch marks is found in both works: two of the angels’ haloes in the Christ Church panel and the halo of San Crescenzio(?) in the Santa Maria Novella polyptych⁴⁰ are punched with a distinctive monster punch (fig. 10) which is exclusive to Daddi and his workshop. It is first found in his Assumption of the Virgin from Prato (now in the Lehman Collection, New York), documented 1337–8.⁴¹

One of the main differences between NG 6599 and the Santa Maria Novella altar piece is in the pattern of the Virgin’s garments. In the Santa Maria Novella altar piece the pattern is arranged in vertical lines, making no concessions to folds in the fabric, whereas in NG 6599 the pattern crosses the folds but follows a sweeping curve around her body, conferring movement and three‐dimensionality to the figure, and thus suggesting a more sophisticated approach. One possible explanation could be that the two altar pieces were intended for different settings, the Santa Maria Novella altar piece designed for the spacious Dominican church with a sometimes distant viewpoint, NG 6599 perhaps for a smaller and more intimate setting with a close‐up viewpoint; alternatively, it is possible that Daddi left the final mordant gilding in the Santa Maria Novella altar piece to a member of his workshop, but executed that of NG 6599 himself.⁴²

Original Location

It is impossible to be sure of the original location of NG 6599. The presence of Saint John the Baptist in its companion panel indicates Florence or its environs. The subjects of the two lost paintings signed by Bernardo Daddi that were in Santa Maria a Quarto, near Florence, one in the choir and one on the high altar,⁴³ are not described in the church’s records, but it cannot be ruled out that one of them could have been the National Gallery/Christ Church painting. Santa Maria a Quarto was in the parish of Santo Stefano in Pane,⁴⁴ which could explain the presence of Saint Stephen. If NG 6599 was indeed on the high altar, then it is likely to have been a polyptych rather than an autonomous panel.

[page 125]

Exhibited

Lugano‐Castagnola 1991, Villa Favorita, Thyssen‐Bornemisza Foundation, Manifestatori delle cose miracolose. Arte Italiana del ’300 e ’400 da Collezioni in Svizzera e nel Liechtenstein, 7 April – 30 June (62). London 2005–6, National Gallery, Reunions: bringing early Italian paintings back together, 12 November–29 January. Oxford 2006, Christ Church, 11 February–9 April.

Provenance

Collection of Horatio Granville Murray‐Stewart (1834–1904), whose collection was sold at Robinson & Fisher in 1904, at which date almost certainly acquired by Herbert Horne (1864–1916), Florence;⁴⁵ J. Pierpont Morgan Jr, Wall Hall, Aldenham, Herts, his deceased sale, London, Christie’s, 31 March 1944, lot 136 (as ‘Nardo Orcagna’), bought by Drey;⁴⁶ Mrs M.H. Drey; entered the collection of Heinz Kisters, Meersburg (Lake of Constance) and then Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, 1955,⁴⁷ thence by inheritance to his widow and son; sold Sotheby’s, Old Master Paintings, London, 7 July 2004, lot 38. Bought with a grant from the American Friends of the National Gallery, London, made possible by Sir Paul Getty’s endowment, 2004.

**Fig. 11**
*The Coronation of the Virgin*, thirteenth‐century French. Ivory. Paris, Musée du Louvre (inv. OA58, OA3921, OA3922). PARIS Musée du Louvre, Paris © RMN, Paris /Photo Jean‐Gilles Berizzi

[page 126]

Notes

1. Although Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. VIII, 1958, p. 150, says the black lines are modern, the fact that they have been painted within incised lines confirms that they are original. Lisa Monnas has pointed out to me that they would have been crowned with small finials, probably echoing those of the frame, as in the thrones depicted in Daddi’s small‐scale triptychs, for example the Bigallo triptych of 1333 (for which see Boskovits and Neri Lusanna, Corpus. The Works of Bernardo Daddi, Section III, Vol. III, 1989, pl. VII) and the large‐scale so‐called San Pancrazio polyptych (pl. XIV). (Back to text.)

2. Di Nepi, Roy and Billinge 2007, pp. 15–16, and p. 24, note 50. (Back to text.)

3. Ibid. , p. 16, fig. 5 and pl. 19. For the painting in Siena see Torriti 1980, cat. 73, p. 230. The Daddesque frame must have been made after 1944, when the painting was sold at Christie’s (see Provenance) still in a nineteenth‐century Florentine frame. (Back to text.)

4. For a full discussion of the technique see Di Nepi, Roy and Billinge 2007, pp. 4–25. (Back to text.)

5. Di Nepi, Roy and Billinge 2007, p. 11, fig. 3. (Back to text.)

6. Ibid. , p. 12. (Back to text.)

7. Roy in ibid. , p. 10, for lead white detected beneath the drapery of the Virgin, the cloth of honour, Christ’s garments, and tinted with a little azurite in the tiled pavement in the Christ Church panel. (Back to text.)

