Margarito d’Arezzo documented 1262
NG 564 
The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Scenes of the Nativity and the Lives of Saints

Dillian Gordon, 2011, updated November 2014

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

c. 1263–4(?)

Signed: MARGARIT[US] [?] DE’ ARITIO ME FECIT

(‘Margarito of Arezzo made me’)

Egg tempera on wood, 92.1 × 183.1 cm

Within the central mandorla the Virgin and Child are enthroned on a cushion on a lion‐headed throne; the Virgin touches the sole of the Child’s left foot with one hand; he is blessing and holding a scroll; on either side are flying angels swinging thuribles. At each corner of the mandorla is the symbol of one of the four Evangelists: top left, an angel for Matthew; top right, an eagle for John; bottom left, a lion for Mark; and bottom right, an ox for Luke. A black band with a stylised floral pattern encompasses the mandorla and another separates the upper and lower register of narrative scenes. The panel is framed by a plain gilded band decorated with raised roundels, with an inner brown‐painted border.

Each scene is bordered with red and identified by an inscription in blue (for the sources of the iconography see below).¹

Reading from left to right, along the top row:

• 1. The Nativity: inscribed DE PARTV VIRGINIS MARIE (‘concerning the childbirth of the Virgin Mary’) & ADNV̄TIATIOE PASTORVM (‘The annunciation to [literally ‘of’] the shepherds’).

  The Virgin reclines on a red cushion which is decorated at each end. The Child lies in a manger, with the ox and the ass behind. Joseph sits below. On either side of the hill angels are announcing the birth of Christ to two shepherds. Goats and sheep graze in the landscape.

• 2. Saint John the Evangelist in a Cauldron of Boiling Oil: inscribed HIC BEAT’ JOH̄ES EV̄G.A FERVORE OLEI LIBERATVR (‘Here blessed John the Evangelist is freed from the heat of the oil’).

  Saint John the Evangelist is being lifted by an angel from a cauldron of boiling oil, which is licked by flames that are being stoked by men with sticks on either side.

  Saint John had been placed in the cauldron at the order of the Roman Emperor Domitian outside the Latin Gate in Rome, but survived unharmed and was exiled to Patmos, where he wrote the Book of Revelation.

• 3. The Raising of Drusiana by Saint John the Evangelist: inscribed H^I SC̄S JOH̄ES EV̄G SVSCITAT DELVSIANAM (‘Here Saint John the Evangelist raises [or revives] Drusiana’).

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  On his return from Patmos, Saint John encountered a crowd carrying the body of Drusiana to be buried. He ordered them to undo the shroud and raised her from the bier as if she had been asleep rather than dead. A small brown cross is at the bier head and the scene is watched by a crowd carrying a cross.

• 4. The Temptation of Saint Benedict: inscribed H^I S̄. BN̄EDICT’ PIECIT SE Ī SPINAS FVGIĒS DIABOLI TĒTATIŌE (‘Here Benedict throws himself in the thorns, fleeing the temptation of the devil’).

  Saint Benedict throws himself into thorny bushes, watched by a figure warming his hands and feet in front of a fire.

  Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order, was at the Sacro Speco at Subiaco, where he was tempted by the thought of a beautiful woman he had seen in Rome; he conquered the temptation by rolling in brambles outside his cave.

  Reading from left to right, along the bottom row:

• 5. The Decapitation of Saint Catherine of Alexandria: inscribed H^I SC̄A CATTARINA SVSCEPIT MA[R] [?]TIRIV̄ & Ī MŌTE SINJ AB ĀG[E] [?]LIS E DLATA (‘Here Saint Catherine undergoes martyrdom and is carried up to Mount Sinai by angels’).

  Saint Catherine is being beheaded by a figure wearing a white and green wreath at the command of the ruler at the right, who carries a sceptre of authority; her head is picked up by an angel (fig. 7); the angel carries it in a cloth up the mountainside, where it is reunited with her bleeding body.

  Saint Catherine was beheaded after she had been tortured on a wheel (her proper attribute).

• 6. The Miracle of Saint Nicholas: inscribed H^I SC̄S NICOLAVS PRECEPIT NAVTIS VT VAS COL/TVM A DIABVLO Ī MARI PICERĒT (‘Here Saint Nicholas instructs the sailors to throw the vase obtained from the devil into the sea’).

