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Benvenuto di Giovanni

Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint Bernardino of Siena, c. 1480/1485

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 8

Medium

tempera on panel

Dimensions

overall: 70.3 × 50 cm (27 11/16 × 19 11/16 in.)

framed: 88.9 × 68.58 × 11.43 cm (35 × 27 × 4 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Widener Collection

Accession Number

1942.9.3

Artists / Makers

Benvenuto di Giovanni (artist) Sienese, 1436 - before 1517

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

upper center in the Madonna's halo: AVE.GRATIA.PRENA.DOM[INVS TECVM] (Hail, full of grace the Lord is with thee; from Luke 1:28)

Provenance

Possibly by 1810 kept at the collecting point of the Istituto di Belle Arti, Siena,[1] transferred there from one of the suppressed convents or monasteries. Probably acquired c. 1896 in Italy by (Charles Fairfax Murray, London and Florence), for (Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London); sold March 1898 to John G. Johnson [1841-1917], Philadelphia; apparently returned to (Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London); sold 30 September 1898 to Peter A.B. Widener, Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania;[2] inheritance from Estate of Peter A.B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania; gift 1942 to NGA.

[1] This is suggested by the wax seal on the reverse of the painting.

[2] The details of ownership by Murray and Agnew's (the painting was Agnew's number 8273) come from the Getty Provenance Index, which indicates the painting was sold to Johnson in March 1898, then to Widener in September of that year. This differs from the Widener collection card (in NGA curatorial files), which documents the 1898 purchase as being in March 1898.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Istituto delle Belle Arti
Johnson, John G.
Murray, Charles Fairfax
Widener, Joseph E.

Bibliography

1900: Catalogue of Paintings Forming the Private Collection of P. A. B. Widener. Ashbourne, near Philadelphia. II: Early English and Ancient Paintings. Paris, 1900: cat. 165, repro.

1903: Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 6 vols. Ed. Robert Langton Douglas (vols. 1-4) and Tancred Borenius (vols. 5-6). London, 1903-1914: 5(1914):164 n. 1.

1908: Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II to the XVI Century. 3rd edition. 3 vols. Ed. Edward Hutton. London, 1908-1909: 3(1909):118.

1909: Berenson, Bernard. The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance. 2nd ed. New York, 1909: 148.

1913: Forbes, Edward W. “An Altarpiece by Benvenuto di Giovanni.” Art in America 1 (1913): 178.

1916: Berenson, Bernard, and William Roberts. Pictures in the Collection of P.A.B. Widener at Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: Early Italian and Spanish Schools. Philadelphia, 1916: unpaginated, repro.

1923: Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 16(1937):395.

1923: Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1923: unpaginated, repro.

1931: Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener at Lynnewood Hall. Intro. by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1931: 154, repro.

1932: Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932: 77.

1936: Berenson, Bernard. Pitture italiane del Rinascimento. Milan, 1936: 66.

1938: Waldmann, Emil. "Die Sammlung Widener." Pantheon 22 (November 1938): 340.

1942: Works of Art from the Widener Collection. Foreword by David Finley and John Walker. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 5.

1948: Paintings and Sculpture from the Widener Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1948 (reprinted 1959): 4, repro.

1961: Coor, Gertrude. Neroccio de' Landi, 1447-1500. Princeton, 1961: 67 n. 223, 203.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 14.

1966: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Darrell Davisson. Benvenuto di Giovanni, Girolamo di Benvenuto, their altarpieces in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Malibu, CA, 1966: 29.

1968: Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:42.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 6, repro.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 26, 646.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 28, repro.

1977: Bandera, Maria Cristina. “Variazioni ai cataloghi berensoniani di Benvenuto di Giovanni.” In Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, eds. Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci. 2 vols. Milan, 1977: 1:314.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:65-66; 2:pl. 39.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 46, repro.

1987: Pope-Hennessy, John, with the assistance of Laurence B. Kanter. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987: 162.

1999: Bandera, Maria Cristina. Benvenuto di Giovanni. Milan, 1999: 120, 123, 125, 143 n. 251, 222, 235, cat. 58.

2002: Quodbach, Esmée. "The Last of the American Versailles: The Widener Collection at Lynnewood Hall." Simiolus 29, no. 1/2 (2002): 94.

2003: Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 111-114, color repro., as Attributed to Benvenuto di Giovanni.