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CATALOGUE ENTRY

St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Catherine of Alexandria

1387–1388
Agnolo Gaddi
Italian, active 1369–1396
egg tempera on poplar panel
Each approximately 29 × 7-7/8 in.
(73.6 × 20 cm)
The Clowes Collection
2004.160A–D
SEE TECHNICAL EXAMINATION REPORT

Marks, Inscriptions, and Distinguishing Features

None

Entry

These four panels, framed as one unit, reflect the fluent elegance and relatively simple drapery folds that characterize the style of the Florentine painter Agnolo Gaddi,1 to whom they were attributed by Richard Offner in 1927.2 Offner’s attribution has found wide acceptance.3 Agnolo employs the classic method of distinguishing features of the figures by outlining them in brown paint (fig. 1), and the panels relate closely both in style and iconography to their counterparts in the main tier of an altarpiece Agnolo painted for the sacristy of San Miniato al Monte in Florence, which shows the Virgin and Child with the saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine (fig. 2).4

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Figure 1: Detail of the face of St Mary Magdalene. Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairveaux and St. Catherine of Alexandria (detail), about 1387–1388, egg tempera on panel. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2004.160A-D.
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Figure 2: Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels, about 1387, tempera on poplar panel, 77-9/16 × 31-1/2 in. (left panel), 80-5/16 × 31-1/2 in. (middle panel), 76-5/8 × 31-1/2 in. (right panel). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.4.a-c.

The iconography of the Clowes panels is largely traditional. At left, Mary Magdalene is shown in red, indicative of a fallen woman, with long hair with which she wiped Christ’s feet and holding the jar of ointment with which she anointed them (John 12:1–8). She also holds a palm, which is unusual as she was not a martyr. The setting is unique to this type of panel and represents the place where, after the Resurrection, she mistook Christ for a gardener. As she approached him, he said “Noli me tangere” (“Do not touch me”; John 20:15–17).5 Next to Mary Magdalene is St. Benedict (died about 543/547), founder of the Benedictine order. He is traditionally shown carrying a book and rods for disciplining disobedient monks (fig. 3). Here the saint’s book displays the prologue of his Rule, its instruction clearly directed at the viewer: (A)SC / (O)LT(A) / (O) FI /L I / P / REC / EPT / A. M(A) / GIST / RI IN / CL(IN) / A. (AUR) / EM (cordis tui) (“Listen, o son, to the precepts of the master and incline the ear [of your heart]"; fig. 4).6 Next to him is St. Bernard (died 1153), founder and abbot of the abbey of Clairvaux. Bernard revitalized the Cistercian order, which also followed the Rule of St. Benedict. Here he is shown reading a decorated book with loosely hanging clasps. The book is one of his main attributes and almost certainly represents the Rule of St. Benedict.7 To his proper left is St. Catherine, who wears a small diadem, indicating her royal status, and holds a martyr’s palm. She stands on one of the broken, spiked wheels on which she was tortured. As recounted in The Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century book of saints' lives, she was saved when the wheels were shattered by an angel.8 Noted for her erudition, the book she carries is a reference to her intellect.9

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Figure 3: Bartolomeo di Giovanni (Italian, 1488–1501), Saint Benedict Exorcizes a Monk, about 1485, predella panel, tempera on wood, 12-63/64 × 15-35/64 in. Alana Collection, Newark. Photo Courtesy Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna, Zeri Photo Library, 13698.
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Figure 4: Detail of Saint Benedict’s book. Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairveaux, and St. Catherine of Alexandria, about 1387–1388, egg tempera on panel. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2004.160A-D.