8. Steinweg 1961, pp. 122–7. (Back to text.)

9. Already Offner (Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, p. 116, note 1) had suggested that the fragment could have come from a Coronation of the Virgin, although he considered a Madonna and Child more likely, presumably because of the presence of the tiny saints. He identified the figure on the right as a bishop saint. Saint Stephen is often shown carrying a banner, for example in an illumination by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci (illustrated in Freuler, Corpus, 1997, pl. XLI¹⁹). (Back to text.)

10. The painting entered the Christ Church collection as a Fox‐Strangways Gift in 1828. See Byam Shaw 1967, pp. 31–3. According to Offner (Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, p. 116, note 2), this was one of the pictures collected by the Hon. W.T.H. Fox‐Strangways (1795–1865) during his years of residence in Florence (1825–8), citing Borenius 1916, pp. 10–11. The reconstruction in Boskovits et al. , Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, p. 277, pl. XXIV, shows too much missing between the two panels. (Back to text.)

11. See Di Nepi, Roy and Billinge 2007, p. 18, pl. 23. The panel from Christ Church was brought to the National Gallery for technical examination on 7, 8 and 9 March 2005 prior to its exhibition in Reunions: bringing early Italian paintings back together, 12 November 2005 to 29 January 2006. (Back to text.)

12. Steinweg 1961, p. 127. (Back to text.)

13. Steinweg 1961, p. 126. She reconstructed the whole panel as measuring 150 × 70 cm plus the supposed trefoil ( ibid. , note 15). The trefoil with the Blessing Redeemer (20.4 × 21.7 cm) attributed by Richard Offner to the circle of the Assistant of Daddi, formerly in the Landesmuseum, Gotha (Offner Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, p. 138 and pl. XXIX; sold Sotheby’s, 9 June 1932, p. 43, lot 111; now Florence, private collection), appears to be too large in scale to belong with NG 6599. According to Boskovits, Labriola and Rodio (Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, pp. 324–6) it was in 1933 in the Filpoldi Menarini Collection, Rome, thence in a private collection in Florence, and belongs with four other similar panels showing the four Evangelists (pp. 327–32, pls XXIX and XXIX^2–5); the panels are described as circle of the Assistant of Daddi (wrongly given as Gaddi on p. 321). See further Enrica Neri Lusanna in Boskovits 1993a, cat. 10, pp. 52–7. (Back to text.)

14. Boskovits, Corpus, Section III, Vol. IV, Florence, rev. edn 1991, p. 330, note 1. The Paris panel does not share any of its punch marks with NG 6599 or its associated panel in Christ Church. See the chart of Bernardo Daddi’s punches by Skaug 1994, II, 5.3. (Back to text.)

15. Examples of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with a quasi predella showing the Annunciation are the Virgin and Child Enthroned by the Maestro di Greve (Florence, Uffizi) and the panel in Santa Maria Maggiore showing the Virgin and Child Enthroned with the Annunciation and the Three Marys at the Sepulchre, for which see Ciatti and Frosinini 2003, p. 47, fig. 3. See also Boskovits, Labriola and Tartuferi, Corpus, Section I, Vol. I, 1993, pp. 274–81, and pl. XI ff., and pp. 570–88, pl. XLIXff.; and Tartuferi 2007, pp. 26–8 (ill. pp. 27–8). Tartuferi dates the Uffizi panel to about 1212. (Back to text.)

16. Although NG 6599 is compared by Cecilia Scalella to a very similar Coronation of the Virgin (Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Collezione Carrand, no. 2009), of similar dimensions to NG 6599 (138.0 × 79.0 cm), which she attributes to the Master of the Christ Church Coronation who was active around 1350–80 (Scalella 2001, pp. 117–30, esp. p. 120), and which was said by Luisa Marcucci (1965, cat. 51, pp. 90–2) to have been the central panel of a polyptych or more likely a triptych, the Carrand panel is in fact iconographically closer to the Santa Maria Novella polyptych (see fig. 9), particularly in the depiction of the crown, which has a conical centre. (Back to text.)

17. For the altar piece in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, by the Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece, now identified as Puccio di Simone, see Shapley 1979, I, pp. 383–6, and II, pl. 276, where it is attributed to Puccio di Simone and Allegretto Nuzi; see also Boskovits et al. , Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, pp. 394–402, pls XXXVII^1–4, as Master of the Fabriano Altarpiece and Allegretto Nuzi. Particularly interesting is the fact that Saint Anthony Abbot appears twice, both in the large‐scale side panel and diminutive in the central panel. Also by Puccio di Simone is the example in the Oratorio di San Pietro, Petrognano (Barberino Valdelsa), for which see Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, pp. 217–19, pl. LI (also Boskovits et al. , Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, pp. 476–82. pls L^1–5); and the example in San Donnino, Certaldo (Fremantle 1975, fig. 169). An example attributed to Jacopo di Cione and dated 1383, originally from SS. Apostoli, Florence, is now in the Uffizi (no. 8607), for which see Fremantle 1975, fig. 334. (Back to text.)

