Saint Matthew, c. 1315/1320

This panel and its three companions at the Gallery—Saint Simon, Saint James Major, and Saint Judas Thaddeus—together with six other busts of apostles [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Judas Thaddeus, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Simon, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Andrew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Bartholomew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Matthew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 6]   [fig. 6] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Thomas, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 7]   [fig. 7] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint James Major, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 8]   [fig. 8] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Philip, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, location unknown. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 9]   [fig. 9] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint James Minor, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, Salini collection, Castello di Gallico, Asciano, Siena. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin [fig. 10]   [fig. 10] Archival photograph, c. 1925, old state, Simone Martini, Saint Matthias, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943. Image: Galerie van Diemen, Berlin,[1]  [1]
In 1924, Maitland Fuller Griggs, acquired four panels of the series—Saints Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthias, and Andrew—through Edward Hutton, and these entered the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1943. The bust of Saint James Minor (fig. 9) belonged to the Stoclet Collection in Brussels at least since 1927, and since 2005 it has belonged to the Salini collection at Castello di Gallico (Asciano). Philip Lehman purchased the image of Saint Philip (fig. 8) along with the four panels discussed here before 1928. The Saint Philip was sold at auction at Christie’s in New York on January 11, 1991 (lot 12). It was purchased by Carlo de Carlo (Florence), in whose collection it remained until 1999; its present whereabouts are unknown.  originally formed part of a polyptychPolyptych
 Type of object with several panels, usually an altarpiece, although it may also fulfil other functions. The polyptych normally consists of a central panel with an even number of side-panels, which are sometimes hinged to fold. Although in principle every object with two panels or more may be called a polyptych, the word is normally used as a general term for anything larger than a triptych. As with diptychs and triptychs, the size and material can vary. —Victor M. Schmidt, Grove Art © Oxford University Press. The ten panels, acquired as a group by Johann Anton Ramboux in the early nineteenth century, remained together until the 1920s, when they were deaccessioned by the Wallraf-­Richartz Museum in Cologne and dispersed. 

The horizontal graining of the wood of the support in all ten panels suggests they are fragments of a predellaPredella
 A horizontal band, cut from a single plank, below the main panels of an altarpiece. The appearance of the predella can be seen as part of the development of the altarpiece from a single panel to a large, multilevel polyptych. The small figures or scenes painted on the predella formed part of the integrated program of the altarpiece, providing a visual commentary on the major images above and at the same time physically raising the main panels, thus improving their visibility. —Ronald Baxter, Grove Art © Oxford University Press.[2]  [2]
The predella, especially in large-size altarpieces in Tuscany, was almost always painted on a single timber with grain running horizontally, separated from the wooden support of the main panels. The top tier of images above the main register, on the other hand, was frequently painted on the same vertically grained panel as the main register itself. See John White, Duccio: Tuscan Art and the Medieval Workshop (New York, 1979), 89–91; Christoph Merzenich, Vom Schreinerwerk zum Gemälde: Florentiner Altarwerke der ersten Hälfte des Quattrocento (Berlin, 2001), 55. The following scholars maintained that the panels formed part of the predella of a polyptych: Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 60; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 76; George McCall, Masterpieces of Art: Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300–1800, ed. Wilhelm R. Valentiner (New York, 1939), 116–117; Michael Mallory, “An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19; Michel Laclotte, in Retables italiens du XIIIe au XVe siècle, ed. Claude Ressort, Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte (Paris, 1978), 19; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:332, 333 n. 7; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 35 n. 18; Cristina De Benedictis, Lippo Memmi in Encyclopedia dell’arte medievale, Rome, 1996, 7:732. De Benedictis (1974) initially argued, as Federico Zeri (1980) did, that they belonged instead to the upper register of a polyptych. Gertrude Coor (1956) thought that both solutions were possible, as did Sabina Spannocchi (2009). See Cristina De Benedictis, “A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco,” Antichità viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 95; Gertrude Coor, “Trecento – ​Gemälde aus der Sammlung Ramboux,” Wallraf – ​Richartz – ​Jahrbuch 18 (1956): 118; and Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:135.  The type of predella formed of busts of saints placed below round arches is rather archaic: in fact, it appears in Sienese painting no later than the years around 1320. Subsequently, preference was given instead to the insertion of narrative scenes in the predella; if busts of saints were included in the program, they were usually inserted in circular or mixtilinear medallions surrounded by painted ornamental motifs.[3]  [3]