The panels have been trimmed at the sides and then framed together as a horizontal unit in a nonoriginal frame, probably of the twentieth century. The panels have a vertical grain,10 however, and were evidently originally single figures from vertical pilasters on either side of the main tier of an altarpiece. Miklós Boskovits, a Hungarian art-historian, in 1975, followed by the American art-historian Bruce Cole, in 1977, associated the Clowes panels with four similar ones, also of standing saints (fig. 5).11 They show St. Peter carrying keys, a Bishop Saint (Augustine?) holding a crosier and a book, St. Paul holding a sword and a book, and a Deacon Saint (Stephen?) carrying a martyr’s palm and a book. Those panels, previously in Göttingen, also originally formed part of a pilaster and were later cut into individual panels that were then trimmed at the sides and framed together as a single horizontal unit. Boskovits, however, later changed his mind regarding their association, considering the apparent discrepancy in size between the two groups to be too great and reconstructed those panels as wings of a triptych on either side of a Virgin and Child.12

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Figure 5: Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), Four Saints: St. Paul, a Deacon Saint, a Bishop Saint, and St. Peter, 14th century, tempera on poplar wood, 22-1/64 × 30-7/16 in. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany, Inv. 1138. Photo credit: bpk Bildagentur / Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen / Volker-H.

Supporting the argument that the ex-Göttingen and the Clowes panels come from the same altarpiece is the fact that they are approximately the same width (i.e., about 20 cm), allowing for the minimal trimming that they all show at the sides, and apart from Mary Magdalene, all the saints stand on the same type of orange and gold decorative textile executed with sgraffito (fig. 6). Furthermore, the two groups came from the Solly Collection, as did the main tier of the altarpiece from which they were almost certainly cut. Significantly, the three units—two sets of panels and the altarpiece—were catalogued sequentially in the Solly Collection, and at some point, presumably during the nineteenth century, the pilaster panels received the same treatment, that is, four individual panels were framed as one unit.

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Figure 6: Detail of the orange and gold sgraffito textile in St Bernard. Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairveaux, and St. Catherine of Alexandria (detail), about 1387–1388, egg tempera on panel. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2004.160A-D.

Boskovits suggested that the Clowes panels had once formed part of the pilaster panels of the altarpiece painted by Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco (about 1370–1425) for the Nobili family chapel in the Camaldolese monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, while the American art historian Laurence Kanter also included the ex-Göttingen saints.13 The Nobili chapel was dedicated to San Jacopo and San Giovanni Decollato (St. James and the beheaded St. John the Baptist) and founded on 25 July 1387 off the cloister of Santa Maria degli Angeli, next to the Chapter House,14 and still survives.15 It was paid for by Bernardo di Cino Bartolini Benvenuti de' Nobili (fig. 7), a Florentine merchant who divided his time between his home city and Paris. He was intimately involved with the French court, first under King Charles V (1338–1380), who made him a citizen of Paris and granted him the use of the French royal fleur-de-lis on his coat-of-arms and the addition of “Nobili” to his name, and then under Charles VI (1368–1422).16 The Nobili family chapel was lavishly furnished by Bernardo with vestments, chasubles, albs, a missal, a chalice, and an altarpiece, as well as a twelve-seat choir stall. The first mass was celebrated there on Easter day, 29 March 1388,17 and endowed masses were to be said in the chapel on 25 July (the feast of St. James) and 29 August (the feast of the beheading of St. John the Baptist) for the salvation of the souls of Bernardo; his wife, Mona Piera (fig. 8), who had died on 17 February 1387; and his descendants.18 Unlike family chapels in most other Florentine churches, none of the family chapels in Santa Maria degli Angeli was, as far as can be ascertained, a burial chapel. Bernardo himself wished to be buried in the Franciscan church of Santa Croce.19

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Figure 7: Lorenzo Monaco (Italian, about 1370–1425), Bernardo di Cino Bartolini de’ Nobili and His Sons, 1387–1388, tempera on panel, 14-15/16 × 11-5/16 in. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Richard L. Feigen, B.A. 1952, 2020.75.1.
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Figure 8: Lorenzo Monaco (Italian, about 1370–1425), Piera degli Albizzi with Her Daughters, predella panel, tempera on wood, 11-1/32 × 8-21/32 in. Alana Collection, Newark. Photo Courtesy Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna, Zeri Photo Library, 9564.