  Saint Nicholas stands on the prow of a ship. On the left a woman in a boat hands a jug to a man, and on the right the same man pours the contents of the jug into the sea, causing the sea to burst into flames.

  The devil, disguised as a nun, had given a deadly oil to some pilgrims on their way to visit Saint Nicholas, with the request that they should anoint the walls of his house with it. Saint Nicholas appeared and warned them of the danger; they threw the oil into the sea, which burst into flames.

• 7. Saint Nicholas saves Three Innocent Men from Beheading: inscribed H^I SC̄S NICOLAVS LIBERAT CŌDĒNATOS (‘Here Saint Nicholas frees the condemned men’).

  Saint Nicholas is freeing three innocent men, kneeling blindfolded, from being beheaded.

• 8. The Miracle of Saint Margaret: inscribed H^I SC̄A MARGARITA … ORE … ERVPTIS / VISCERIBVS (‘Here Saint Margaret [having been swallowed] in the mouth [of a dragon escapes], its entrails having burst’).

  Saint Margaret is being swallowed by a two‐headed dragon with wings; she emerges from its stomach; a cross floats in the top left‐hand corner.

  When Saint Margaret was in prison, the devil, in the guise of a dragon, swallowed her; she shielded herself with the sign of a cross, the dragon burst and she emerged unscathed.

Technical Notes

Panel structure and condition

Height, including frame, 92.1 cm; height of original panel, without frame edge at base, 91.0 cm. Width, including frame, 183.1 cm; width of original panel, without frame edge, 182.0 cm. Thickness of panel, including frame, 5.0 cm; thickness of original panel, without frame, 2.8 cm. Height of painted surface 76.0 cm; width of painted surface 168.4 cm. Painted surface of each scene 26.0 × 25.0 cm.

The panel is made up of three horizontal boards, measuring 13.8 cm (top board), 37.5 cm (middle board) and 25.9 cm (bottom board). The left edge (seen from the back) has been cut. The original frame, which has been entirely regilded, was nailed on (nail heads are visible at the cut edge). The wood is in good condition apart from some worm damage, worst in the bottom board, which has been reinforced with a later strip of wood along the bottom edge. There are two channels at the extreme edges, left by the removal of vertical battens, visible on the back ( c. 4.5/5.0 cm wide at the left‐hand side, and c. 6.0 cm at the right‐hand side). Between the two channels the back is covered with a protective layer of what appears to be old gesso.

Painting condition and technique

Infrared reflectography does not reveal any underdrawing and none is visible to the naked eye.

The water‐gilded background is original, but in poor condition and with the patchy remains of a layer of varnish. There is no bole: the gold leaf has been stuck immediately onto the gesso, which now shows through in many places.

The borders around the scenes have been incised with single lines, as have the bars of the prison with Saint Margaret and the dragon.

The Virgin’s halo merges with the golden mandorla and has not been incised or punched. The outlines of her crown have been incised and then punched with a somewhat coarse single‐dot punch tool, which has also been used to create Saint Nicholas’s mitre, the crown of the ruler in the scene with Saint Catherine, the cross (fig. 2) in the top left‐hand corner of the scene with Saint Margaret, and her crown, and the cross carried by the crowd in the Raising of Drusiana.

The painting has a history of flaking and a considerable amount of paint has come away where it was over gold.

The central Virgin and Child are in remarkably good condition, and the signature is original and intact. Both the angels within the mandorla have lost their second wing that spread towards the centre (fig. 1), and the thuribles, painted in white, have flaked slightly.

At the bottom right, below the mandorla, the ox symbolising Saint Luke is extremely damaged.

Certain areas of the paint surface are missing: for example, the heads of Joseph, the angels and the shepherds in the Nativity; John the Evangelist’s cauldron; and the head of the seated figure, most of the landscape, and the trunks of trees on the horizon in the scene with Saint Benedict. Something illegible (banners? angels?) has disappeared from above the heads of the figures in the Raising of Drusiana. The cross in the scene with Saint Margaret was originally outlined in black, with white dots for pearls, but most of this has now largely disappeared.