Examples of the predella type with busts of saints set in round-arched frames are Simone Martini’s polyptych now in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa (1319–1320); that of Ugolino di Nerio in the Museo Nazionale in Lucca, datable to c. 1320; and that of Meo da Siena, also dating to around 1315–1320, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Perugia. Cf. James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and His School, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1979), 2: fig. 375; and Francesco Santi, ed., Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, vol. 1, Dipinti, sculture e oggetti d’arte di età romanica e gotica (Rome, 1969), 58–59. Predellas with medallions surrounded by floriated motifs, by contrast, were used by Giotto in his polyptychs in the Baroncelli Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence and in the Pina­coteca Nazionale in Bologna in the years 1325–1335, and, among Sienese artists, by Ugolino di Nerio in the predella now in the Musée des Beaux-­Arts at Besançon (see Stubblebine 1979, fig. 465), and by Bartolomeo Bulgarini in the predella of his polyptych formerly in Santa Croce, now in the storerooms of the Gallerie Fiorentine; see Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), fig. 72. Sometimes, as in Simone Martini’s altarpiece of Saint Louis of Toulouse in the Museo di Capodimonte at Naples (1317), the round arches of the predella contain not the busts of saints but small narrative scenes. Perhaps the practice of adding a predella containing busts of saints to small devotional paintings originated in the shops of Simone and Lippo (cf. the Madonna in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, no. P. 30 w 8, or the Crucifixion no. 156 of the Pinacoteca Vaticana). It seems to reflect a type of altarpiece similar to that of Simone in Naples: paintings, that is, with a single scene (instead of several panels with figures of saints) in the main register.  The absence from this series of busts of two of the most venerated apostles, Peter and John, may suggest that these panels were already lost at the time of Ramboux’s acquisition of the panels, together with a bust of Christ (or Christ on the Cross) that normally formed the central image of predellas decorated with busts of saints.[4]  [4]
However, sometimes, as in the above-cited predella of Meo da Siena’s polyptych, Christ does not appear among the apostles, and the center of the sequence of busts of apostles is occupied instead by Saints Peter and Paul.  But it is more likely that the series of apostles in the predella was originally incomplete and that the images of Peter and John were separated from the rest and incorporated in the main register of the altarpieceAltarpiece
 An image-bearing structure set on the rear part of the altar, abutting the back of the altarblock, or set behind the altar in such a way as to be visually joined with the altar when viewed from a distance. It is also sometimes called a retable, following the medieval term retrotabulum. The altarpiece was never officially prescribed by the Church, but it did perform a prescribed function alternatively carried out by a simple inscription on the altarblock: to declare to which saint or mystery the altar was dedicated. In fact, the altarpiece did more than merely identify the altar; its form and content evoked the mystery or personage whose cult was celebrated at the altar. This original and lasting function influenced the many forms taken by the altarpiece throughout its history. —Alexander Nagel, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, as was the case, for example, in Duccio’s Maestà.[5]  [5]
In Duccio’s masterpiece, the large scene representing the Madonna and Child flanked by saints and angels is surmounted by a horizontal second register of half-length saints (from left to right): the busts of Saints Thaddeus, Simon, Philip, James Major, Andrew, Matthew, James Minor, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthias. The apostles Peter and Paul, and John the Evangelist, on the other hand, are represented, together with the Baptist, as full-length figures flanking the throne of the Madonna.  As for the sequence of the individual figures, it seems probable that the apostles Andrew and James Major would have been placed closer to the center (and hence in a position of particular emphasis), and that the images of Matthew, Thomas, Simon, and Thaddeus would have been placed closer to the two ends.[6]  [6]