The altarpiece for the Nobili chapel was originally inscribed: An[no]. D[omini]. 1387 Bernardus Cini di Nobilibus fecit fieri hanc Capellam [pro remedio animae suae et suorum] descendentium.20 In 1759, when it was almost certainly either entirely or mostly intact, the Florentine church historian Giuseppe Richa described it as truly the most magnificent altarpiece he had ever seen: (“e per vero dire è la più magnifica Ancona, che fin ora io mi sia avvenuto a vedere”).21 The different compartments of the altarpiece have been identified by various scholars over the years (fig. 9).22

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Figure 9: Hypothetical reconstruction made by Dillian Gordon with the help of Rachel Billinge of the altarpiece painted by Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco for the Nobili family chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli, Florence, 1387–1388.

The dedication of the chapel to St. James and St. John the Baptist led the German art historian Hans Gronau in 1950 to identify the predella of the altarpiece as scenes from the lives of those saints, including the Feast of Herod and St. James and the Sorcerer Hermogenes on either side of the Crucifixion (Musée du Louvre, Paris),23 and the Baptism of Christ (National Gallery, London).24 In 1964, the Italian art historian Federico Zeri25 added to the predella panels a similar (trimmed) panel showing Hermogenes throwing Books on Sorcery into a River (Newark, Alana Collection),26 and a (trimmed) panel that he identified as Piera degli Albizzi with Her Daughters (see fig. 8).27 In 1743, the Florentine antiquarian Domenico Maria Manni had described the altarpiece as showing the panel with Piera and her daughters apparently in situ, with Bernardo and four of his sons on the opposite side.28 That panel was identified as part of the altarpiece by Kanter (see fig. 7).29 In 1977, Cole identified the main tier of the altarpiece as the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Sts. John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, James, and Bartholomew, now in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, but until 1821 in the Solly Collection.30 In 2004, the Norwegian art historian and expert on punchmarks in Italian panel paintings Erling Skaug identified the missing pinnacle panels as the Angel Gabriel, Blessing Redeemer, and Annunciate Virgin, now in the Collezione Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti, on long-term loan to the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino.31

Richa also described the Nobili altarpiece as being ornamented with rich finials, small figures, and gold (“un quadro ornato di guglie ricche, e di figurine, e di oro”), which suggests that the pilasters contained small-scale figures, as was commonplace.32 The Clowes and ex-Göttingen saints correspond in the widths of their painted surfaces to those of the Baptism of Christ, Hermogenes Throwing Books on Sorcery into the River, and the two donor panels, and share the same red and gold sgraffito textile (see fig. 6) as the donor panels. Moreover, a distinctive punch mark, consisting of a five-lobed floret (Skaug no. 441), is found in the haloes of both the Clowes (fig. 10) and ex-Göttingen saints, but it has not been traced by Skaug in any other works by Agnolo Gaddi, or indeed Lorenzo Monaco, while a punch mark (Skaug no. 466) in the halo of the Bishop Saint in the ex-Göttingen panels is found also on the main tier panels33 and constitutes further evidence regarding the link between them.

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Figure 10: Detail of the five-lobed floret in the halo of St. Mary Magdalene. Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairveaux, and St. Catherine of Alexandria (detail), about 1387–1388, egg tempera on panel. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2004.160A-D.

The choice of saints also indicates that the two groups of pilaster panels were part of the Nobili altarpiece. St. Benedict is included because the Camaldolese were reformed Benedictines and followed his Rule, while St. Bernard was the name saint of the patron and St. Peter was the name saint of the patron’s wife, Piera. The saints in the main tier include James and Bartholomew, in reference to Bernardo’s father, Cino Bartolini. Cino is a diminutive deriving from Jacopo (Jacopo → Lapo → Lappocino → Cino), and Bartholomew refers to Bartolini.34 The presence of St. Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine in the pilasters is more difficult to explain. Bernardo’s youngest daughter, who was born between 1374 and 1385, was called Caterina, but none of his other daughters (Francesca, Niccolosa, and Elisabetta), shown with their mother (see fig. 8), is represented in the altarpiece by a name saint.35

