Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Clare and Two Angels
Frame: 23 3/8 × 13 7/8 in. (59.4 × 35.2 cm)
Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance, I. London: Phaidon, 1968.
Boskowits, Miklós, and Erich Schleier. Gemäldegalerie Berlin: Katalog der Gemälde, Frühe Italienischer Malerei. Berlin: Mann Verlag, 1988.
Carli, Enzo. “Dipinti Senesi nel Museo Houston.” Antichità viva 2, no. 4 (April 1963): 17, fig. 2.
Catholic Encyclopedia. “Saint Clare.” www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=215.
Flora, Holly. Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trinita Kennedy. Nashville: Frist Center for the Visual Arts; London: Philip Wilson, 2014.
Fredericksen, Burton B. and Frederico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
Offner, Richard. “The Straus Collection Goes to Texas.” Art News 44, no. 7 ( May 15–31, 1945): 16–23.
Roberts, Perri Lee, Bruce Cole, and Hayden B. J. Maginnis. Sacred Treasures: Early Italian Paintings from Southern Collections. Athens, GA: Georgia Museum of Art, The University of Georgia, 2002.
Schrader, Jack. In A Guide to the Collection. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1981, cat. 22, no. 39.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Catalogue of the Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1945.
Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold, and George Henry McCall. Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300–1800: Masterpieces of Art, New York World’s Fair, May to October, 1939. New York: Bradford, 1939.
Vaughan, Malcolm. “Old Masters at the Fair.” Parnassus 11, no. 5 (May 1939): 9.
Wilson, Carolyn C. Italian Paintings, XIV–XVI Centuries, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in association with Rice University Press and Merrell Holberton, 1996.
ProvenancePrivate collection, Scotland; [Edward Hutton, London, until May 1929]; acquired by Percy S. Straus, New York, May 1929; bequeathed to MFAH, 1944.Despite ongoing research, the identity of the painter who produced this small panel has remained unknown. The painting had been acquired by Percy S. Straus as a work by Lippo Memmi, but Richard Offner believed it to be a work by an artist from the “circle of Barna da Siena.”1 The attribution, however, has remained uncertain, and even Bernard Berenson, who in a letter to Percy Straus in 1933 attributed it to the Panzano Master, changed his mind, proposing thirty-five years later that it must have been painted by a close follower of Simone Martini. This was taken up by more recent scholars like Burton Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, although Jack Schrader suggested that it may have been painted by Master of the Sienese Straus Madonna.2
Much smaller in scale than the Virgin and Child by the Master of the Sienese Straus Madonna (see cat. 1), Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Clare and Two Angels was apparently conceived as a single panel since its original engaged frame shows no signs of having been attached on either side. Certainly meant for private devotion, it exemplifies its patron’s dedication to the Franciscan orders. The two saints placed on either side of the Madonna are Saint Francis, revealing his stigmata, and Saint Clare, wearing the habit of the Order of Poor Ladies of San Damiano. This order was briefly directed by Saint Francis and was later known as the Order of Saint Clare, Poor Clares, or Clarisses.3 The saints act as intercessors between the viewer and the Madonna, who is somewhat awkwardly seated on a throne set on a dais. She tenderly holds a standing Christ Child, clad in a toga-like garment. The stance of the child has been traced to Simone Martini’s magnificent Maestà, a fresco at the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena,4 further solidifying the attribution to a Sienese master. Holly Flora has pointed out that the steep gable of the little panel and the poses of the Madonna and Child are an adaptation of the “grand civic image” to the private sphere on an appropriately small scale.5
There are obvious similarities in the figure types, in the long-fingered hands and the idealized faces with long noses and slightly almond-shaped eyes, with the Virgin and Child by the Master of the Sienese Straus Madonna, but the present work is far less elaborate in the depiction of luxurious garments, and the arrangement of the figures is far less convincing. Indeed, the figures, including the angels standing behind and above the saints, are characterized by an angularity and stiffness not noticeable in the larger work.6 However, the delicately punched halos and the beautiful ribbon of punchwork running along the inside of the frame are elements that this work shares with another small panel, today at Grosseto (fig. 2.1), which has also been thought to have been a work of the Master of the Sienese Straus Madonna.7
—Helga Kessler Aurisch
Notes
1. Carolyn C. Wilson, Italian Paintings, XIV–XVI Centuries, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in association with Rice University Press and Merrell Holberton, 1996), 40.
2 . Wilson, Italian Paintings, 40–41.
3 . Catholic Encyclopedia, “Saint Clare.” www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=215.
4 . Wilson, Italian Paintings, 40.
5 . Holly Flora, Sanctity Pictures: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, ed. Trinita Kennedy (Nashville: Frist Center for the Visual Arts and London: Philip Wilson, 2014), 145.
6 . Wilson, Italian Paintings, 41.
7 . Wilson, Italian Paintings, 41.
Comparative Images
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