In his analysis of the problem of the sequence of busts, Giovanni Previtali (1987) proposed the following order, from left to right: Matthias, Thomas, Bartholomew, James (Minor or Major), Matthew, Andrew, James[?], Philip, Simon, and Thaddeus, observing that this would be the exact reverse of the order followed by Duccio in representing the ten apostles in the Maestà and by Simone Martini in the predella of the Pisa polyptych, in which Peter and Paul are naturally added to the ten, in a central position (John the Evangelist appears here among the saints in the main register). See Giovanni Previtali, “Problems in the Workshop of Simone Martini,” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 83–84. But the se­quence represented in the works of Duccio and Simone Martini is not the only possible one. For example, Simone represented the apostles in the Maestà he frescoed in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena in the order of: Bartholomew, Philip, Matthew, Thomas, James Minor, James Major, Matthias, Andrew, Thaddeus, and Simon (with Paul, John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and Peter placed in the foreground); for the identification of the apostles, cf. Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maestà di Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999), 155–157. Different again is the sequence of apostles adopted by Giotto in the Last Judgment of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and in the Stefaneschi polyptych in the Pinacoteca Vaticana; cf. Margrit Lisner, “Die Gewandfarben der Apostel in Giottos Arena­fresken: Farbgebung und Farbikonographie mit Notizen zu älteren Aposteldarstellungen in Florenz, Assisi und Rom,” Zeitschrift für Kunst­geschichte 53 (1990): 309–375; and Margrit Lisner, “Giotto und die Aufträge des Kardinals Jacopo Stefaneschi für Alt-­St. Peter: 2; der Stefaneschi-­Altar; Giotto und seine Werkstatt in Rom; das Altarwerk und der verlorene Christuszyklus in der Petersapsis,” Römisches Jahrbuch der Bibliotheca Hertziana 30 (1995): 59–133. Only the central position of Peter, Paul, and John (if they form part of the series), as well as James Major and Andrew, holds good as a general rule.

As for the painter of these busts of apostles, an attribution to the Sienese master Lippo Memmi (Sienese, active 1317/1347) was supported by Ramboux in the catalog of his collection (1862).[7]  [7]
Katalog der Gemälde Alter italien­i­scher Meister (1221–1640) in der Samm­lung des Conservator J. A. Ramboux (Cologne, 1862), 15, no. 75.  This was endorsed by the older studies, beginning with Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle (1864) and ending with Louis Gielly (1926).[8]  [8]
Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1864–1866), 2:105; Louis Gielly, Les primitifs siennois (Paris, 1926), 111.  It was only when the ten panels reentered the art market that the more prestigious name of Simone Martini was proposed by Robert Lehman (1928) and then by others.[9]  [9]
At least as regards the panels that entered the Griggs collection in New York through Edward Hutton, the attribution to Simone presumably had been made by the dealer / amateur Hutton himself. The Saint James Minor also seems to have entered the Stoclet collection in Brussels with an attribution to Simone; cf. Pierre Bautier, “I primitivi italiani della collezione Stoclet a Bruxelles,” Cronache d’arte 4 (1927): 315. August L. Mayer (1930) further accepted Simone Martini’s authorship for the panels then in the Lehman collection, as did George McCall and William Valentiner. August L. Mayer, “Die Sammlung Philip Lehman,” Pantheon 5 (1930): 113; George McCall, Masterpieces of Art: Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300–1800, ed. Wilhelm R. Valentiner (New York, 1939), 116–117.  Art historians generally accepted the attribution to Simone, though more often than not with the qualifier “shop of” or “school of” Simone.[10]  [10]
Perhaps having been asked by Maitland Fuller Griggs in 1926 for his expertise, Richard Offner orally ascribed the four panels acquired for that collection as “school of Simone Martini,” while in 1926 Raimond van Marle, in a manuscript opinion, attributed the paintings to an “immediate follower of Simone Martini.” See Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 96. Intervening in 1932 and then in 1936, and in the posthumous edition of 1968, Bernard Berenson (who in 1925 had conjectured the authorship of the young Lippo Vanni (Sienese, active 1344 - 1376); for his expertise, see Zeri and Gardner 1980, 96) defined the image of Saint Matthew as at least in part by Simone, but classified the other four panels of the series in the Lehman collection as works of the artist’s shop. F. Mason Perkins (1937) thought the Lehman panels in large part executed by Simone’s assistants. The participation of the artist’s assistants was also detected in the paintings by Gertrude Coor (1956), in Exposition de la collection Lehman 1957, by Fern Rusk Shapley (1966), by Joseph Polzer (1971), by Burton B. Fredericksen and Zeri (1972), by Zeri and Gardner (1980), by Giovanni Previtali (1987), by Mojmir S. Frinta (1998), by Hiltrud