The placement of the saints and their sequence is necessarily conjecture. The Clowes panels may have been stacked one above the other, two on either side of the main tier, as suggested by Boskovits.36 However, since Peter and Paul are foremost in the hierarchy of saints, they are unlikely to have been positioned at the sides of the altarpiece. If the reconstruction proposed here is correct (see fig. 9), then when the altarpiece came to be dismantled the bottom figures—namely, the Clowes panels—were grouped together, and the top figures—the ex-Göttingen panels—were grouped together.37

The Clowes panels are overall undoubtedly by Agnolo Gaddi. They strongly resemble their counterparts in his altarpiece painted in 1388 for the sacristy of San Miniato al Monte, Florence, paid for out of a legacy from Benedetto degli Alberti, who died in exile in January 1388 (see fig. 2). However, Cole observed the ex-Göttingen figures to be of diminished quality.38 It seems likely that those were painted by the young Lorenzo Monaco, following the design, and possibly part execution, of Agnolo. The Deacon Saint (see fig. 5) in the ex-Göttingen panel is similar in style to the St. Catherine in the Clowes Collection.39 The participation in the Nobili altarpiece of Lorenzo Monaco, then still a layman going by the name of Piero di Giovanni, has long been recognized.40 Agnolo probably began the commission for the altarpiece in 1387, but in 1388 largely left Lorenzo Monaco to complete the remainder while he turned his attention to the altarpiece for San Miniato al Monte.41

The Nobili altarpiece was one of the most magnificent of the family chapel altarpieces in Santa Maria degli Angeli, and of superb quality. It may have been working on this altarpiece which in 1390 led to Lorenzo Monaco joining the monastery where he went on to become one of the leading painters and manuscript illuminators in fifteenth-century Florence.

The monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli was suppressed under Napoleon in 1808/10. By 1819, Edward Solly (1776–1844), an English merchant living in Berlin, seems to have acquired most of the altarpiece (see Provenance), probably with the exception of the pinnacle panels and almost certainly the predella, given that at least part of it was already in the hands of William Young Ottley.42 Solly then sold the partially dismembered altarpiece, along with the rest of his collection, to the Prussian king Frederick William III in 1821.

Author

Dillian Gordon

Provenance

Edward Solly (1776–1845), Berlin, by 1819;43

Sold by the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin, in 1923.44

Eilhard Hans Wilhelm Mitscherlich (1901–1979), New York, by 1942;45

Ivan Podgoursky (1901–1962), in 1942;46

G.H.A. Clowes, Indianapolis, in 1942;

The Clowes Fund, Indianapolis, from 1958–2004, and on long-term loan to the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 1971 (C10042);

Given to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, in 2004.

Exhibitions

John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1959, Paintings from the Collection of George Henry Alexander Clowes: A Memorial Exhibition, no. 27;

Indiana University Museum of Art, Bloomington, 1962, Italian and Spanish Paintings from the Clowes Collection, no. 2;

Guangdong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Hunan Museum, Changsha, China; Chengdu Museum; 2020–21, Rembrandt to Monet: 500 Years of European Painting.

References

Osvald Sirén, Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz, 1905), 41n1;

Oskar Wulff, “Der Madonnenmeister. Ein sienesisch-florentinischer Trecentist,” Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst 20 (1907): 233;

Oskar Wulff, “Nachlese zur Starnina Frage,” Italienische Studien. Paul Schubring zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1929), 175–176;

Bernard Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance: Florentine School (London: Phaidon, 1963), 1:67;

A. Ian Fraser, A Catalogue of the Clowes Collection (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1973), 6;

Miklós Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370–1400 (Florence: Edam, 1975), 299;

Miklós Boskovits and Erich Schleier, Frühe italienische Malerei. Katalog der Gemälde. Gemäldegalerie (Berlin: Mann, 1988), 38–39;

Miklós Boskovits, “Agnolo Gaddi/Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]/shortly before 1387,” Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/206122 (n29);

Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press 1977), 27, 30, 82–83 (pl. 37);

Erling Skaug, Punchmarks from Giotto to Fra Angelico. Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting c. 1330 – 1430 (Oslo: Nordisk Konservatorforbund 1994), 1:261; 2, Chart 8.2;

Erling Skaug, “Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco?,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48 (2004): 55;

