Christ Blessing, c. 1310

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, this panel and its two companions (Saint Peter and Saint James Major) were preserved together with two others from the same 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 [fig. 1]   [fig. 1] Reconstruction of a dispersed polyptych by Grifo di Tancredi (color images are NGA objects): a. Saint Peter; b. Saint John the Baptist (fig. 2); c. Christ Blessing; d. Saint James Major; e. After Grifo di Tancredi, line drawing of a lost image of Saint Ursula (see also Reconstruction): one representing the Baptist [fig. 2]   [fig. 2] Grifo di Tancredi, Saint John the Baptist, c. 1310, tempera on panel, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry now in the Musée des Beaux-­Arts in Chambéry,[1]  [1]
Véronique Damian and Jean-Claude Giroud, Peintures florentines, Collections du Musée de Chambéry (Chambéry, 1990), 66–67. The panel entered the museum in 1914 as a gift of Leonce Mesnard. I have been unable to establish the painting’s fate in the time period between the 1851 sale and 1914. and the other probably with an image of Saint Ursula, its whereabouts currently unknown.[2]  [2]
The fate of this painting is also unknown. It never resurfaced after its sale at the abovementioned auction. However, the drawing of it published in the Artaud de Montor catalog (1843) suffices to show that the collector’s identification of the crowned female saint with Saint Clare of Assisi was mistaken. The martyr saint in question is clearly of royal birth, if not a queen; George Kaftal plausibly recognized her as Saint Ursula. George Kaftal, Saints in Italian Art, vol. 1, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence, 1952), 996. They were parts of an 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 that, in view of its dimensions and execution, must have been a commission of some importance, although characterized by iconographicIconography, or Iconology
 Terms that refer broadly to the study of subjects and themes in works of art. Iconology, which is based on the results of iconography, is the more wide-ranging and comprehensive. One of the principal concerns of iconography is the discovery of symbolic and allegorical meanings in a work of art. —Willem F. Lash, Grove Art © Oxford University Press conventions and technical features (execution on a single panel) of an archaizing type. From an iconographic point of view, the bust of the adult Christ (rather than the Madonna and Child) in the central panel, rather uncommon in Tuscany at the time of the execution of the work,[3]  [3]
While the adult Christ appears with some frequency at the center of altarpieces, at least in the area of Lazio, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this iconography is rarer in Tuscany, where the center panel or compartment is usually filled with the Madonna and Child. Cf. Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), nos. 278, 279, 280, 298, 305. Significant exceptions are Meliore’s altarpiece in the Uffizi, Florence (no. 9153); that in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa (no. 1582) and dating to the early years of the Trecento; and Giotto’s polyptych now in the North Carolina Museum of Art at Raleigh, no. GL. 60.17.7. Other sui generis cases are presented by the Stefaneschi altarpiece in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, executed for Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome and hence reflecting local iconographic conventions, and the polyptych of Taddeo Gaddi formerly in the Bromley Davenport collection, in which the central image represents not the blessing Christ but the Vir dolorum. For the latter painting, see Andrew Ladis, Taddeo Gaddi: Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia, MO, 1982), 20–21. Yet after the early decades of the fourteenth century, altarpieces with Christ at the center disappear completely, only to reappear sporadically in the second half of the century; cf. Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 9–10. and the appearance among the lateral saints of one whose veneration was not particularly widespread (if she really does represent, as would seem to be the case, Saint Ursula), might suggest that the altarpiece was intended for the nuns of the Florentine convent named after this saint and founded in 1309.[4]  [4]
P. N. Cianfogni and Domenico Moreni, Memorie istoriche dell’Ambrosiana R. Basilica di S. Lorenzo di Firenze, 3 vols. (Florence, 1804), 1:136–139. The elaborate ornamental decoration incised on the gold groundGround
 The layer or layers used to prepare the support to hold the paint. is probably a measure of the importance attached to the work. This type of decoration, preferred by CimabueCimabue
 (Cenni [Benciviene] di Pepo) (c. 1240–before July 14, 1302) Italian painter and mosaicist. His nickname means either “bull-head” or possibly “one who crushes the views of others,”’ (It. cimare: ‘top, shear, blunt’), an interpretation matching the tradition in commentaries on Dante that he was not merely proud of his work but contemptuous of criticism. Filippo Villani and Vasari assigned him the name Giovanni, but this has no historical foundation. He may be considered the most dramatic of those artists influenced by contemporary Byzantine painting through which antique qualities were introduced into Italian work in the late 13th century. His interest in classical Roman drapery techniques and in the spatial and dramatic achievements of such contemporary sculptors as Nicola Pisano, however, distinguishes him from other leading members of this movement. As a result of his influence on such younger artists as Duccio and Giotto, the forceful qualities of his work, and its openness to a wide range of sources, Cimabue appears to have had a direct personal influence on the subsequent course of Florentine, Tuscan, and possibly Roman painting. —Robert Gibbs, Grove Art © Oxford University Press, was not common in Florence and was generally used in the thirteenth century only on images of the Maestà.[5]  [5]