Kier and Frank Günter Zehnder (1998), and by Alessandro Bagnoli (1999). Even the recent catalog entry by Sabina Spannocchi (in Bellosi 2009), although citing the series of apostles under Simone’s name, considered it executed in part by assistants “under the surveillance” of the master. See Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places (Oxford, 1932), 534; Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento: Catalogo dei principali artisti e delle loro opere con un indice dei luoghi, trans. Emilio Cecchi (Milan, 1936), 459; Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 3 vols. (London, 1968), 1:404; F. Mason Perkins, “Simone di Martino (Simone Martini),” in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, and Hans Vollmer, 37 vols. (Leipzig, 1937), 31:67; Gertrude Coor, “Trecento – ​Gemälde aus der Sammlung Ramboux,” Wallraf – ​Richartz – ​Jahrbuch 18 (1956): 118; Exposition de la Collection Lehman de New York (Paris, 1957), 43; Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century (London, 1966), 48–49; Joseph Polzer, “Observations on Known Paintings and a New Altarpiece by Francesco Traini,” Pantheon 29 (1971): 386; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-­Nineteenth-­Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 122; Federico Zeri, in Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner (New York, 1980), 95; Giovanni Previtali, “Problems in the Workshop of Simone Martini,” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 83 – ​84; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 118, 189, 205, 311, 321, 400, 444, 453; Hiltrud Kier and Frank Günter Zehnder, ed., Lust und Verlust, vol. 2, Corpus – ​Band zu Kölner Gemäldesammlungen 1800–1860 (Cologne, 1998), 551–552; Alessandro Bagnoli, La Maestà di Simone Martini (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 1999) 156 n. 24, 179; and Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:132–141.  The catalog of the National Gallery of Art also cited the four panels presented by the Kress Collection as works of “Simone Martini and assistants.” The attribution to Lippo Memmi, however, was never wholly discarded and has more recently been revived.[11]  [11]
Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933) revived the attribution to Lippo Memmi, followed by Pietro Toesca (1951), Maria Cristina Gozzoli (in Contini and Gozzoli 1970), Cri­stina De Benedictis (1974, 1979, 1996), Michael Mallory (1974), Michel Laclotte (1978), and Andrew Martindale (1988). The present writer (1988) limited himself to rejecting the ascription of the panels to Lippo Memmi, without offering any alternative attribution. See Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), nos. 60–61; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: nos. 76–77; Pietro Toesca, Il Trecento, Storia dell’arte classica e italiana 3; Storia dell’arte italiana 2 (Turin, 1951), 551 n. 75; Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in L’opera completa di Simone Martini, ed. Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 105 n. 53; Cristina De Benedictis, “A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco,” Antichità viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Cristina De Benedictis, La pittura senese 1330–1370 (Florence, 1979), 93; Cristina De Benedictis, “Lippo Memmi,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; Michael Mallory, “An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201, n. 19; Michel Laclotte, in Retables italiens du XIIIe au XVe siècle, ed. Claude Ressort, Sylvia Beguin, and Michel Laclotte (Paris, 1978), 19; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 35 n. 18; Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemälde­galerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 75.  Proposed dates vary between c. 1320 and 1333.[12]  [12]
Fern Rusk Shapley (1966, 1979) and Giovanni Previtali (1987) proposed the date c. 1320; Cristina De Benedictis (1974), 1325—i.e., the date of the lost polyptych by Lippo Memmi for San Paolo a Ripa d’Arno in Pisa—or, more cautiously (De Benedictis 1996), after 1323, the presumable date of the Triumph of Saint Thomas in San Domenico at Pisa. Michael Mallory (1974) dated the series c. 1330; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth Gardner (1980), to the period between c. 1320 and 1333. Sabina Spannocchi (2009) suggested the date of execution as c. 1317. See Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century (London, 1966), 48–49; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:332, 333 n. 7; Gio­vanni Previtali, “Problems in the Workshop of Simone Martini,” Center / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 7 (1987): 83–84; Cristina De Benedictis, “A proposito di un libro su Buffalmacco,” Antichità viva 13, no. 2 (1974): 8, 10 n. 13; Cristina De Benedictis, “Lippo Memmi,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; Michael Mallory, “An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19; Federico Zeri and Elizabeth E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: Sienese and Central Italian Schools; A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 95; Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:139.