James France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007), 324, 379 (Compact Disc PA80);

Stefan Weppelmann in“Fantasie und Handwerk.” Cennino Cennini und die Tradition der toskanischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco, ed. Wolf-Dietrich Löhr and Stefan Weppelmann, exh. cat. (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2008), 276n3;

Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 14–25 (reproduced);

Kjell M. Wangensteen, et al., Rembrandt to Monet: 500 Years of European Painting (Nanjing: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing, 2020), 30–33 (reproduced);

Kjell M. Wangensteen, et al., Floating Lights and Shadows: 500 Years of European Painting (Nanjing: Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing, 2020), 30–33 (reproduced).

Technical Notes and Condition

The four saints have been installed together in a nonoriginal frame.47 The panels originally consisted of individual planks with a vertical grain, cut tangentially (almost certainly from poplar), which had suffered considerable woodworm damage. They were consequently thinned, trimmed, and cradled. Narrow wooden strips were added at the sides, either on one edge alone or on either side. Such intervention removed any trace of barbs left by the removal of the original engaged frames. Remains of punched dots along the left edge of St. Catherine, and to the left and right edges of St. Bernard, as well as above the figure of the saint, indicate that a punched border separated the engaged frame from the picture surface and that the panels terminated in pointed arches.

The technique followed that outlined in Cennino Cennini’s Libro dell’Arte, which is not surprising given that Cennino was Agnolo Gaddi’s assistant for 12 years.48

The planks were first covered with pieces of canvas that were cut to size and did not extend over the engaged frames. Two layers of gesso, gesso grosso and then gesso sottile, followed. No evidence of underdrawing has been detected, either with infrared reflectography or the naked eye. The overall condition of all four panels is good, although there has been some retouching and regilding.

A thick layer of iron-rich red bole was applied to the areas to be water-gilded. Each saint has a slightly different halo pattern, created using different combinations of a few simple punches. All the haloes were punched with a five-lobed floret (see fig. 10).49 In St. Catherine’s halo (fig. 11), a single large dot was added to the center; in the haloes of the other three saints, five dots have been applied between each petal of the floret. A small round punch was used only in the halo of Saint Benedict (fig. 12). The area between the florets was stippled. Clusters of three dots were applied around the haloes in St. Benedict and St. Mary Magdalene. The textile on which the saints stand was done with vermilion painted over the gold and the pattern then scratched out, a technique known as sgraffito (see fig. 6). The draperies were painted before the hands and feet. The skin tones were done with an initial layer of verdaccio, followed by hatched strokes of pink and white. Contours of faces and hands were outlined in brown (see fig. 1). The mordant gilding on the decorative borders of robes was pigmented with white.50 The pigments were standard for this period. Cross-sections taken from the St. Catherine and St. Benedict panels confirm the use of lead-tin yellow II combined with azurite (e.g., for the green of St. Catherine’s dress); vermilion (e.g., in the sgraffito textiles and Mary Magdalene’s robe, and to outline the books held by the saints), yellow ochre, lapis lazuli, red earth (hematite), and red lake.

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Figure 11: Detail of the halo of St. Catherine. Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairveaux, and St. Catherine of Alexandria (detail), about 1387–1388, egg tempera on panel. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2004.160A-D.
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Figure 12: Detail of the halo of St. Benedict. Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, active 1369–1396), St. Mary Magdalene, St. Benedict, St. Bernard of Clairveaux, and St. Catherine of Alexandria (detail), about 1387–1388, egg tempera on panel. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Clowes Collection, 2004.160A-D.

The marks on the backs of the panels are on the cradles and therefore not original.