18. Boskovits et al. , Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001 (rev. edn of Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947), p. 278, N². Frinta (1989) 1993, p. 33, note 5, says two standing saints in an English private collection, also featuring the monster punch mark (for which see note 41 below), belong with NG 6599. These are presumably the two half‐length saints, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Peter (formerly in the Leatham Collection, London; see Boskovits, Corpus, Section III, Vol. IV, rev. edn 1991, pl. LV, pp. 407–10). Although the monster punch mark does indeed feature in the halo of Saint John the Evangelist (see Skaug 1994, II, chart 5.3), this is not enough to link the two saints with NG 6599, despite the fact that they too were in an English collection, having been sold out of the collection of the Revd Walter Bromley Davenport in 1863 (as by Taddeo Gaddi; see Christie Manson and Woods, 12–13 June 1863, as noted in Boskovits, Corpus, Section III, Vol. IV, rev. edn 1991, p. 408). They are proportionally wrong for NG 6599. In fact they are more likely to have been on either side of a half‐length Virgin and Child, even if they do not belong with the panel in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, as suggested by Zeri (1976, cat. 4, pp. 8–9), but doubted by Boskovits (Corpus, Section III, Vol. IV, 1991, p. 342, N¹ and p. 408, N³). (Back to text.)

19. See Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, pp. 243–50. (Back to text.)

20. Jacopo da Voragine, Legenda Aurea, ed. Maggioni 1998, II, p. 782; The Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, II, pp. 79–80. The Coronation of the Virgin first appears in Italian art in connection with the Assumption, for example in the Siena window of 1287 attributable to Duccio (see the exh. cat. Duccio 2003, cat. 26, pp. 166ff.). (Back to text.)

21. For which see Boskovits in the exh. cat. Giotto. Bilancio critico 2000, cat. 27, pp. 187–91; Giorgia Corsi in the exh. cat. Giotto e il Trecento 2009, cat. 16, pp. 173–5. (Back to text.)

22. Fremantle 1975, p. 91, figs 177 and 178; for the side panels with standing saints, now in Parma, Galleria Nazionale, which flanked Puccio’s Coronation of the Virgin (formerly Cenami‐Spada Collection, present whereabouts unknown), see Silvia Giorgi in Schianchi 1997, cat. 52, pp. 46–7. (Back to text.)

23. For this sculpture see Koechlin 1924, I, pp. 57–8, II, p. 16. For this type of influence see Seidel 2007, pp. 45–158. (Back to text.)

24. Levi d’Ancona 1977, pp. 332–40, esp. p. 339. (Back to text.)

25. See Bertani in Bertani and Vervat 2000, p. 17, and the illustration opposite p. 9. For the documents of 1347 concerning the Orsanmichele painting see Zervas 1996, p. 27, doc. 12a. A crude version of the pattern appears in works by Puccio di [page 127]Simone; see, for example, the floor textile in the signed polyptych in the Accademia, Florence, recently restored (see Tartuferi and Parenti 2005, cat. 1, pp. 42–5; cat. 4, pp. 52–3; also p. 18, fig. 6). (Back to text.)

26. Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. VIII, 1958, p. 150 (then in the Kisters Collection). The assertion by Freuler in the exh. cat. Manifestatori delle cose miracolose 1991 (cat. 62, p. 168), repeated in Sotheby’s 2004 catalogue (pp. 128–9), that Raimond van Marle in 1924 attributed the Coronation of the Virgin to Jacopo di Cione (Van Marle, Vol. III, 1924, p. 508, note 1) is incorrect, since he could not have been referring to NG 6599. Van Marle cites Osvald Sirén without giving a publication reference. Sirén 1917, I, p. 277, describes the ‘Coronation of the Virgin and a number of saints’ with the Kleinberger Galleries, New York. Since the Christ Church panel had by this date been separated from the main panel, leaving only the fragmentary saints which had been painted out, NG 6599 cannot have been the painting referred to by Van Marle. Katherine Baetjer kindly searched the Kleinberger stock books, discovering only one panel fitting the description, which Laurence Kanter (verbal communication) has identified as being in the Fogg Art Museum, Boston. (Back to text.)

27. Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, pp. 115–16, pl. XXIV. (Back to text.)

28. Steinweg 1961, p. 127. See also Berenson 1932, p. 403; Berenson 1963, I, p. 163; and Fremantle 1975, p. 145, fig. 291, for an attribution to Orcagna. (Back to text.)

29. Byam Shaw 1967, pp. 31–3. (Back to text.)

30. Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, pp. 105–16, pl. XXII; republished by Boskovits et al. , Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, pp. 257–72, with up‐to‐date bibliography. (Back to text.)

31. Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 1947, p. 115. (Back to text.)

