Lorenzo Veneziano documented 1353–79
NG 3897 
The Madonna of Humility with Saints Mark and John the Baptist

Dillian Gordon, 2011

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

c. 1366–70

Egg tempera on wood, 31.3 × 57.5 cm.

The Virgin wears a blue cloak with a green lining embroidered with a gold floral pattern. She has a gold star on each shoulder and another on her head; a roundel at her neckline which is now barely visible may have shown a sunburst. Her pink dress is also patterned with gold. She wears a ring with a jewel on her right hand. She is suckling the Child, who wears an elaborate apricot‐coloured wrap, also with gold embroidery, over white swaddling clothes with gold stripes. Stippled into the gold background above her are twelve stars, and a crescent moon is at her feet. Below, on either side of her, is the inscription SC̄A/ MARIA D’LAUMI/LITADE (Holy Mary of Humility).¹ On the Virgin’s proper right is Saint Mark, carrying his Gospel and identified by the inscription ·S·/ MAR/CHUS (the M has been slightly altered by restoration); he wears a red robe and a pink cloak with a green lining. On her proper left is Saint John the Baptist, identified by the inscription ·S·/ ·IOHĒS·/ · B͞TI·; he wears a green cloak over a camel‐skin garment and is carrying a scroll inscribed ECCE/A(G?)N’/ DEI/ ECCE/ QUI/ TOLIS/ PECA/TA/ MVN/DI/ MIS/ERE/RE (‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Have mercy [upon us]’).²

Technical Notes

Panel structure and condition

Total size (excluding the outermost moulding of the frame all round, which is not original) 31.3 × 57.5 cm. Painted surface: central compartment, with rounded arch, c. 23.0 × 18.4 cm; side compartments, with pointed arches, each c. 23.0 × 12.0 cm. Each compartment has a cusped top.

The three compartments with their framework are on a single board of wood with a horizontal grain and a marked convex warp. X‐radiography (fig. 3) shows that the panel is extremely worm‐damaged.

The frame mouldings, which are typically Venetian, are original. X‐radiography reveals that within the spandrels between the arches were originally carved rosettes, which have been turned into roundels with filling and regilding.³

It was considered too risky to remove the outermost frame to inspect the edges, but there are no signs in the X‐radiograph to indicate that anything was ever attached to it, and it is likely that it was always an autonomous panel.

The back has been painted with brown, probably when the painting was in the collection of Henry Wagner (see below and NG 3375 (p. 438) et al. ). There are five labels on the back:

• 1. Henry J. Murcott, Picture Frame Manufacturer, 6 Endell Street, Long Acre, London W.C.
• 2. Two for the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester, 1857, Rev. J. F. Russell, Green 116.
• 3. Royal Academy, London, 1878 exhibition of Old Masters as Berna (sic) da Siena, Revd. John Fuller Russell, 4 Ormonde Terrace, Regents Park.
• 4. Exhibition of Early Italian Art, London, 1893–4, Berna da Siena, lent by Henry Wagner Esq., Reg. 97–11.

Painting condition and technique

Cleaned and restored in 1970.

The painted surface is generally in good condition. There is an area of damage at the bottom left‐hand corner in Saint Mark’s compartment. The gilding of the frame has been repaired.

The triangular indentations decorating the round and pointed arches and the outside frame moulding have traces of vermilion in them; the rest, including those in the capitals and spandrels, are painted with azurite.

A simple underdrawing outlining the folds of the drapery is visible with infrared reflectography (fig. 6). Some of the folds of the Virgin’s drapery were incised. Odd lines above the crescent moon may perhaps delineate the initial intentions for the fall of the drapery around the moon. After the composition had been sketched in, small adjustments were made to the drapery around Saint Mark’s right foot, to his hand, which was originally slightly higher up, and to Saint John, whose right foot was originally further forward and his left foot further to the right.

Unusually, changes were made to the figure of the Virgin at several stages during the production of the painting. After the figure had been drawn, the outlines were incised where they meet the gold, as was the practice in paintings with a gold background. However, after the background had already been water gilded and the rays incised around the Virgin, her entire outline, except for her head, was reduced in size so that extra gold had to be added all around, and in some places the rays extended (figs 4 and 6).

After the Virgin’s right hand had been painted, it was painted again, this time clutching the baby higher up. The [page 309][page 310] original position, with the hand more open, shows clearly in infrared reflectography (see fig. 6) because the green earth underpaint shows dark, while the new hand has no green underpaint, but a pink underlayer instead, and shows in the reflectogram in its present position thanks to black outlining (fig. 5).

The water gilding of the backgrounds is in reasonably good condition. The haloes have been executed with two single dot punches: a finer one for stippling and a coarser one in clusters of three around their circumferences. The curling motif in the halo of Saint Mark (fig. 7) has been incised and then punched with the fine punch. The Virgin’s halo has been stippled with densely packed straight lines around quatrefoil and circular shapes, the latter with a central dot. The Child’s halo has been incised with a cross, left plain, the intervening spaces decorated with stippled tendrils. Saint John’s halo alternates a six‐petal rosette with leaves, both motifs created by stippling with the very fine punch to emulate the effect of composite punches (fig. 8). Twelve stars have been stippled around the Virgin and the rays which surround her have been incised freehand.

The mordant gilding, applied on a greyish‐brown mordant, is in good condition and has been used for the Virgin’s inscription; to decorate the borders of robes; as a single edging line for the draperies; for the Virgin’s ring (see fig. 5); for the gold patterns on her pink dress, the green lining of her blue cloak (fig. 10), and the Child’s apricot‐coloured wrap; for the stripes on the Child’s white swaddling clothes; and for the decoration of Saint Mark’s book and the gold embroidery on the front of his robe. The moon at the Virgin’s feet and the three stars on her cloak – one at her forehead and one on each shoulder – have also been mordant gilded. The mordant‐gilded roundel on her neckline is damaged, but judging from other versions (see below) almost certainly showed a gold sunburst.