Notes

  1. Osvald Sirén, Don Lorenzo Monaco (Strassburg: J. H. Ed. Heitz, 1905), 41n1, attributed the Indianapolis panels (then still in Berlin) to a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi, and in “Early Italian Pictures, the University Museum, Göttingen,” The Burlington Magazine 26, no. 141 (1914): 113, he attributed the associated panels with saints (for which see below), which between 1884 and 1976 were on loan from Berlin to the Universitätsmuseum in Göttingen, to a younger artist working in the master’s workshop. Although Oskar Wulff, “Der Madonnenmeister. Ein sienesisch-florentinischer Trecentist,” Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst 20 (1907): 233, attributed the Indianapolis panels to an anonymous Sienese painter working in Florence, he nonetheless acknowledged a proximity to the work of Agnolo Gaddi. Roberto Salvini, “Per la cronologia e per il catalogo di un discepolo di Agnolo Gaddi,” Bollettino d’Arte 29 (1935): 288, stated that Wulff’s “Madonnenmeister” was certainly Florentine and a pupil of Agnolo Gaddi. ↩︎

  2. Letter of 10 May 1927 in File C10059, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎

  3. For example, Bernard Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance: Florentine School, (London: Phaidon, 1963), 1:67; Miklós Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370–1400 (Florence: Edam, 1975), 299; and Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977), 27, 83. ↩︎

  4. Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977). 27. See also note 13. ↩︎

  5. This painting was previously titled Mary Magdalene in the Wilderness, however, given the inclusion of the plant on the left, this is unlikely. According to The Golden Legend, she “retired to an empty wilderness. . . no streams of water there, nor the comfort of grass or trees.” Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, with introduction by Eamon Duffy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), no. 96, 380. ↩︎

  6. It is not clear whether the word C / (ORDIS) was begun at the bottom right-hand page. ↩︎

  7. See James France, Medieval Images of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007), 40–42, and www.cistopedia.org/imagesofbernard, for 1,050 thumbnail images of the saint. The Clowes image is PA198. ↩︎

  8. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, with introduction by Eamon Duffy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), no. 172, 724. ↩︎

  9. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, with introduction by Eamon Duffy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), no. 172, 721–723, 726. ↩︎

  10. See Technical Examination Report. ↩︎

  11. Miklós Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370–1400 (Florence: Edam, 1975), 299. Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977), 27, catalogue 82–83 (pls. 36 and 37), considered the two groups of saints to be associated but from different altarpieces, and the ex-Göttingen saints to be workshop pieces following a design by Agnolo. See also note 1. ↩︎

  12. Miklós Boskovits and Erich Schleier, Katalog der Gemälde. Gemäldegalerie Berlin. Frühe italienische Malerei (Berlin: Mann,1988), cat. 19, 38–39, where they are attributed to Agnolo Gaddi. Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977), 27, had also suggested that as an alternative to pilasters the Clowes saints might have been wings of an altarpiece. See further Stefan Weppelmann in “Fantasie und Handwerk.” Cennino Cennini und die Tradition der toskanischen Malerei von Giotto bis Lorenzo Monaco, ed. Wolf-Dietrich Löhr and Stefan Weppelmann, exh. cat. (Berlin: Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2008), 276n3. ↩︎

  13. See Miklós Boskovits, “Agnolo Gaddi/Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]/shortly before 1387,” Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/206122 (note 29), citing Kanter’s view. ↩︎

  14. Domenico Maria Manni, Osservazioni istoriche sopra i sigilli antichi de’secoli bassi (Florence: Nella Stamperia dell’Autore, 1743), 14:12–13; Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese Fiorentine (Florence: Nella Stamperia di Pietro Gaetano Viviani, 1759), 8:149. ↩︎

  15. For the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli, see Divo Savelli and Rita Nencioni, Il Chiostro degli Angeli. Storia dell’Antico monastero camaldolese di Santa Maria degli Angeli a Firenze (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2008); and Cristina De Benedictis, Carla Milloschi, and Guido Tigler eds., Santa Maria degli Angeli a Firenze: da monastero camaldolese a Biblioteca Umanistica (Florence: Nardini editore, forthcoming). For the chapels and altarpieces in the monastery, see George Bent, “Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Arts: Patronage, Production and Practice in a Trecento Florentine Monastery,” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1993; George Bent, Monastic Art in Lorenzo Monaco’s Florence: Painting and Patronage in Santa Maria degli Angeli, 1300–1415 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006); Dillian Gordon, “The Fourteenth-Century Altars and Chapels in the Camaldolese Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence: The Saving of Souls more laudabili,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 3 (2013): 289–314; Dillian Gordon, “The Paintings from the Early to the Late Gothic Period,” in Santa Maria degli Angeli a Firenze: Da monastero camaldolese a Biblioteca Umanistica, ed. Cristina De Benedictis, Carla Milloschi, and Guido Tigler (Florence: Nardini editore, forthcoming). ↩︎