The palette is relatively simple. The base colour for the decorative horizontal band and the band around the mandorla is black, painted with a stylised floral pattern in white, red, [page 317] yellow and blue (see detail, p. 322). The Virgin’s dress has vermilion in the underlayer, with red lake glazes, painted more thickly in deeper folds. Its pattern, based on small stylised flowers and geometric shapes, takes no account of the folds. The modelling of her cloak is no longer visible, due to darkening of the azurite‐containing paint; however, infrared reflectography (fig. 3) reveals that, like the folds of the Child’s drapery, it was painted with spiky lines, here of blue mixed with black, to indicate the folds.

Infrared reflectography similarly reveals that in the scene of Saint Nicholas with the pilgrims (fig. 4), the sea was swarming with a host of sea creatures, numerous fish, some of them eating other fish, eels, a crab and an octopus, likewise no longer visible due to the darkening of azurite‐containing paint.

There is considerable blackening of retouchings of vermilion, which in itself has survived well, but it has flaked where it was over gold, for example in the red borders around each scene and around the edge of the Virgin’s cushion.

The red lakes, used, for example, in the garments of the angels swinging thuribles in the centre, of the executioner and of one of the young men and the soldier in the scene with Saint Nicholas saving three innocent men from beheading, have faded.

The quality of the painting, in particular that of the Virgin, is exceptionally high (fig. 5). Yet, the painting was included in the purchase of the Lombardi‐Baldi Collection ‘to show the barbarous state into which art had sunk even in Italy previously to its revival.’²

Design and Iconography

The iconography of NG 564 is very similar to that of the Virgin and Child from Montelungo, and of the Virgin and Child in Washington (see below). In all three panels the Virgin wears a similar type of crown. The inverted V shape resembles Ottonian crowns³ and may be intended to evoke Western (perhaps specifically Ottonian or Germanic) imperial images, while the hanging strings of pearls and gems are Byzantine or Byzantinising in origin.⁴ Although there are Byzantine prototypes of a frontal enthroned Madonna presenting the Child, dressed in orange and holding a scroll, the Virgin is never shown wearing a crown.⁵ However, the Child’s blessing fingers in NG 564 suggest that the prototype was a Byzantine icon or an Italian painting based on a Byzantine icon.

The Virgin holding Christ in her lap is the God‐bearer (‘Theotokos’). The Child holding a scroll refers to the fact that he represents ‘Logos’, that is, the word of God made flesh. The throne represents also the sedes sapientiae (throne of wisdom): the lion‐headed throne, which was common in twelfth‐century wood sculpture, represents the throne of wisdom or the throne of Solomon;⁶ Solomon’s throne is described in I Kings 10: 18–20 as being of ivory, covered in gold, with six steps, and ‘two lions stood beside the stays’.

NG 564 is discussed by Natacha Piano in the context of the Maiestas Mariae developed in Europe from the eleventh century onwards, particularly in Catalan antependia (altar frontals), for example the antependium from El Coll of around 1200–20 in the Museo Episcopal, Vich, where the crowned Virgin and Child are seated on a lion‐headed throne within a mandorla which merges into the decorative band separating the upper and lower registers of the scene, with the Evangelist symbols in the corners.⁷

Anna Maria Maetzke pointed out that the iconography of the Nativity scene in NG 564 is identical to one of the lateral scenes in the dossal from the Santuario di Santa Maria delle Vertighe, Monte San Savino, with a fragmentary inscription to the effect that it was painted by Margarito in collaboration with Ristoro, probably completed in the 1270s or early 1280s (see biography above).

Angels swinging thuribles are very common in Umbrian panel painting, especially in early dossals.⁸

The abstract pattern dividing the upper and lower scenes (see detail, p. 322) is very similar to that found on the Saint Francis with Scenes from his Life in the Tesoro di San Francesco, Assisi, and, to a lesser extent, to that found on the similar panel in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome, whose authorship and relative chronology in relation to Giunta Pisano are debated.⁹

Date

NG 564 was dated 1265–75 by Edward Garrison.¹⁰ However, some authors have considered it to be considerably earlier, based partly on two paintings which are very similar in both style and iconography: a Virgin and Child (Arezzo, Museo Statale di Arte Medievale e Moderna) from Santa Maria, Montelungo, near Arezzo, and a Virgin and Child in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Kress Collection), both of which bear the same signature as NG 564. The panel from Montelungo was, according to a seventeenth‐century inscription, dated 1250.¹¹ This date was accepted by Roberto Longhi,¹² but not by Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti,¹³ nor by Carlo Ragghianti, who dated the painting to around 1260, together with NG 564 and the Washington panel.¹⁴ The authenticity of the date of 1250 was accepted by Maetzke,¹⁵ who therefore also accepted it in relation to NG 564 (although considering it possibly slightly earlier) and the Washington panel.¹⁶ Ada Labriola dated NG 564, together with the Washington panel, to the 1240s.¹⁷