32. See Padoa Rizzo 1993, pp. 211–22. (Back to text.)

33. See Sotheby’s, Old Master Paintings, 7 July 2004, p. 124. (Back to text.)

34. Boskovits in the introductory essay in Boskovits and Neri Lusanna, Corpus, Section III, Vol. III, republished Florence 1989, p. 45, note 52, where he deduces the influence of Andrea Pisano’s sculpture in the ‘smiling’ serenity of Daddi’s mature works such as NG 6599, and pp. 72 and 81 (where it is listed under ‘Further works attributed to Bernardo Daddi’). See also Boskovits et al. , Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, pp. 278–80, with an up‐to‐date bibliography, where the Christ Church panel and NG 6599 are still listed as by an ‘Assistant of Bernardo Daddi’. (Back to text.)

35. Boskovits 1975, p. 208, note 22. (Back to text.)

36. Freuler in the exh. cat. Manifestatori delle cose miracolose 1991, cat. 62, pp. 168–70, and p. 277. (Back to text.)

37. Tartuferi 2000a, pp. 24 and 58; Tartuferi in Boskovits and Tartuferi 2003, cat. 5, pp. 53–60. (Back to text.)

38. Skaug (2005) 2008, p. 87. (Back to text.)

39. In the Santa Maria Novella altar piece the Virgin is being crowned with a conical crown which was popular later in the century (for example, see in this catalogue NG 569.1, p. 52, and NG 568, p. 220). Daddi and his workshop and followers painted numerous small‐scale versions of the Coronation of the Virgin at the centre of small tabernacles, all showing the Virgin being crowned with a conical crown; e.g. that in the Lindenau Museum, Altenburg, by Daddi himself (see Angelo Tartuferi in the exh. cat. Dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau‐Museum di Altenburg 2005, cat. 9, pp. 71–2), and those in Berlin and in Turin Pinacoteca attributed by Offner (Corpus, ed. Boskovits, Section III, Vol. IV, 1991, pp. 273–80 and 293–6) to a close follower of Daddi. (Back to text.)

40. Tartuferi 2000a, p. 58, fig. 60, and p. 59, note 15. (Back to text.)

41. See Pope‐Hennessy and Kanter 1987, cat. 23, pp. 48–51, esp. p. 50. Erling Skaug points out that the monster punch has been stamped first upside‐down and then the right way up, alternating all around the halo in the Prato panel; then in the Christ Church panel it appears upside‐down and the right way respectively; in the Santa Maria Novella altar piece it is used the right way up continuously (Skaug 1994, I, p. 112, and note 181). For the monster punch see also Frinta 1965, p. 262. Frinta (1989) 1993, pp. 19–20, notes its use as a painted motif in Ugolino’s Santa Croce altar piece (see p. 451 of this catalogue, fig. 20) and elsewhere. It occurs on the binding of the book held by Saint Lawrence in the painting by Daddi in the Accademia, Florence (Boskovits and Tartuferi 2003, p. 76, fig. 26. A similar motif is used extensively on the silvered frame of Andrea di Cione’s altar piece of the Pentecost (Florence, Accademia). For the motif in metalwork see Cioni 1996, esp. p. 74, fig. 42. (Back to text.)

42. Daddi painted another altar piece for Santa Maria Novella, the Virgin and Child with Saints Peter, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist and Matthew, for the altar of the so‐called Spanish Chapel, signed and dated 1344, which seems to have extensive workshop collaboration, although again compromised by its condition. See Tartuferi 2000a, p. 55, fig. 57. (Back to text.)

43. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Sepoltuario Strozziane, Col. XXVI, 170, carta 81v and carta 166v; cited by Offner, Corpus, Section III, Vol. III, 1930a, p. 2. For Santa Maria a Quarto see Carocci 1881, p. 289, where he records that the local families were the Rinuccini, Canigiani and Banchi, who benefited the church, and that ‘l’attuale parroco ha raccolta una copiosa galleria di quadri’; and Carocci (1881) 1907, II, p. 47, where he states that ‘il patronato della chiesa … fu sempre riservato al popolo’, but that the families Del Bene and Rosati founded the high altar and side altars. Santa Maria a Quarto is very near San Giorgio a Ruballa (Bagno a Ripoli), which was under the patronage of the Bardi 1330–1450 (Carocci 1881, p. 288) and for which Daddi and his workshop painted a polyptych (now London, Courtauld Galleries), probably completed by his workshop after he died in 1348. See Boskovits and Neri Lusanna, Corpus, Section III, Vol. III, 1989, pp. 324–49. The church of Santa Maria a Quarto, which is first mentioned in a document of 1224, was much rebuilt in 1845, and again in 1930, and none of the paintings was there originally. See del Bravo 1994. (Back to text.)