  16. For information on Bernardo and his family, see Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 16, 18–19 (whole article 14–25). ↩︎

  17. Domenico Maria Manni, Osservazioni istoriche sopra i sigilli antichi de’secoli bassi (Florence: Nella Stamperia dell’Autore, 1743), 14:13; Giuseppe Richa: Notizie istoriche delle chiese Fiorentine (Florence: Nella Stamperia di Pietro Gaetano Viviani, 1759), 8:149. ↩︎

  18. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Diplomatico, Firenze, Santa Maria degli Angioli, 9 November 1388 (00077476). Both Domenico Maria Manni, Osservazioni istoriche sopra i sigilli antichi de’secoli bassi (Florence: Nella Stamperia dell’Autore, 1743), 14:13, and Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese Fiorentine (Florence: Nella Stamperia di Pietro Gaetano Viviani, 1759), 8:150, give the date of the codicil as 16 November 1388. ↩︎

  19. See Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 16. ↩︎

  20. See Stefano Rosselli, Sepoltuario, Archivio di Stato Firenze, Manoscritti, 625, ff. 1324–1325, no. 16, with a sketch of the arms, cited by Dillian Gordon, National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings (London: National Gallery, 2003), 197n3. ↩︎

  21. Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese Fiorentine (Florence: Nella Stamperia di Pietro Gaetano Viviani, 1759), 8:166. ↩︎

  22. Most recently, Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 14–25. ↩︎

  23. Hans D. Gronau, “The Earliest Works of Lorenzo Monaco—II,” The Burlington Magazine 92 (1950): 217–222. See also Marvin Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 200–201 (under “ascribed to Lorenzo Monaco,” although Eisenberg saw them generally as by the workshop of Agnolo). ↩︎

  24. For the Baptism of Christ, see Dillian Gordon, National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings (London: National Gallery, 2003), 1:192–197. The Baptism is first recorded in the Warner Ottley Sale, 30 June 1847, and was presumably in the collection of William Young Ottley (1771–1836), who was in Italy from 1791 to 1799. ↩︎

  25. Federico Zeri, “Investigations into the Early Period of Lorenzo Monaco—I,” The Burlington Magazine 106, no. 741 (1964): 554–558; reprinted in Giorno per Giorno nella Pittura. Scritti sull’Arte Toscana dal Trecento al primo Cinquecento (Turin: U. Allemandi, 1991), 103–106. ↩︎

  26. Sold Sotheby’s New York, 29 January 2009, lot 8. With Robert Langton Douglas by 1920. ↩︎

  27. Formerly in a private collection in Milan. ↩︎

  28. Domenico Maria Manni, Osservazioni istoriche sopra i sigilli antichi de’secoli bassi (Florence: Nella Stamperia dell’Autore, 1743), 14:16. ↩︎

  29. I am grateful to Larry Kanter for sharing his identification with me and for encouraging me to publish it. See Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 14–25. ↩︎

  30. Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977), pl.1, 75. ↩︎

  31. Erling Skaug, “Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco?,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48 (2004): 245–257. ↩︎

  32. Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese Fiorentine (Florence: Nella Stamperia di Pietro Gaetano Viviani, 1759), 8:166. ↩︎

  33. Erling Skaug, “Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco?,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48 (2004): 254–255, with illustrations and chart. I am very grateful to Erling Skaug for his help in this matter. ↩︎

  34. Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 23. ↩︎

  35. Caterina is first named with her three sisters in Bernardo’s will of 21 June 1385 (Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile Antecosimiano 6177, ff. 156 verso). It is interesting to note that Bernardo had a slave called Caterina, to whom he bequeathed her liberty in the same will. For Bernardo’s several wills, see Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 17n23 and 18. Henry Tann kindly tracked down the wills on my behalf. ↩︎

