Master of the Albertini (Master of the Casole Fresco), 'The Virgin and Child with Six Angels', about 1310-15 (?)

The Virgin and Child with Six Angels

Master of the Albertini (Master of the Casole Fresco)

Not on display

About the work

Overview

This large altarpiece has been cut down at the base, but it probably originally showed the Virgin full length. It was painted in the early fourteenth century, when artists were rethinking the conventions of Byzantine (Eastern Christian) art in search of a more naturalistic way of painting.

The anonymous painter was one of Duccio’s earliest followers, taking from him the elegant flowing lines, the soft colours and graceful gestures. Even small details, such as the white line along the top of the lips, are copied from Duccio.

In-depth

The Virgin Mary sits on a carved and inlaid marble throne, the Christ Child perched in the crook of her arm. In a tender gesture he grasps his mother’s thumb; with the other hand, she holds the pink cloth in which he is wrapped between her slender thumb and forefinger. Elegant angels dressed in soft glowing colours gaze adoringly at them, clasping the pinnacles of the throne with their fingers or crossing their arms in prayer.

This large altarpiece of the Virgin and Child enthroned was once even bigger, but it has been cut down at the base; it probably originally showed the Virgin full length. It was painted in the early fourteenth century, when artists, including Giotto and Duccio, were rethinking Byzantine (Eastern Christian) conventions in search of a more naturalistic way of painting.

The anonymous Master of the Albertini (Master of the Casole Fresco) was one of Duccio’s earliest followers, taking from him elegant flowing lines, soft colours and graceful gestures. The flesh is underpainted with green earth. This was a sophisticated optical device used by Trecento painters to suggest the cool mid-tones of human skin (it is perhaps now more visible here than was originally intended). As in Duccio’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Dominic and Saint Aurea, and Patriarchs and Prophets, the Virgin’s robe is here edged with a fluid gold hem, and Christ’s feet are crossed in anticipation of their pose at the Crucifixion. Even small details, such as the white line along the top of the lips, are copied from Duccio.

The precise dating of the Albertini Master’s works and the extent of his oeuvre are still under debate. This painting seems to sit between his Virgin and Child, which is very similar to the work of Duccio, and his Virgin and Child Enthroned, which more closely resembles the work of Giotto (both Pinacoteca, Siena). He was an eclectic painter, drawing details from a variety of Sienese artists, including the Badia a Isola Master and the Master of Città di Castello, with whom he perhaps shared a workshop: both used the same five-petal rosette tool to punch the gilded background. They might even have been brothers working in close collaboration, like Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. There were numerous families of painters working together in fourteenth-century Siena, as throughout Italy.

The painting is said to have came from Santa Croce, Florence, and might have been commissioned by a confraternity, the Laudesi, that met in the Bardi Vernio chapel there. If this provenance is correct, the painting would have been the second Sienese picture made for a confraternity attached to a major Florentine church, Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna having been the first.

In the 1950s, the painting was transferred from its original wooden panel to a synthetic support. When the back was exposed, drawings of a sphinx, a game board and what may have been either a window or a bishop’s mitre became visible.

Key facts

Details

Full title: The Virgin and Child with Six Angels
Artist: Master of the Albertini (Master of the Casole Fresco)
Artist dates: active early 14th century
Date made: about 1310-15 (?)
Medium and support: egg tempera, originally on wood, transferred to canvas
Dimensions: 194.2 × 170.6 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1857
Inventory number: NG565
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 20th-century Replica Frame

Provenance

Stated to come from Santa Croce, Florence. Apparently the Virgin and Child recorded by Vasari in 1550 on a pilaster in the choir of Santa Croce; Vasari’s picture may be the undescribed painting recorded over a side door leading to the cloister by Bocchi in 1591. The picture described by Bocchi was moved to the Tosinghi/Spinelli chapel (the chapel immediately to the north of the cappella maggiore) in 1595, where it is recorded (as a Madonna) in Rosselli’s Sepoltuario of 1657. Purchased by Lombardi and Baldi from the convent of Santa Croce; acquired with other pictures from the Lombardi-Baldi Collection, Florence, 1857.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Dillian Gordon, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Italian Paintings before 1400’, London 2011; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2011

Devotion by Design: Italian Altarpieces before 1500

The National Gallery (London)

6 July 2011 - 2 October 2011

Bibliography

1591

F. Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza, Florence 1591
1677

F. Bocchi and G. Cinelli, Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza, dove a pieno di pittvra di scvltvra di sacri templi di palazzi, i piu notabili artifizj, e piu preziosi si contengono, Florence 1677
1846

G. Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, ed. F. Le Monnier, 14 vols, Florence 1846
1878

G. Vasari, Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori: Con nuove annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, ed. G. Milanesi, 8 vols, Florence 1878
1892

K. Frey (ed.), Il libro di Antonio Billi: Esistente in due copie nella Biblioteca nazionale di Firenze, Berlin 1892
1898

J.P. Richter, Lectures on the National Gallery, London 1898
1901

A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, 11 vols, Milan 1901
1911

C.H. Weigelt, Duccio di Buoninsegna: Studien Zur Geschichte der Frühsienesischen Tafelmalerei, Hiersemann 1911
1912

G. de Nicola, 'Duccio de Buoninsegna and His School in the Mostra di Duccio at Siena', The Burlington Magazine, XXII, 1912, pp. 138-47
1923

R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols, The Hague 1923
1925

E. Hutton, The Sienese School in the National Gallery, London 1925
1930

C.H. Weigelt, Sienese Painting of the Trecento, Florence 1930
1940

W. Paatz and E.V. Paatz, Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein hunstgeschichtliches Handbuch: S. Miniato al Monte, 5 vols, Frankfurt am Main 1940
1942

N. Tarchiani, 'Fonti ed errori delle lettere sull'Italia del presidente de Brosses', Emporium, I, 1942, pp. 288-303
1951

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, London 1951
1951

C. Brandi, Duccio: Master of the Casole Fresco, Florence 1951
1960

G. Coor, 'The Early Nineteenth-Century Aspect of a Dispersed Polyptych by the Badia a Isola Master', Art Bulletin, XLII/243, 1960
1961

M. Davies, The Earlier Italian Schools, 2nd edn, London 1961
1979

J.H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, Princeton 1979
1979

D. Sutton, 'Robert Langton Douglas, X: The Tribulations of an Editor', Apollo, CIX/207, 1979, pp. 348-65
1986

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: The Earlier Italian Schools, revised edn, London 1986
1988

Gordon, Dillian, National Gallery Catalogues: The Early Italian Schools before 1400, revised edn, London 1988
1991

J. Dunkerton et al., Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery, New Haven 1991
1999

J. Gardner, 'Duccio, "Ciambue" and the Maestro di Casole: Early Sienese Paintings for Florentine Confraternities', Iconographica, 1999, pp. 109-13
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2011

Gordon, Dillian, National Gallery Catalogues: The Italian Paintings before 1400, London 2011

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.