However, the authenticity of the date of 1250 is suspect (see biography above), and the iconography of the narrative scenes depicted in NG 564 suggests a later date for it. By comparing the episodes depicted in NG 564 with three hagiographical texts, it is possible to demonstrate that the painting is based on the Legenda Aurea.

The Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend), written by the Dominican friar Jacopo da Voragine (or da Varazze; d. 1298), has a terminus a quo of 1260–3.¹⁸ A compilation of the lives of saints, it is based on two main sources.¹⁹ It has been shown that about two‐thirds was derived from the lives of saints by the Dominican friar Jean de Mailly, the Abbrevatio in gestis et miraculis [page 320]sanctorum, written in 1225–30;²⁰ in some cases the entire life of a saint is based on Jean de Mailly’s text, in others only part.²¹ Jacopo’s other main source was a similar hagiographical text, the Liber Epilogorum in Gesta Sanctorum, also by a Dominican friar, Bartolomeo da Trento, and written between 1244 and 1254.²²

The depiction in NG 564 of Saint Catherine’s decapitation and of her body being carried to Mount Sinai by angels occurs in all three texts.²³ Similarly, the details of Saint Benedict’s rolling in thorn bushes to conquer his lust are also to be found in all three texts. However, the passage in the Liber Epilogorum is laconic, and only the Abbrevatio and Legenda Aurea state that it was by rolling in the thorns that he conquered ‘the fire of lust’. This is probably why in NG 564 a man is shown happily warming his hands at a fire (fig. 8) while Saint Benedict mortifies the flesh in the way described;²⁴ in the Legenda Aurea (and in the Liber Epilogorum) the devil is said to have disguised himself as a blackbird, and since the Latin word ‘merula’ can also mean ‘simpleton’, this could also explain the man’s appearance. The source is therefore probably the Legenda Aurea.

The miracle of Saint Margaret emerging unharmed from the dragon’s stomach does not occur in the Abbrevatio, where the dragon only threatens to devour her and retreats when she makes the sign of the cross; Jacopo da Voragine in the Legenda Aurea recounts this episode, but adds that one may read elsewhere that the dragon swallowed her whole and she made the sign of a cross, whereupon the dragon burst and she emerged unscathed; in fact here Jacopo has taken the Liber Epilogorum as a basis, and embellished it.²⁵ In the Legenda Aurea Saint Margaret’s emergence from the dragon is described as ‘draco uirtute crucis crepuit et uirgo illesa exiuit’ (‘the dragon burst by virtue of the cross and the virgin emerged unscathed’), whereas the Liber Epilogorum has ‘crepuit et virgo illesa de ventre eius exivit’ (‘[the dragon] burst and the virgin emerged unscathed from its stomach’). In NG 564 the saint is clearly emerging from the dragon’s stomach: this could be said to be implicit in the account in the Legenda Aurea, and the inscription does not refer to the stomach, as one might expect if it derived from the Liber Epilogorum, but merely to the ‘visceribus’.

Elsewhere in the inscriptions, a nod in the direction of the texts occurs in the scene with Saint John the Evangelist being boiled in oil, where the saint is said to have been freed from the heat of the oil: the inscription reads ‘a fervore olei’, the texts ‘in fervens oleum’ (Liber Epilogorum) and ‘in dolium feruentis olei’ (Legenda Aurea). In the scene of the raising of Drusiana, the verb used in the Liber Epilogorum is ‘resuscitavit’ and the Legenda Aurea has ‘Christus suscitet te’, echoed in the ‘suscitat’ of the inscription in NG 564.

All three texts include the miracles concerning Saint John the Evangelist being boiled in oil and the raising of Drusiana.²⁶ These two incidents are consecutive in the written narratives and both are depicted in NG 564. Similarly, the two miracles concerning Saint Nicholas depicted in NG 564 are also consecutive in the Liber Epilogorum and the Legenda Aurea.