  36. Miklós Boskovits, “Agnolo Gaddi/Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew, Benedict, Bernard, and Catherine of Alexandria with Angels [entire triptych]/shortly before 1387,” Italian Paintings of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, NGA Online Editions, https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/206122 (note 29). The Clowes saints have been cradled (see Technical Examination Report), which renders useless any attempt to fit the panels one above the other by matching patterns in the wood grain via X-rays. ↩︎

  37. See Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 22. ↩︎

  38. Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977), 27. ↩︎

  39. Noted also by Bruce Cole, Agnolo Gaddi (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1977), 27, who identifies the figure as St. Stephen. ↩︎

  40. See Erling Skaug in Lorenzo Monaco: A Bridge from Giotto’s Heritage to the Renaissance, ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Daniela Parenti, exh. cat (Florence: Giunti Editore S. P. A., 2006), cat. 5, 106–111. ↩︎

  41. See Dillian Gordon, “The Nobili Altarpiece from S. Maria degli Angeli, Florence,” The Burlington Magazine 162 (January 2020): 24. ↩︎

  42. See note 24. ↩︎

  43. Solly, an English timber and grain merchant, resided in Berlin from about 1813 to 1819. He had assembled a collection of more than 3,000 paintings, which were purchased by the Prussian State by contract in 1819, forming one cornerstone of what would become the Gemäldegalerie Berlin; see Christoph Marin Vogtherr, “Das Königliche Museum zu Berlin: Planungen und Konzeption des ersten Berliner Kunstmuseums,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Sammlungen N.F. 39, Berlin 1997, 95–114. The Gaddi panels, then attributed to Orcagna (Andrea di Cione, died 1368), are first included in an 1821 inventory, as no. Tö 14, prepared by Ernest Heinrich Toelken. The first detailed inventory was conducted in 1823, and three sequential entries (nos. M74, 75, 76) cover the main tier panels in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the ex-Göttingen panels (now back in the Gemäldegalerie) and the Clowes panels (M76).

    By 1829/30, when the Clowes panels were catalogued as no. III 41, the attribution had changed to Florence, about 1400. The author wishes to thank Robert Skwirblies, Technische Universität, Berlin, for his help in providing information on the Nobili altarpiece panels that were in the Solly Collection. See also Robert Skwirblies, “‘Ein Nationalgut, auf das jeder Einwohner stolz sein dürfte’: Die Sammlung Solly als Grundlage der Berliner Gemäldegalerie, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 51, 2009, 69–99, especially 75, 95, for digests of the relevant inventories. ↩︎

  44. Letter from Erich Schleier, Berlin, to the IMA, 19 March 1976, File C10042, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎

  45. Bill of sale, Mitscherlich to Podgoursky, 24 February 1942, File C10042, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. ↩︎

  46. Bill of sale, Podgoursky to G.H.A. Clowes, 24 February 1942, File C10042, Clowes Registration Archive, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Podgoursky met Clowes in the late 1930s, selling him several paintings over the following decades. ↩︎

  47. A photograph of the painting in a modern frame previous to the present one is to be found in Oskar Wulff, “Nachlese zur Starnina Frage,” Italienische Studien. Paul Schubring zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet (Leipzig 1929), 175. ↩︎

  48. For a description of the technique of early Italian panel paintings, see David Bomford, Jill Dunkerton, Dillian Gordon, and Ashok Roy, Art in the Making: Italian Painting before 1400, exh. cat. (London: National Gallery, 1989), esp. 9–51. ↩︎

  49. Skaug no. 441. See Erling Skaug, “Towards a Reconstruction of the Santa Maria degli Angeli Altarpiece of 1388: Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo Monaco?” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48 (2004): 255. ↩︎

  50. For another example of Lorenzo Monaco using lead white to pigment the mordant, see his altarpiece for San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti of 1407–1409; Dillian Gordon, National Gallery Catalogues: The Fifteenth Century Italian Paintings (London: National Gallery, 2003), 1:168. ↩︎