44. See Tosi 1892, p. 3. (Back to text.)

45. Information from Caroline Elam, who has kindly drawn attention to two entries in Charles Ricketts’ Diary of 1904 (London, British Library, Add. MS 58102, f. 27r): on Thursday 12 May Ricketts went to Robinson and Fisher, who had ‘a most interesting set of Italian pictures skied’, and thus too high up for him to examine properly, but he noted ‘a Coronation of [the] Virgin (Giotesque)’ (sic); on Friday 13 May, a ‘Day of great excitement’, Ricketts went to the sale at Robinson and Fisher where ‘had Horne not turned up I should have bought a fine Coronation of [the] Virgin round Orcagna or Gadi (sic) … Horne warned me off the Coronation.’ Ricketts bought three pictures. Two of them are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: the Niccolò di Pietro Gerini Madonna and Child, and the Florentine school, early fifteenth‐century Madonna and Child (Goodison and Robertson 1967, no. 2078, pp. 59–60, and no. 1987, pp. 54–5). David Scrase has kindly confirmed that the seal with the griffin sergeant and pelican in its piety (see fig. 1) is indeed that of Horatio Granville Murray‐Stewart, since it is found on both no. 2078 and no. 1987, together with his book plate bearing the same crest. Caroline Elam suggests that Horne warned Ricketts off the Coronation of the Virgin because he was buying it himself. A number of receipts of Horne’s purchases exist (see Morozzi 1988, nos 82, 83, 84). However, Dottoressa Elisabetta Nardinocchi kindly informs me that there is none relating to the Coronation of the Virgin, but that this is not significant since not all the items in Horne’s collection correspond with surviving receipts. The Saint Stephen by Giotto in the Horne Collection, also from the collection of Horatio Granville Murray‐Stewart, was also bought at the Robinson and Fisher sale in 1904, for £9. 5s. (see Bertani et al. 2001, p. 16). (Back to text.)

46. NG 6599 almost certainly came from the collection of the famous collector John Pierpont Morgan (d. 1913), since, according to Christine Nelson, Drue Heinz Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, his son J. Pierpont Morgan Jr is not known to have purchased any paintings (see Di Nepi, Roy and Billinge 2007, p. 23, note 17). (Back to text.)

47. Boskovits, Labriola and Rodio, Corpus, Section III, Vol. V, 2001, p. 278, where it is stated that it came into the Kisters Collection ‘presumably by way of a Scottish private collection’, presumably referring to the collection of Horatio Granville Murray‐Stewart (see above). (Back to text.)

List of archive references cited

Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Sepoltuario Strozziane, Col. XXVI, 170, carta 81v and carta 166v
London, British Library, Add. MS 58102, f. 27r: Charles Ricketts, Charles Ricketts’ Diary, 1904