The attempts in recent decades to unite the catalogs of paintings previously assembled respectively under the names of Lippo Memmi and Barna da Siena, as well as under the nebulous formulae “Companions of Simone,” “Lippo and Tederico Memmi,” or “shop of Memmi” have complicated the matter of distinguishing among the paintings executed within the orbits of Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi and have made Lippo’s artistic development difficult to understand.[13]  [13]
After the publications by Gordon Moran (1976), who was the first to cast doubt on whether a painter called Barna da Siena had ever existed — ​ according to him, the name was an erroneous transcription of Bartolo di Fredi—and that of Antonino Caleca (1976, 1977), who argued that the works formerly attributed to “Barna” should be reassigned to the catalog of Lippo Memmi, art historians have gone their separate ways in trying to identify the masters of the paintings left orphans after Barna’s “demise.” Luciano Bellosi (1977) wrote of the “Famiglia Memmi” as a kind of family concern, while Carlo Volpe (1982) considered probable Moran’s hypothesis attributing the paintings to Federico Memmi, brother of Lippo. Giovanna Damiani (1985) maintained that “la firma di Lippo Memmi corrisponda​ . . . ​ad una sorta di etichetta che indica anziché l’attività di una personalità artistica, quella di una bottega comprendente Lippo e Federico Memmi e che doveva avere al suo attivo anche personalità minori” (Lippo Memmi’s signature corresponds to a kind of label that indicates not the activity of an artistic personality but the activity of a workshop comprising Lippo and Federico Memmi and that must have included minor figures as well). Returning to the question, Bellosi (1985) thought it right to “riconsidera­re unitariamente tutta la produzione che fa capo al prestigioso atelier familiare di Simone Martini, ivi comprese le opere attribuite a Lippo e a Barna” (reconsider integrally the entire production of the prestigious family workshop headed by Simone Martini, including the works attributed to Lippo and Barna). Previtali (1988) went further, affirming that “lo stile che siamo soliti chiamare ‘Barna’​ . . . ​sta a Simone un po’ come lo stile dei manieristi sta a quello di Michelangiolo” (the style that we are accustomed to calling Barna is to Simone a bit as the style of the mannerists is to Michelangelo). Previtali also proposed, albeit with caution, that some works usually attributed to Lippo be reassigned to Simone himself. To Leone de Castris (1988), a “distinzione puntuale fra le opere di ‘Barna’” (precise distinction between the works of “Barna”)—in his view probably executed by a presumed Tederico Memmi—and those of the “Maestro della Madonna Straus,” another anonymous Simonesque painter, seemed to be “operazione assai difficoltosa” (a rather difficult task). Miklós Boskovits (2008) and Ada Labriola (2008) insisted on the necessity of restoring to Lippo Memmi the paintings attributed to Barna, but Sabina Spannocchi (2009) still preferred to speak of the “cosidetto Barna” (the so-called Barna). See Gordan Moran, “Is the Name Barna an Incorrect Transcription of the Name Bartolo?” Paragone 27 (1976): 76–80; Antonio Caleca, “Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, un’ipotesi sul Barna e la bottega di Simone e Lippo, 1,” Critica d’arte 41 (1976): 49–59; Antonio Caleca, “Tre polittici di Lippo Memmi, un’ipotesi sul Barna e la bottega di Simone e Lippo, 2,” Critica d’arte 42 (1977): 55–80; Luciano Bellosi, “Moda e cronologia: B) per la pittura di primo Trecento,” Prospettiva 11 (1977): 21; Carlo Volpe, in Il gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’art (Florence, 1982), 186–187; Giovanna Damiani, in Simone Martini e “chompagni,” ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 82–85; Luciano Bellosi, in Simone Martini e “chompagni,” ed. Alessandro Bagnoli and Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1985), 94–102; Giovanni Previtali, “Introduzione ai problemi della bottega di Simone Martini,” in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 27 – ​29, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 160–161; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, “Problemi martiniani avigno­nesi: Il ‘Maestro degli angeli ribelli,’ i due Ceccarelli ed altro,” in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 27 – ​29, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 230 n. 10; Miklós Boskovits, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau -Museum di Altenburg, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 26; Ada Labriola, Simone Martini e la pittura gotica a Siena: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Memmo di Filippuccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ugolino di Nerio, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Lippo Memmi, Matteo Giovanetti, Naddo Ceccarelli, Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Niccolò di ser Sozzo (Florence, 2008), 56–58; and Sabina Spannocchi, in La collezione Salini: Dipinti, sculture e oreficerie dei secoli XII, XIII, XIV e XV, ed. Luciano Bellosi, 2 vols. (Florence, 2009), 1:141.  Inextricably linked to this issue, the chronology of the series of apostles discussed here remains equally problematic. To judge from the works signed and dated [14]  [14]