It is in the life of Saint Nicholas that overwhelming evidence is to be found that the likely source of the narrative scenes in NG 564 is the Legenda Aurea. Both the Saint Nicholas miracles shown are entirely missing from the Abbrevatio, but both occur in laconic passages in the Liber Epilogorum, which were then embellished in the Legenda Aurea. For his own version of the miracle concerning the dramatic intervention by Saint Nicholas as the three kneeling blindfolded men are about to be executed by sword, Jacopo da Voragine copied almost verbatim the passage in the Liber Epilogorum. However, there is one significant detail missing from the Liber Epilogorum but present in the Legenda Aurea, and, crucially, shown in NG 564 (fig. 9), namely, that the three men about to be beheaded had their faces covered (‘facie iam uelata’).²⁷

It is difficult to argue that NG 564 is itself a compilation derived from different textual sources. The Abbrevatio can be excluded as a source since it omits the two scenes from Saint Nicholas’s life shown in NG 564. The possibility that the scenes derive from the Liber Epilogorum, which would give NG 564 a probable terminus post quem of 1254, cannot be entirely discounted, but the missing detail in the scene of Saint Nicholas makes this less probable. Much more likely is that the scenes are based on the Legenda Aurea, the dissemination of which was rapid and far‐reaching.²⁸ This was a text which embellished its own sources and was ripe with visual details upon which a painter could draw. The close correlation between text and painting would thus give NG 564 a probable date of around 1263/4.

Function

The design and format of NG 564 are very close to other European eleventh‐, twelfth‐ and thirteenth‐century dossals and altar frontals, both painted and metalwork, which typically have small‐scale narrative scenes ranged on either side of a central figure, usually the Virgin and Child, the enthroned Christ or an enthroned saint, often framed by a mandorla.

NG 564 may have been an altar piece rather than an altar frontal.²⁹ The channels on either side of the reverse suggest that vertical battens extended below the base moulding, and were designed to slot into the back of an altar table. This type of extension on a dossal from San Felice, Giano, has been interpreted as indicating that that dossal was an altar frontal.³⁰ However, the carpentry is very different from that of other surviving altar frontals with ‘legs’ extending the front mouldings of the frame, whose function was to support the painting on the floor,³¹ and the location of the signature along the bottom of NG 564 suggests that it was an altar piece.

Original Location

NG 564 was purchased by Lombardi and Baldi in ‘the neighbourhood of Arezzo’ and has been identified with a painting described by Vasari on the tramezzo (rood screen) of the nunnery of Santa Margherita, Arezzo.³² However, Davies rightly considered that Vasari’s description of the picture in Santa Margherita does not fit with NG 564:³³ Vasari described it as showing small‐scale narrative scenes (‘storie di figure piccole’) from the lives of the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, whereas in NG 564 there is only one scene from the Life of the Virgin, and none from the Life of Saint John the Baptist (although one might argue that Vasari in his notes confused John the Evangelist and John the Baptist).

Maetzke accepts Santa Margherita as the provenance.³⁴ However, although Saint Margaret features in the bottom right‐hand corner, the predominance of scenes devoted to Saints John the Evangelist and Nicholas suggests that the painting came from an altar or church dedicated to those saints rather than to Saint Margaret.

It may be significant that Vasari recorded a painting by Margarito in the church of San Niccolò in Arezzo.³⁵ According to Angelo Tafi this church was founded before 1113, and was for a while a dependant of the Camaldolese church of San Michele in Arezzo; in the thirteenth century it was a parish church, dominated by the Girataschi family; in 1583 a visitation described the church as a ruin with only one altar; in 1631 it was completely rebuilt, and it was closed down in 1964.³⁶ In view of the date suggested here for NG 564, it may be significant that the church of San Niccolò had two bells installed in 1263.³⁷

Provenance

NG 564 was acquired before 1845 in the neighbourhood of Arezzo by Lombardi and Baldi;³⁸ purchased with other pictures from their collection, 1857.³⁹

Notes

Update

Helen Howard, Kristina Mandy, David Peggie and Imogen Tedbury, 13 November 2024

This painting was partially cleaned and restored from 2019 to 2022, but it still retains the majority of its nineteenth‐century restoration and degraded varnish layers. The treatment began with the removal of unsightly nineteenth‐century regilding on the frame, which was replaced by more sympathetic regilding.