List of references cited

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Berenson 1932: Berenson, Bernard, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places, Oxford 1932 (1953)
Berenson 1963: Berenson, Bernard, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places. Florentine School (revised lists of 1932), 2 vols, London 1963
Bertani, Nardinocchi, Paolini, Sanna Randaccio and Trotta 2001: Bertani, Licia, Elisabetta Nardinocchi, Claudio Paolini, V. Sanna Randaccio and Giampaolo Trotta, Il Museo Horne. Una casa fiorentina del Rinascimento, Florence 2001
Bertani and Vervat 2000: Bertani, Licia and Muriel Vervat, eds, La Madonna di Bernardo Daddi negli ‘horti’ di San Michele, Florence and Livorno 2000
Borenius 1916: Borenius, Tancred, Pictures by the Old Masters in the Library of Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford 1916
Boskovits 1975: Boskovits, Miklós, La Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370–1400, Florence 1975
Boskovits 1991: Offner, Richard, additional material, notes and bibliography by M. Boskovits, The Fourteenth Century. Bernardo Daddi, his shop and following, continued under the direction of M. Boskovits and M. Gregori, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Offner, Richard and Klara Steinweg eds, Section III, IV, new edition, Florence 1991
Boskovits 1993: Boskovits, Miklós, ed., The Martello Collection. Further paintings, drawings and miniatures 13th‐18th century, Florence 1993
Boskovits 2000: Boskovits, Miklós, ‘Giotto: un artista poco conosciuto?’, in Giotto. Bilancio critico, ed. A. Tartuferi (exh. cat. Galleria dell’Accademia), Florence 2000, 75–94
Boskovits, Labriola and Rodio 2001: Boskovits, Miklós, assisted by Ada Labriola and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, The Fourteenth Century. Bernardo Daddi and his Circle, Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, V, with additional material, notes and bibliography, Florence 2001
Boskovits, Labriola and Tartuferi 1993: Boskovits, Miklós, assisted by Ada Labriola and Angelo Tartuferi, The Origins of Florentine Painting 1100–1270, trans. by R.E. Wolf, Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section I, I, Florence 1993
Boskovits and Neri Lusanna 1989: Offner, Richard, Klara Steinweg, additional material, notes and bibliography by Miklós Boskovits, in collaboration with Enrica Neri Lusanna, The Fourteenth Century. The Works of Bernardo Daddi, continued under the direction of M. Boskovits and M. Gregori, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Offner, Richard and Klara Steinweg eds, Section III, III, new edition, Florence 1989
Boskovits and Parenti 2005: Boskovits, M. and D. Parenti, eds, Da Bernardo Daddi al Beato Angelico a Botticelli. Dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau‐Museum di Altenburg (exh. cat. Museo di San Marco, Florence, 22 March–4 June 2005), Florence 2005
Boskovits and Tartuferi 2003: Boskovits, Miklós and Angelo Tartuferi, eds, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, Dipinti, 1, Florence 2003
Byam Shaw 1967: Byam Shaw, James, Paintings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, Oxford 1967
Carocci 1881/1907: Carocci, Guido, I Dintorni di Firenze, Florence 1881, 1907, 2
Ciatti and Frosinini 2003: Ciatti, Marco and Cecilia Frosinini, eds, ‘Immagine Antica’. The Madonna and Child of Santa Maria Maggiore in Florence. Studies and Restoration, Florence 2003
Cioni 1996: Cioni, Elisabetta, ‘Per Giacomo di Guerrino, orafo e smaltista senese’, Prospettiva, 1996, 83/84, 56–79
Corsi 2009: Corsi, Giorgia, in Giotto e il Trecento. ‘Il più Sovrano Maestro stato in dipintura’, ed. A. Tomei (exh. cat. Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome, 6 March – 29 June 2009), Milan 2009, cat. 16, 173–5
Del Bravo 1994: Bravo, Fabio del, La chiesa di Santa Maria a Quarto e la sua gente, Florence 1994
Di Nepi, Roy and Billinge 2007: Di Nepi, Simona, Ashok Roy and Rachel Billinge, ‘Bernardo Daddi’s Coronation of the Virgin: the reunion of two long‐separated panels’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 2007, 28, 4–25
Fremantle 1975: Fremantle, Richard, Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: a Guide to Painting in and near Florence, 1300 to 1450, London 1975
Freuler 1991: Freuler, G., ‘Manifestatori delle cose miracolose’. Arte Italiana del ’300 e ’400 da Collezioni in Svizzera e nel Liechtenstein (exh. cat. Thyssen‐Bornemisza Foundation, Villa Favorita, Lugano‐Castagnola, 7 April – 30 June 1991), Lugano 1991
Freuler 1997: Freuler, Gaudenz, Tendencies of Gothic in Florence: Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Boskovits, M. ed., Florence 1997, Section IV, VII, II
Frinta 1965: Frinta, Mojmír, ‘An investigation of the punched decoration of mediaeval Italian and non‐Italian panel paintings’, Art Bulletin, 1965, 47, 261–5
Frinta 1993: Frinta, Mojmír, ‘Observations on the Trecento and early Quattrocento workshop’, in The Artist’s Workshop, ed. P.M. Lukehart (Proceedings of the Symposium of 10–11 March 1989), Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium papers, XXII, National Gallery of Art, Washington, New Haven and London 1993, 19–20 (Studies in the History of Art, 38)
Giorgi 1997: Giorgi, Silvia, in Galleria Nazionale di Parma. Catalogo delle opere dall’Antico al Cinquecento, ed. Lucia Fornari Schianchi, Milan 1997, cat. 52, 46–7
Goodison and Robertson 1967: Goodison, J.W. and G.H. Robertson, Catalogue of Paintings in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, vol. 2, Italian Schools, Cambridge 1967
Jacopo da Voragine 1998: Maggioni, Giovanni Paolo, ed., Iacopo da Varazze. Legenda Aurea, 2 vols, 2nd edn, Florence 1998
Koechlin 1924: Koechlin, Raymond, Les ivoires gothiques français, Paris 1924
Levi d’Ancona 1977: Levi d’Ancona, Mirella, The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting, Florence 1977
Lusanna 1993: Lusanna, Enrica Neri, in The Martello Collection. Further paintings, drawings and miniatures 13th‐18th century, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Florence 1993, cat. 10, 52–7
Marcucci 1965: Marcucci, Luisa, Gallerie Nazionali di Firenze. Cataloghi dei musei e gallerie d’Italia. I dipinti toscani del secolo XIV, Rome 1965
Morozzi 1988: Morozzi, Luisa, ed., Le Carte Archivistiche della Fondazione Herbert P. Horne: inventario, Milan 1988
Offner 1930: Offner, Richard, The Fourteenth Century, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, III, New York 1930
Offner 1947: Offner, Richard, The Fourteenth Century, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, V, New York 1947
Offner 1958: Offner, Richard, The Fourteenth Century, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, VIII, New York 1958
Padfield et al. 2002: Padfield, J., D. Saunders, J. Cupitt and R. Atkinson, ‘Improvements in the Acquisition and Processing of X‐ray Images of Paintings’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 2002, 23, 62–75
Padoa Rizzo 1993: Padoa Rizzo, Anna, ‘Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli, il “Polittico Rucellai” e il Polittico di San Pancrazio di Bernardo Daddi’, Studi di Storia dell’Arte, 1993, 4, 211–22
Pope‐Hennessy and Kanter 1987: Pope‐Hennessy, John, assisted by Laurence B. Kanter, The Robert Lehman Collection, 1987 (Italian Paintings. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Princeton, 1)
Saunders et al. 2006: Saunders, David, Rachel Billinge, John Cupitt, Nick Atkinson and Haida Liang, ‘A New Camera for High‐Resolution Infrared Imaging of Works of Art’, Studies in Conservation, 2006, 51, 277–90
Scalella 2001: Scalella, Cecilia, ‘Contributi alla pittura fiorentina del secondo Trecento: il “Maestro dell’Incoronazione della Christ Church Gallery”’, Arte Cristiana, 2001, 89, 803, 117–30
Schianchi 1997: Schianchi, Lucia Fornari, ed., Galleria Nazionale di Parma. Catalogo delle opere dall’Antico al Cinquecento, Milan 1997
Seidel 2007: Seidel, Max, ‘La scoperta del sorriso. Vie di diffusione del gotico francese (Italia centrale, 1315–25)’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 2007, 51, 45–158
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Sirén 1917: Sirén, Osvald, Giotto and some of his followers, 2 vols, Harvard and London 1917
Skaug 1994: Skaug, Erling, Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico, Oslo 1994, 1 and 2
Skaug 2008: Skaug, Erling, ‘Bernardo Daddi’s chronology and workshop structure, as defined by technical criteria’, in Da Giotto a Botticelli : pittura fiorentina tra gotico e Rinascimento, Francesca Pasut and Johannes Tripps, 2008, 79–96
Steinweg 1961: Steinweg, Klara, ‘Rekonstruktion einer orcagnesken Marienkrönung’, Mitteilung des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1961, 10, 122–7
Tartuferi 2000a: Tartuferi, Angelo, Bernardo Daddi. L’Incoronazione di Santa Maria Novella. Galleria dell’Accademia, Livorno 2000
Tartuferi 2005: Tartuferi, Angelo, in Da Bernardo Daddi al Beato Angelico a Botticelli. Dipinti fiorentini del Lindenau‐Museum di Altenburg, eds M. Boskovits and D. Parenti (exh. cat. Museo di San Marco, Florence, 22 March – 4 June 2005), Florence 2005, cat. 9, 71–2
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Tomei 2009: Tomei, A., ed., Giotto e il Trecento. ‘Il più Sovrano Maestro stato in dipintura’ (exh. cat. Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome, 6 March – 29 June 2009), 2 vols (I. I Saggi, II. Le Opere), Milan 2009
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Zeri 1976: Zeri, Federico, with condition notes by E.C.G. Packard, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, ed. U.E. McCraken, 2 vols, Baltimore 1976
Zervas 1996: Zervas, Diane, Orsanmichele. Documents 1336–1452, Modena 1996

