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A young woman sitting and holding a nude baby boy is surrounded by winged angels and four men in this vertical painting. They all have pale skin, and the people, not angels, have delicate gold rings as halos. The woman, Mary, sits on a white stone pedestal on a stone step, which spans the width of the painting. Her head tilts to our right as she looks down. Her brown hair is covered with a translucent white veil. She wears a raspberry-pink dress under a midnight-blue cloak lined with pine green. She cradles the chubby baby with both hands. He has round cheeks, a snub nose, and bow-shaped lips. He looks at Mary and reaches toward her face with one hand. Two men stand on the step to either side of her pedestal, and two more kneel at the base of the step. The man at the top left is cleanshaven and has wings striped with grass green, mauve pink, pearl white, and sky blue. He wears a gold helmet, a muscled breastplate, a knee-length, lavender-blue tunic, and gold, shin-high, toe-less shoes. He holds a sword up high with one hand and a scale with the other. A tiny man kneels and prays to Mary in the higher pan of the scale. In front of him, a man with darker, tanned skin, kneels on one leg with his body facing us as he turns his head to look up at Mary and the baby. His brows are furrowed and his lips parted. He has short, curly brown hair and a trimmed beard. He wears a bottle-green robe and a canary-yellow cloak. He holds a piece of paper on a pink book braced against his raised knee. To the upper right, the man standing next to Mary’s pedestal has a long white beard, and he looks down at an open book he holds with both hands. He wears a conical, split hat, a grass-green robe edged with a pattern of haloed, winged baby heads against maroon red. He wears gold rings over white gloves and a white garment underneath the cloak. In front of him, a balding man with a curly white beard and hair also kneels on one leg in front of the step. This man also looks down with lips parted. He holds a book with a moss-green cover with one hand and a pen in the other as he writes on a piece of paper on the book. He wears a cranberry-red cloak over a lapis-blue robe, and both kneeling men wear sandals on the feet we can see. Four winged angels, about half the size of the other people, hover in a line behind Mary, two to each side. They all have long, blond, curly hair. Their wings and robes are painted in shades of red, yellow, blue, and green. The angel to our left holds a spray of white flowers and one to our right holds a branch of white lilies. They all look at Mary or the baby. A sliver of blue, mountainous landscape is visible to our left of the pedestal. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, so Mary, the angels, and the men standing to each side of the pedestal are mostly outlined against a pale blue sky.

Luca Signorelli

Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, mid or late 1510s

Not on View

Medium

oil on panel transferred to hardboard

Dimensions

overall: 155.7 x 135.6 cm (61 5/16 x 53 3/8 in.)

framed: 194.3 x 172.1 x 7.6 cm (76 1/2 x 67 3/4 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1961.9.87

Artists / Makers

Luca Signorelli (artist) Cortonese, 1445/1450 - 1523

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

An Albergotti chapel, possibly the one in the Cathedral of Arezzo, built c. 1517;[1] Marchesi Albergotti, by the 17th century;[2] Francesco Lombardi and Ugo Baldi, Florence, by 1845;[3] (Ludwig Metzger, Florence); acquired 17 May 1875 by Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, 25th earl of Crawford [1812-1880], Villa Palmieri, near Florence;[4] by inheritance to his son, James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th earl of Crawford [1847-1913]; by inheritance to his son, Sir David Alexander Edward Lindsay, 27th earl of Crawford [1871-1940]; by inheritance to his son, Sir David Alexander Robert Lindsay, 28th earl of Crawford [1900-1975], Haigh Hall, Wigan, Manchester;[5] (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 11 October 1946, no. 152); (Koetser, London and New York). (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York); sold June 1949 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[6] gift 1952 to the Honolulu Academy of Arts; returned 1960 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; gift 1961 to NGA.

[1] The Albergotti chapel of the Duomo, on the left side of the main altar, preserves its original stained glass window, commissioned in 1516 by the canon Baldassare di Luca Albergotti from Guilleaume de Marcillat and executed the following year (see Angelo Pasqui and Ubaldo Pasqui, Nuova guida di Arezzo e de'suoi contorni, Arezzo, 1880: 88 n. 59, and Girolamo Mancini, Guglielmo de Marcillat francese insuperato pittore di Vetri, Florence, 1909: 25). As such a dating would not seem to contradict the style of the NGA painting, it is quite possible that the latter was executed for the same chapel and in the same time period. Against this hypothesis is, however, the circumstance that the chapel's dedicatee, Saint Sylvester, is not represented on the altarpiece. Among those flanking the Madonna, two figures of evangelists can be recognized, one of whom is probably Mark. Near to one of the Albergotti residences in Arezzo, the "Palazzo delle Statue" in Via Ricasoli, there was a now destroyed church dedicated to this latter saint (San Marco a Murello; see Angelo Tafi, Guida Storico-Artistica, Arezzo, 1978: 282), and one cannot exclude that the NGA panel was instead executed for this church.

[2] Guido A. Angelucci, Memori Istoriche per servire di Guida al Forestiero in Arezzo, Florence, 1819: 83, mentions the modifications made in the 1810s by Bishop Agostino Albergotti to his family chapel in the Cathedral. This work and the construction of a new altar might have caused the removal of the original altarpiece and its transfer to the family gallery. An early twentieth-century photograph in the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence shows, however, the NGA painting in a sumptuous baroque frame bearing the coat-of-arms of the Albergotti. Possibly the panel obtained this new frame when it entered the family gallery; in this case it must have been there by the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Oreste Brizi, Nuova Guida di Arezzo, Arezzo, 1838: 49, in his description of the Albergotti collection, mentions a painting by Signorelli, but unfortunately fails to specify its subject.