The Madonna della Misericordia in Orvieto Cathedral, signed “Lippus de Sena natus nos pinxit amena,” is not dated but in general is thought to have been executed around 1320. Cf. Giovanni Previtali, “Introduzione ai problemi della bottega di Simone Martini,” in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 27–29, 1985, ed. Luciano Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 156; Cristina De Benedictis, “Lippo Memmi,” in Enciclopedia dell’arte medievale, 12 vols. (Rome, 1996), 7:732; and Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 176–177. The Madonna and Child in the Lindenaum-Museum in Altenburg is usually dated slightly later; see Joseph Polzer, “Symon Martini et Lippus Memmi me pinxerunt,” in Simone Martini: Atti del convegno; Siena, March 27–29, 1985, ed. Lucia­no Bellosi (Florence, 1988), 168; De Benedictis (1996, 7:732); Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 217 n. 41; and Johannes Tripps, in Maestri senesi e toscani nel Lindenau-Museum di Altenburg, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Johannes Tripps (Siena, 2008), 49. For the diptych divided between the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and a private collection that bears the date 1333, see Millard Meiss, “Notes on a Dated Diptych by Lippo Memmi,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, 2 vols. (Milan, 1977), 1:137–139; Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 76.  by Lippo in the years between c. 1323 and 1333, the insertion in his oeuvre of the four busts of apostles in the Gallery seems far from convincing. The softness of the modeling and the spontaneous naturalness of the saints’ gestures recall more readily the manner of his brother-in-law (Simone Martini) than the solemn poses, polished forms, and metallic sheen that often distinguish the works of Lippo himself. 

Of the series of apostles of which the four panels in the Gallery form part, the Saint Andrew now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [fig. 11]   [fig. 11] Simone Martini, Saint Andrew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943 has close affinities, both in physiognomic type and in his rather surly expression, with the apostle, presumably Saint Andrew as well, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, unanimously recognized as Simone’s work.[15]  [15]
No. 51.2397; Laurence B. Kanter, Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, vol. 1, 13th–15th Century (Boston, 1994), 84, accepted the dating of the work shared by most art historians, to the early 1320s. Boskovits had already proposed in 1990 a comparison between the two images of the saint. Miklós Bosko­vits, “Review of Simone Martini by Andrew Martindale,” Kunstchronik 43 (1990): 595–601.  The Saint Judas Thaddeus [fig. 12]   [fig. 12] Detail, Simone Martini, Saint Judas Thaddeus, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection in the Gallery similarly invites comparison with the image of the same saint in Simone’s polyptych in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo in Pisa.[16]  [16]
The date of the altarpiece is variously indicated as 1319 or 1320. Both dates are derived from the same source: the sixteenth-century Annali of the Dominican convent in Pisa, which record the placing of the polyptych over the high altar of the church of Santa Caterina in 1320. But this date, if calculated according to the Pisan style in use at the time the polyptych was painted, could be equivalent to 1319 in the modern calendar. Cf. Pierluigi Leone De Ca­stris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 352.  In both images the apostle is presented as a beardless youth who turns towards the arch of the frame with a slight GothicGothic
 Term used to denote, since the 15th century, the architecture and, from the 19th century onward, all the visual arts of Europe during a period extending by convention from about 1120 to c. 1400 in central Italy, and until the late 15th century and even well into the 16th century in northern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The early gothic style overlapped chronologically with Romanesque and flourished after the onset of Renaissance art in Italy and elsewhere. The term gothic is applied to western European painting of the 13th century to the early 15th century. Unlike gothic architecture, it is distinguished more by developments in style and function than in technique, and even in these areas there is considerable national and regional diversity. The applicability of the term to Italian painting is debated, as is its usefulness in accounting for developments in Netherlandish painting from the early 15th century. Contact with Byzantine art was close in the early 13th century, but after c. 1250 survived principally in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. —Peter Kidson, Grove Art © Oxford University Press bend, his head bowed to one side in an attitude of meditation. It cannot be said categorically, however, that the version painted for the polyptych of Pisa around 1319–1320 was the model for the painting in the Gallery, given that the contours of the figure and the drapery folds in the latter are far less agitated, following the stylistic models of previous works by Simone that still fall into the second decade of the century.[17]  [17]