List of exhibitions cited

London 1989–90: London, National Gallery, Art in the Making. Italian Painting before 1400, 29 November 1989–28 February 1990
London 2005–6: London, National Gallery, Reunions, 12 November 2005–29 January 2006
Lugano‐Castagnola 1991: Lugano‐Castagnola, Villa Favorita, Thyssen‐Bornemisza Foundation, Manifestatori delle cose miracolose. Arte Italiana del ’300 e ’400 da Collezioni in Svizzera e nel Liechtenstein, 7 April–30 June 1991

The Organisation and Method of the Catalogue

Sequence

The artists are listed in alphabetical order. Paintings are catalogued in chronological order under the artist’s name. Some artists are identified only as the master of a particular work, such as the Master of the Borgo Crucifix; others are known only through their association with a particular area, such as Pisa, Venice or Umbria.

Attribution

A painting is discussed under the artist’s name where the authorship is not considered to be in doubt. ‘Attributed to’ implies a certain measure of doubt.

Dimensions

Dimensions are given in centimetres; height is preceded by width.

Technical information and method

The paintings listed here, except Segna di Buonaventura’s Crucifix (NG 567), Spinello Aretino’s fresco (NG 1216.1) and Jacopo di Cione’s Crucifixion (NG 1468), have been re‐examined for this catalogue in the conservation studios. The paintings have been remeasured and examined with X‐radiography and infrared reflectography wherever possible.

The X‐radiographs were made using conventional X‐ray sensitive film sheets (30 × 40 cm, Kodak Industrex AA400), which have been scanned to produce 16‐bit mono TIFF digital images and finally assembled using software to produce a mosaic.¹ A complete survey of the paintings in infrared was made using a Hamamatsu C2400 vidicon system, equipped with a N2606‐06 vidicon tube, which is sensitive between 500 and 2200 nm (radiation shorter than 900 nm was excluded using a Kodak 87A filter). Where features of interest were identified these were then recorded subsequently, when it became available, with SIRIS or OSIRIS, the Gallery’s digital infrared imaging systems, equipped with InGaAs detectors sensitive between 900 and 1700 nm.² The paintings were examined with a Wild M650 stereo‐binocular operating microscope at magnifications between 6× and 40×. Photomicrographs were taken using a Zeiss Axiocam HrC mounted on the Wild microscope.