[3] See Collection de tableaux anciens de F. Lombardi and H. Baldi, Florence, n.d. [1845]: 13. The collection had been formed since 1838; see Denys Sutton, "Aspects of British Collecting-IV," Apollo 122, no. 282 (August 1985): 94. William B. Spence, The Lions of Florence, Florence, 1847: 137, states that the private gallery of the restorers and dealers Lombardi and Baldi was one of the most important of its kind in Florence. Although the catalogue of their collection does not give information about the origin of the painting, its provenance from the collection of the marchesi Albergotti is confirmed by Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, from the II to the XVI Century, 3 vols., London, 1864-1866: 3(1866); Milanesi in Vasari, ed. Milanesi 3, 1878: 701; and Robert Vischer, Luca Signorelli und die italienische Renaissance, Leipzig, 1879: 236, 269.

[4] Luitpold Dussler, "An Unpublished Signorelli in an English Private Collection," The Burlington Magazine 47 (July 1925): 3, states that the painting was bought by the grandfather of the owner, in Florence. Hugh Brigstocke ("Lord Lindsay as a Collector," Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 64, no. 2 [Spring 1982]: 323 n. 3) reports the existence of a receipt pertaining to the painting's acquisition from Metzger in the archives of the earl of Crawford and Balcarres. The receipt is dated 17 May 1875. An annotation in NGA curatorial files reads as follows: "Mr. Walker [John Walker, NGA Chief Curator and then Director] copied from the Inventory (in old hand) at earl of Crawford's: it was once at the Villa Palmieri and was bought from the heirs of Francesco Lombardi in Florence in 1875 for 1300 fr." It is known that Villa Palmieri was bought by the 25th earl of Crawford in 1873 and sold in 1907 (see Harold Donaldson Eberlein, Villas of Florence and Tuscany, Philadelphia and New York, 1922: 346). According to the 1946 sale catalogue, the painting was brought to England in 1905.

[5] This location is given by Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford, 1932: 533, and Italian ed., trans. Emilio Cecchi, Milan, 1936: 459, and the 1946 sale catalogue also specifies that this and other paintings of the collection sold at the same auction were "removed from Haigh Hall."

[6] The Wildenstein invoice to the Kress Foundation for 16 items, including this painting, is dated 23 June 1949 (copy in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1375).

Associated Names

Albergotti, Marchesi
Baldi, Ugo
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Crawford, Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, 25th Earl of
Crawford, David Alexander Edward Lindsay, 27th Earl of, Sir
Crawford, David Alexander Robert Lindsay, 28th Earl of, Sir
Crawford, James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of
Honolulu Museum of Art
Koetser Gallery, David M.
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Lombardi, Francesco
Metzger, Ludwig
Wildenstein & Co., Inc.

Exhibition History

1893: The Work of Luca Signorelli and his School, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1893, no. 29 (only a photograph was exhibited).

Bibliography

1845: Collection de tableaux anciens de F. Lombardi et H. Baldi. Florence, 1845: 13.

1864: Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle. A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. 3 vols. London, 1864-1866: 3(1866):30.

1869: Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Geschichte der italienischen Malerei. 6 vols. Leipzig, 1869-1876: 4(1871):35.

1878: Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori. Ed. Gaetano Milanesi. 9 vols. Florence, 1878-1885: 3(1878):701.

1879: Vischer, Robert. Luca Signorelli und die italienische Renaissance. Leipzig, 1879: 236, 269.

1886: Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Storia della pittura in Italia dal secolo II al secolo XVI. 11 vols. Florence, 1886-1908: 8(1898):511.

1903: Crowe, Joseph Archer, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy. 2nd edition. 6 vols. Ed. Robert Langton Douglas (vols. 1-4) and Tancred Borenius (vols. 5-6). London, 1903-1914: 5(1914):113 n. 5.

1925: Dussler, Luitpold. “An Unpublished Signorelli in an English Private Collection.” The Burlington Magazine 57 (July 1925): 3, repro.

1927: Dussler, Luitpold. Luca Signorelli. Des Meisters Gemälde. Stuttgart, 1927: 138, repro.

1932: Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932: 533.

1936: Berenson, Bernard. Pitture italiane del rinascimento. Milan, 1936: 459.

1946: “Forthcoming Sales.” The Burlington Magazine 88 (1946): 260.

1951: Galetti, Ugo and Ettore Camesasca. Enciclopedia della pittura italiana. Milan, 1951: 2291.

1952: The Samuel H. Kress Collection in the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Honolulu, 1952: 38, 39, repro.

1953: Salmi, Mario. “Chiosa Signorelliana.” Commentari 4 (1953): 117, fig. 21.

1953: Salmi, Mario. Luca Signorelli. Novara, 1953: 65.

1964: Scarpellini, Pietro. Luca Signorelli. Florence, 1964: 141, 143.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 122.

1968: Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:401.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 109, repro.

1968: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century. London, 1968: 97, fig. 233.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 188, 647.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 326, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:429-430; 2:pl. 308.

1982: Brigstocke, Hugh. “Lord Lindsay as a Collector.” Bulletin of the J. Rylands University Library of Manchester 64, no. 2 (Spring 1982): 325.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 373, repro.

1989: Kanter, Laurence B. "The Late Works of Luca Signorelli and His Followers, 1498-1559." Ph.D. diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1989: 262-263, 289-291.

1991: Gizzi, Corrado, ed. Signorelli e Dante. Exh. cat. Castello Gizzi, Torre de’ Passeri, 1991: 301, 302.

2002: Kanter, Laurence B., and Tom Henry. Luca Signorelli: The Complete Paintings. Milan, 2002: 251-252, cat. 140.

2003: Boskovits, Miklós, David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 2003: 649-654, color repro.

2012: Henry, Tom. The Life and Art of Luca Signorelli. New Haven and London, 2012: 296-297, fig. 283.