In Florence, panels with similarly decorated gold grounds are found especially in representations of the Maestà. We may cite, for example, the three versions of the Maestà that have come down to us from the hand of Cimabue, Duccio’s Madonna Rucellai, or the altarpiece of the Magdalen Master in the church of San Michele at Rovezzano near Florence. See Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998a), 105–112, 132, 136, 248; and Angelo Tartuferi, La pittura a Firenze nel Duecento (Florence, 1990), pl. 163. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Lucchese master Deodato Orlandi also used this type of decoration on horizontal altarpieces with half-length figures of saints. Examples include the one dated 1300 now in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa (no. 1586); the dismembered and dispersed polyptych of which the center panel is known, formerly in the Hurd collection in New York, inscribed with the date 1308; and even in a portable tabernacle, like that now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 260–261; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 160 no. 418; Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemäldega­lerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 256–259. As for the peculiar profiles of the triptych components, and the fact that they seem to have been painted on a single panel, these were aspects of archaizing character but still fairly widespread in Florentine painting in the early fourteenth century.[6]  [6]
Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 173, observed that the peculiar profile of the former Artaud de Montor panels seems unique among paintings dating to this period. But this does not necessarily imply, as Garrison believed, that it is the result of modern falsification. Nor does Garrison’s doubt regarding the genuineness of the appearance of the paintings in the way they were illustrated in the drawing published in the Artaud de Montor catalog seem justified. It should be borne in mind that the outer frame of the altarpiece has been lost, probably when the figures were separated and their profiles adjusted to the painted internal frame. The external frame originally might have had a different profile, for instance like that of the Sienese triptych no. 11 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, which still preserves its original mixtilinear external frame while the ornamental border that delimits the upper part of the scenes is trefoil shaped. Another similar case is the Florentine Madonna in the Acton collection in Florence, which originally formed the center of an altarpiece; it too is executed on wood with horizontal graining (cf. Garrison 1949, no. 635). Here, the painted inner frame is arch shaped, whereas the outer frame placed over it is triangular in profile. It is therefore difficult to reconstruct with any precision the original external profile of the polyptych by Grifo di Tancredi. Altarpieces with half-length figures, executed on a single horizontal-grained wooden support, represent an archaic form that Sienese painters abandoned around 1300 but that continued to be used sporadically in Florence in the early decades of the fourteenth century. The best known example is the polyptych of Santa Reparata, produced in Giotto’s shop no earlier than c. 1310; cf. Giorgio Bonsanti and Alfio Del Serra, in Capolavori e restauri (Florence, 1986), 354–357. Cf. also the examples cited in Provenance note 3.

Artaud de Montor probably acquired the National Gallery of Art’s panels in Italy in the later years of the eighteenth or early years of the nineteenth century. They came to him accompanied by the attribution (wholly unjustified) to “Margaritone d’Arezzo,” with which they were later illustrated in the successive catalogs of his collection (1808, 1811, 1843).[7]  [7]
Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, Considérations sur l’état de la peinture en Italie, dans les quatre siècles qui ont précédé celui de Raphaël: Par un membre de l’académie de Cortone; Ouvrage servant de catalogue raisonné à une collection de tableaux des XIIe, XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris, 1808), nos. 30, 31, 34; Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, Considérations sur l’état de la peinture en Italie, dans les quatre siècles qui ont précédé celui de Raphaël, par un membre de l’Académie de Cortone (Artaud de Montor): Ouvrage servant de catalogue raisonné à une collection de tableaux des XIIe, XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris, 1811), nos. 35, 36, 39; Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, Peintres primitifs: Collection de tableaux rapportée d’Italie (Paris, 1843), nos. 35, 36, 39. A century later, Bernard BerensonBerenson, Bernard
 (June 26, 1865–October 6, 1959) Art historian and connoisseur. Son of a Lithuanian timber merchant who emigrated to the United States with his family in 1875, he was educated at the Latin School, Boston, and at Harvard University, where he studied Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and German. In an unsuccessful application for a traveling fellowship to Europe, he wrote, ‘Art prevails in this programme because it is there that I feel myself weakest. One can study literature here . . . but art not at all.’ On his subsequent visit to Europe in 1885, financed by friends, his rapid visual self-education led to the decision to settle in Italy and to devote his life to the study of Italian art. —William Mostyn-Owen, Grove Art © Oxford University Press (1920) suggested an attribution to Cimabue.[8]  [8]