Occasionally references are made to X‐radiographs and infrared images which are not illustrated; this is because once these images are reduced to page size the information they contain is often no longer decipherable.

Technique and condition are discussed together since the condition of a painting is often, among other factors, the result of the techniques employed in its making.

Support

Descriptions of construction and carpentry are based on direct physical examination, infrared images and X‐radiographs. The support is assumed to be poplar unless otherwise stated. Where the wood has been identified positively, this is noted.

Medium

The medium of the paint is assumed to be egg tempera unless otherwise stated. For some of the works, analysis of the binding medium in paint samples has been carried out using Fourier transform infrared microscopy (FTIR) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), usually during earlier examinations or in conjunction with conservation treatment. The results are described in the individual catalogue entries and, where published, the reference is given. Some further analysis of samples from a few of the paintings has been carried out specifically for this catalogue.

Gilding and tooling

Information on gilding is presented before that on painting, in keeping with the order of execution. Mordant gilding and silvering are included in the discussion on gilding, despite being applied in the later stages, so that all the techniques of metal leaf decoration could be discussed together. The individual punches are described, but the reader is also referred to Erling Skaug’s catalogue published in 1994. The particular gilding technique used by the artists has generally been identified from examination of the surface of the painting with a stereomicroscope. In some cases samples were available from previous examinations and were re‐examined, or occasionally a new sample was taken, particularly where analysis of the metal leaf or investigation of the composition of a mordant was of interest. Where metal leaf has been identified, this has been confirmed with energy dispersive X‐ray analysis in the scanning electron microscope (SEM‐EDX).

Punch mark illustrations

Unfortunately, when printed, some photomicrographs that show depressions in a paint surface appear to the reader reversed. This is particularly disturbing with some images of punch marks in gilding which may seem to show raised pastiglia. This phenomenon is a result of the way the human brain interprets visual signals; expecting a pattern of shadows and highlights to have been caused by raised areas (which would be more usual in normal life), this is the message sent to the reader by the brain.

[page xxiii]

Pigments

Descriptions of the pigments for many of the paintings were available from earlier research carried out during the preparation for the 1989 exhibition Art in the Making: Italian Painting before 1400. Information also existed from studies of new acquisitions or from analysis carried out in support of conservation treatment. The paint samples that existed from earlier examinations were re‐examined with optical microscopy, SEM‐EDX and occasionally Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microscopy. A limited number of new samples were taken to address specific questions that arose during the research for the catalogue. The surface of the paintings was examined under a stereomicroscope wherever possible at magnifications of up to 40×. At this magnification many pigments can be identified with a reasonable degree of reliability, and these examinations greatly extended the information on pigments and pigment mixtures in areas of the paintings that were not sampled, and enabled the observations from samples to be correlated with the appearance of the painting itself.

Comments

As full an account as possible is given with regard to authorship, companion panels – particularly relevant for altar pieces – subject matter, iconography, original location, date, patronage and so on. The compiler has tried to make this information accessible to the lay reader as well as to the art historian. Inevitably there is a certain amount of speculation, but it is made clear where an argument is hypothetical. For ease of reference the comments are given subheadings, but their sequence varies according to the requirements of the argument.

Notes and references

1. X‐radiography and the associated scanning of the plates and processing were carried out by the photographic departments of the National Gallery. For a full description of the process see J. Padfield, D. Saunders, J. Cupitt and R. Atkinson, ‘Improvements in the ~~Acquisition and Processing~~ acquisition and processing of X‐ray images of paintings’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 23, 2002, pp. 62–75. (Back to text.)

2. For more details on SIRIS see D. Saunders, R. Billinge, J. Cupitt, N. Atkinson and H. Liang, ‘A new camera for high‐resolution infrared imaging of works of art’, Studies in Conservation, 51, 2006, pp. 277–90. (Back to text.)

About this version

Version 3, generated from files DG_2011__16.xml dated 06/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Entries for NG564, NG566, NG579.6-NG579.8, NG752, NG1139-NG1140 & NG1330, NG1147, NG1468, NG2927, NG3897, NG5360, NG6572-NG6573 and NG6599 marked for publication; citations for NG6583 altered to include update date.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version): https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAM-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version): https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E6W-000B-0000-0000
Chicago style: Gordon, Dillian. “NG 6599, The Coronation of the Virgin”. 2011, online version 3, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAM-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style: Gordon, Dillian (2011) NG 6599, The Coronation of the Virgin. Online version 3, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAM-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
MHRA style: Gordon, Dillian, NG 6599, The Coronation of the Virgin (National Gallery, 2011; online version 3, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAM-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 29 March 2025]

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The Coronation of the Virgin:Catalogue entry