Art historians in recent decades generally have agreed on dating the frescoes with half-length figures of saints in the northern transept of the lower church of San Francesco in Assisi to the years 1315–1320. Cf. Maria Cristina Gozzoli, in L’opera completa di Simone Martini, ed. Gianfranco Contini and Maria Cristina Gozzoli (Milan, 1970), 94–95; Luciano Bellosi, “La barba di San Francesco: Nuove proposte per il ‘problema di Assisi,’” Prospettiva 22 (1980): 13–14; and Carlo Volpe, in Il Gotico a Siena: Miniature, pitture, oreficerie, oggetti d’arte (Florence, 1982), 179. A similar dating is proposed for the polyptych formerly in Sant’Agostino at San Gimignano; cf. Cristina De Benedictis, “Pittura e miniatura del Duecento e del Trecento in terra di Siena,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 1:337–339; Andrew Martindale, Simone Martini (Oxford, 1988), 200–202 n. 23; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 349. The polyptych now divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (no. 41.100.23, Lehman Collection, no. 1975.1. 12 and 13), the Thyssen-­Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (no. 82.PB.72) is usually dated to the 1320s, but the present writer prefers an earlier dating, towards the mid-1310s; cf. Miklós Boskovits, “Da Duccio a Simone Martini,” in Medioevo: La chiesa e il palazzo; Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, September 20–24, 2005, ed. Arturo Carlo Quintavalle (Milan, 2007), 577.  Comparison with the corresponding figures in the Pisa polyptych remains telling, however, and can also be extended to the representations of Saints Matthew and Simon. Simon is represented as still a young man, with a short, dark beard, while Matthew is a man of middle age in frontal position, with a long, forked beard. Matthew is shown in both paintings in the process of writing his Gospel. Less closely resembling his counterpart in the Washington panel is the Saint James Major of the Pisa polyptych, where we may observe the tendency, absent in the panels discussed here, to present the apostles in movement, to envelop their bodies in voluminous mantles that cast deep folds, and to place sharply foreshortened books in their hands. In the Pisa polyptych the books are in general more voluminous and open, and represented in such a way that some lines of calligraphy are visible. The saints, moreover, often seem to be conversing with one another, accompanying or enforcing their remarks with raised hand or exhibiting an object that not infrequently interrupts the outer contour of the figure, set against the gold ground, as if backlit.

Might the reduced emphasis on agitated rhythms and elegant gestures in the busts of apostles in the Gallery and in their companion panels imply a dating for them prior to the Pisa polyptych? Unfortunately, “objective data” deriving from the use of punch marks help us little in this case, since according to Mojmir S. Frinta’s survey (1998), the punched motifs present in the panels now divided between the Metropolitan Museum of Art [fig. 11]   [fig. 11] Simone Martini, Saint Andrew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943 [fig. 13]   [fig. 13] Simone Martini, Saint Bartholomew, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943 [fig. 14]   [fig. 14] Simone Martini, Saint Matthias, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943 [fig. 15]   [fig. 15] Simone Martini, Saint Thomas, c. 1315/1320, tempera on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943 and the Gallery recur virtually throughout the entire oeuvre of Simone Martini, from the San Gimignano polyptych to the Annunciation in the Uffizi, Florence (1333), and beyond.[18]  [18]