The flesh has a green underpaint and is often outlined with brown or black (figs 9 and 12).

The rich blue of the Virgin’s cloak has been painted with ultramarine over a lighter blue layer. Her dress was originally darker, but the red lake has faded. The distinctive green widely used throughout the painting has been created by mixing high‐quality azurite with yellow, probably an opaque yellow pigment, and white, and possibly a yellow lake.

The Child’s cloak has been painted with lead‐tin yellow highlights over an apricot‐coloured base which probably contains earth pigments.

Saint Mark’s red robe has been painted using vermilion, with red lake shadows and yellowish highlights; his pink cloak, lined with green, has been painted with red lake mixed with white, with black and blue added for the shadows. His book is yellow, with a diamond‐shaped decoration in blue, and black straps.

John the Baptist’s green cloak (see p. 305, fig. 1) has red lake shadows and yellow highlights; its lining has been painted with ultramarine mixed with white.

The vermilion used for the inscriptions identifying the saints is well preserved.

Attribution and Date

Although acquired as by Tomaso da Modena,⁴ NG 3897 is generally accepted as being by Lorenzo Veneziano, to whom it was first attributed by Evelyn Sandberg‐Vavalà in 1930.⁵ Pietro Toesca and Bernard Berenson agreed with the attribution, as did Martin Davies and Rodolfo Pallucchini.⁶ Luigi Coletti called it Giovanni da Bologna.⁷ Hans Gronau (oral communication, 1936) put it between Paolo Veneziano and Lorenzo Veneziano. Ferdinando Bologna ascribed it to the painter he names the Master of Arquà.⁸ Lionello Puppi attributed it to Jacobello del Bonomo (for whom see p. 272).⁹

Sandberg‐Vavalà dated NG 3897 between Lorenzo’s polyptych with the Annunciation signed and dated 1371 (Venice, Accademia) and the Virgin and Child formerly in San Francesco, Rieti (Paris, Louvre), signed and dated 1372.¹⁰ Cristina Guarnieri, probably correctly, places it slightly earlier, between the Proti polyptych of 1366 (Vicenza, Duomo) and the polyptych showing the Traditio Clavium (Venice, Museo Correr) dated 1370 (1369 Venetian style).¹¹

Iconography and Function

The iconography combines the Virgin of Humility, as identified in the inscription, with the celestial Woman described in the Apocalypse (Revelation 12:1) as ‘a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars’; it belongs with a type that was extremely popular in northern Italy, including Venice, from around 1355, as discussed by Millard Meiss.¹² When the Virgin’s hand was in its original position, the iconography would have been closer to a main prototype for the Madonna of Humility that is reflected in several versions of the subject; NG 3897 may possibly be related to the version that Meiss suggested was invented by Simone Martini.¹³ It is noteworthy, however, that apart from the Madonna of Humility in San Domenico Maggiore, Naples, generally attributed to the circle of, or a follower of, Simone Martini,¹⁴ the overwhelming majority of Sienese versions show the Child on the right, generally suckling the Virgin’s left breast, while north Italian painters show the Child on the left.¹⁵ In north Italian versions the Virgin of Humility is often shown seated on a rounded mound of earth, sometimes covered with flowers, which Margreet Mudde relates to the Latin for earth (humus).¹⁶

A marked feature which persists in many versions is that the Child’s feet are crossed one over the other, and the sole of his foot (fig. 12), which will be pierced with a nail at the Crucifixion, is exposed.¹⁷

The Madonna of Humility suckling the Child (fig. 11), sometimes with the sun as a brooch at her throat, was extremely common in the oeuvre of Lorenzo Veneziano and his workshop (see, for example, fig. 13).¹⁸

Although sometimes referred to as a predella, for instance by Pallucchini and Bologna and by Mauro Lucco,¹⁹ it is more likely that NG 3897 is complete in itself (see above) and was an autonomous devotional panel.²⁰ A similar panel of the Madonna of Humility in the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (fig. 14), with the Virgin suckling the Child and the moon at her feet, flanked by Saint Blaise and Saint Helen(?) introducing a male donor and a female lay donor respectively, attributed to the workshop of Lorenzo Veneziano and similarly judged to be an autonomous work,²¹ shows the likely type of patronal context of small devotional panels into which NG 3897 fits.²²[page 312] The presence of Saint Mark, patron saint of Venice, suggests that NG 3897 was painted for a Venetian patron, possibly someone whose name saint was John the Baptist. The Baptist’s text would have reminded the worshipper of the liturgy of the Mass, and emphasised his role: the Baptist often appears together with the Virgin as intercessor for mankind, particularly in scenes of the Last Judgement.²³

Exhibited

Manchester 1857, Art Treasures, lent by Revd J. F. Russell (label on back but not listed in either the provisional or the definitive catalogue). London 1878, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Old Masters, lent by Revd John Fuller Russell (200, as Berna da Siena; catalogue p. 38). London 1893–4, New Gallery, Exhibition of Early Italian Art from 1300 to 1550, lent by Henry Wagner (25, as Berna da Siena; catalogue p. 5).

Provenance

In the collection of the Revd J. Fuller Russell, where probably seen by Waagen;²⁴ sold at the Russell sale, Christie, Manson and Woods, 18 April 1885, lot 99, bought by Wagner. Presented by Henry Wagner, 1924.

Notes