The treatment of the painting was limited to the border on the inner edge of the engaged frame and other localised areas. Red‐brown overpaint was removed from this border revealing original layers of red paint decorated with a yellow foliate design. Within the main panel, some small areas of regilding were removed and where necessary, replaced with more sympathetic regilding. Finally, a non‐original red band below the Virgin’s throne was removed. This may have been added in the nineteenth century to complete the framing of the central figure group, since there was no indication of original paint below this later intervention. Its removal highlights the prominence of the Virgin’s feet and the movement of her hemline. It also draws attention to the relationship between the Virgin’s throne of Solomon and the marble dais that supports it, perhaps recalling wooden sculptures of the Virgin and Child displayed on stone altars in the Aretine territories.⁴⁰

Extensive technical investigation was carried out in association with the 2019‐2022 treatment.⁴¹ Close examination revealed traces of an original mecca layer, something seen in other works by Margarito d’Arezzo.⁴² This translucent layer would have added a golden tone and was originally applied here to enhance the warmth of the metal leaf. Some remnants can be found within the recesses of the punchwork for the crowns and crosses in the narrative scenes (fig. 11).

Examination and analysis invited a reassessment of the complex application of paint layers, hitherto obscured by damage and deterioration, later restoration and degraded varnish layers. For example, the decorative horizontal bands and mandorla appear graphic and simple, but analysis has revealed additional details in the stylised floral and geometric patterns. The plant‐like tendrils and leaves on the horizontal bands are painted with a copper blue or green paint combined with varying amounts of lead white to indicate volume, and yellow earth and vermilion are used for the colourful yellow and red flowers. The mandorla has a stylised pattern decorated with vermilion red geometric shapes connected to each other with green leaf‐like forms that have become more translucent and less three‐dimensional with time. There are also fine details, such as fleur‐de‐lis decorations painted in orpiment, which are now barely discernible.

Analysis also drew attention to a repeating motif on the Virgin’s dress, while further information has been obtained on Margarito’s use of materials more generally.⁴³ The decoration of the dress, based on flowers and geometric shapes which take no account of the folds, is painted in orpiment, lead white and indigo and includes a fleur‐de‐lis pattern. Fragments of this motif were previously visible on close examination, but imaging has revealed the fleur‐de‐lis to be part of an overall repeating pattern. A barely discernible fleur‐de‐lis was also identified on the mandorla, forming a visual cohesion between these decorative elements and the distinctive fleur‐de‐lis ornamental cusps that top the Virgin’s crown.

The investigation showed that the Virgin’s cloak has a red iron earth underpaint overlaid with azurite‐containing paint, which is modelled with lead white to suggest folds. The layering of red earth and azurite may have given the cloak a purple cast, which is no longer apparent. The Child’s drapery is painted with yellow earth and orpiment with stylised folds in red earth. The water in the scene of Saint Nicholas, previously thought to be painted with azurite, has been revealed to contain no copper and is now known to be indigo‐containing blue paint. Macro XRF analysis has also revealed additional details in the miracle of Saint Margaret, for example, the scales on the dragon are enlivened with a copper blue or green pigment mixed with lead white along the dragon’s chest and tail.

The new analysis has focused attention on the fleur‐de‐lis motif. Since Gordon noted a possible connection between Margarito’s Virgins’ crowns and Ottonian or Germanic imperial crowns, Sonia Chiodo has suggested that these crowns attest to the Aretine diocese’s political loyalties during the bishopric of Guglielmo degli Ubertini, who led Arezzo in its support of the Holy Roman Emperor.⁴⁴ The representation of the Virgin wearing a fleur‐de‐lis crown is certainly a local phenomenon with earlier precedent. In the lunette on the façade of the Pieve, signed by sculptor Marchio and dated 1216, the Virgin wears a crown with fleur‐de‐lis and hanging jewels. The Adoration of the Magi bas‐relief set in the west wall of the Pieve, also generally given to Marchio, again uses the fleur‐de‐lis cusps to decorate the Virgin’s crown.⁴⁵ These examples are evidence of a local iconography associating the Virgin with the fleur‐de‐lis, that, when Margarito was working fifty years later, may have spoken as much of Aretine local identity as of Ghibelline allegiances.