The punch marks in the four Washington panels are registered as follows by Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998): “Da10a” (present in works by Simone Martini from the San Gimignano polyptych to the late Orsini quadriptych and in various works of Lippo Memmi), 117–119; “Ea1” (present in paintings by Simone with a presumable provenance from Orvieto, in the Orsini quadriptych, and in works by Lippo), 189; “Fd14a” (used in a similar way as the preceding punches); “I16a” (used in Simone’s polyptych divided among the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Thyssen-­Bornemisza Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Uffizi Annunciation, and in panels attributed to Lippo), 205; “I70” (present in paintings between the Orvieto phase and the Uffizi Annunciation, and in works by Lippo), 321; “Jb59” (present in works of Simone’s Orvieto phase and in the Orsini quadriptych, but not found in authenticated paintings by Lippo), 388; “Jc15” (present in paintings of Simone’s Orvieto phase, the Uffizi Annunciation, and in works by Lippo), 400–401; “Ka27a” (again present in paintings of Simone’s Orvieto phase, the Uffizi Annunciation, and in various works by Lippo), 444; and “Ka63” (used in a similar way as the previous punch), 453–454.  It might be more fruitful to concentrate attention instead on another aspect, namely the fact that Simone, as far as we are able to judge today, generally avoided the use of the round arch in his altarpieces. This motif appears for the last time in the youthful polyptych from San Gimignano, while in later works the arch, if it is not Gothic, is enriched with small trefoil arches on the inside, as in the Pisa polyptych. Not only is the framing of the National Gallery of Art panels very similar to that of the components of the predella of the Saint Louis of Toulouse in Naples (painted in c. 1317, the year of the saint’s canonization), but also their stylistic character is consistent with that of the works realized in the years of rapid development between the Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico (1315) and the Pisan polyptych of 1319–1320. 

These considerations raise the question of identifying the altarpiece of which the ten busts of apostles formed part. Michael Mallory (1974) argued that the four Washington panels, together with their six companion panels in other collections, were in origin the predella of the polyptych by Lippo Memmi of which Saint John the Baptist in the Gallery also formed part.[19]  [19]
Michael Mallory, “An Altarpiece by Lippo Memmi Reconsidered,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 (1974): 201 n. 19.  The proposal has not met with acceptance in the art historical literature, but no alternative hypotheses have yet been formulated. A possible candidate for the lost central panel of the polyptych of which the series of busts of apostles formed part could be, in the present writer’s opinion, the Madonna and Child from the church of Santa Maria Maddalena at Castiglion d’Orcia, now in the Museo Civico e Diocesano at Montalcino (80 × 61 cm).[20]  [20]
The Madonna formerly at Castiglion d’Orcia was not necessarily painted for that town and was variously attributed in the past. Serena Padovani (1979) attributed it to Simone, and Alessandro Bagnoli (1997) accepted the attribution, whereas Leone de Castris (2003) thought it was painted “in buona parte” by studio assistants of Simone and dated it to the early 1320s. With regard to the dating of the painting, it should be borne in mind that Frinta (1998) found in it a punch mark present in various works by Simone executed during his period in Orvieto, as well as in the Pisa polyptych of 1319–1320, and in the San Gimignano polyptych. See Serena Padovani, “Una tavola di Castiglione d’Orcia restaurata di recente,” Prospettiva 17 (1979): 82–88; Alessandro Bagnoli, Museo civico e diocesano d’arte sacra di Montalcino (Siena, 1997), 33, 35; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, Simone Martini (Milan, 2003), 209, 354; Mojmir Svatopluk Frinta, Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting (Prague, 1998), 428.  The width of the panel is not very different from that of the images placed at the center of Simone’s polyptychs executed for churches in Pisa, Orvieto, or San Gimignano, and its height is also close to that from San Gimignano, now deprived of its original frame. So there is nothing to prevent us from imagining the Montalcino Madonna at the center of a similar polyptych and with a series of apostles in its predella. Our panels share with it not only a similar date but also the external profile terminating in a round arch. 

In conclusion, the ten panels of the apostles can, I believe, be firmly attributed to Simone Martini. In the past scholars have generally undervalued these panels, not as a consequence of any intrinsic mediocrity but because of the loss of the pictorial finishes in some of them, flattening the modeling of the figures, and the unhappy result of successive restorations that have obscured many of the more exquisite touches of the pictorial technique, especially in the busts of Saints Bartholomew, Matthias, and Thomas now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, the better-preserved passages in our panels, in particular in the faces of Saints Thaddeus and James Major, still retain qualities that, in the view of the present writer, seem fully worthy of the hand of Simone.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016