Bernard Berenson, “A Newly Discovered Cimabue,” Art in America 8 (1920): 250–271. Publishing the three panels immediately after their acquisition by Duveen Brothers, Inc., in 1919, Berenson considered them executed “as early as 1271​ . . . ​or a little later” and compared them with various late thirteenth-century works, including two apse mosaics—one in San Miniato al Monte in Florence[9]  [9]
Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 1100 – ​1270 (Florence 1993), 142–144, 726–733. The mosaics of the Florentine church, executed in the 1270s probably by the Master of Sant’Agata, were restored for the first time in 1297 and then later as well. They are now rather difficult to read, but the figure of Christ, which Berenson compared with the Christ in the Washington painting, belongs to the earliest phase of the program. See Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, Sec. i, vol. ii, The Mosaics of the Baptistery of Florena (Florence 2007), 207 n. 158, 603–607. and the other in Pisa Cathedral, the latter a documented work of a “magister Franciscus,” who executed it between 1301 and 1302[10]  [10]
Roberto Paolo Novello, “I mosaici,” in Il Duomo di Pisa, ed. Adriano Peroni, 3 vols. (Modena, 1995), 1:286–287, 556–558. —and the fresco with the scene of the Capture of Christ in the upper church of San Francesco at Assisi.[11]  [11]
Alessio Monciatti, in La basilica di San Francesco ad Assisi, ed. Giorgio Bonsanti (Modena, 2002), 503–504. The panels were exhibited under the name of Cimabue in 1920, 1924, and 1935, and various subsequent publications accepted the attribution.[12]  [12]
Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition: Loans and Special Features (New York, 1920), unnumbered catalog; Loan Exhibition of Important Early Italian Paintings in the Possession of Notable American Collectors (New York, 1924), no. 2; and Raymond Escholier et al., Exposition de l’art italien de Cimabue à Tiepolo (Paris, 1935), 51. Among these we may mention the opinions of Osvald Sirén (1922), who compared the three paintings with the artist’s late works (in particular with the Maestà now in the Uffizi, Florence);[13]  [13]
This is the panel from the church of Santa Trinita (no. 8343), variously dated. More recent scholarship has tended to date it to the last decade of the thirteenth century; cf. Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 249–256. Lionello Venturi (1931, 1933); Enzo Carli (1949); Pietro Toesca (1927); and Luigi Coletti (1941), all of whom thought that the paintings in the Gallery probably were autograph by the master.[14]  [14]
Lionello Venturi, Pitture italiane in America (Milan, 1931), no. 8; Lionello Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, trans. Countess Vanden Heuvel and Charles Marriott, 3 vols. (New York and Milan, 1933), 1: no. 10; Enzo Carli, “Cimabue,” in Enciclopedia cattolica, 12 vols. (Florence, 1949), 3:1614; Pietro Toesca, Il medioevo, 2 vols., Storia dell’arte italiana 1 (Turin, 1927), 2:1040 n. 48; Luigi Coletti, I Primitivi, vol. 1, 120 tavole (Novara, 1941), 37. Berenson himself restated on various occasions his conviction of the Cimabuesque authorship of the panels. But Raimond Van Marle (1923 and later) placed this in doubt, as did Richard Offner (1924), though he admitted the possibility of a direct intervention of the master, at least in the central panel.[15]  [15]
Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 1, From the 6th Until the End of the 13th Century (The Hague, 1923), 476, 574; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 5, The Local Schools of Central and Southern Italy of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1925), 442, fig. 262; Raimond van Marle, Le scuole della pittura italiana, vol. 1, Dal VI alla fine del XIII secolo (The Hague, 1932), 495–496,  fig. 321; Richard Offner, “A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings,” The Arts 5 (1924): 244. Mario Salmi (1935) also excluded the three panels from Cimabue’s catalog; additionally, he recognized one of the missing figures of the former Artaud de Montor altarpiece in the panel of the Baptist in the museum in Chambéry.[16]  [16]
Mario Salmi, “Per il completamento di un politico cimabuesco,” Rivista d’arte 17 (1935): 114. In 1948, Roberto Longhi identified the master of the polyptych with the anonymous artist who executed the Maestà no. 6115 in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.[17]  [17]
Roberto Longhi, “Giudizio sul Duecento,” Proporzioni 2 (1948): 19, 47. That panel came from the monastery of San Gaggio near Florence,[18]  [18]
See Angelo Tartuferi, in Dipinti, vol. 1, Dal Duecento a Giovanni da Milano, Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, ed. Miklós Boskovits and Angelo Tartuferi (Florence, 2003), 94–98. hence the conventional name Longhi bestowed on this artist: Master of San Gaggio. From that moment, the attribution to Cimabue disappeared from the art historical literature, apart from the posthumous edition of Berenson’s Italian Pictures (1963) and the catalogs of the Gallery.[19]  [19]
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 1:50. The three paintings thereafter were classified as works by a follower of the master, or ascribed—ever more frequently—to the Master of San Gaggio himself.[20]  [20]
The following authorities spoke of “school” or “following” of Cimabue: Giulia Sinibaldi and Giulia Brunetti, eds., Pittura italiana del Duecento e Trecento: Catalogo della mostra giottesca di Firenze del 1937 (Florence, 1943), 277; Roberto Salvini, Cimabue (Rome, 1946), 23; Roberto Salvini, “Cimabue,” in Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte, ed. Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 15 vols. (Florence, 1960), 3:473; Richard Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 5, Bernardo Daddi and His Circle, ed. Miklós Boskovits, Ada Labriola, and Martina Ingendaay Rodio, new ed. (Florence, 2001), 472 n. 1; Edward B. Garrison, Ita­lian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 172–173; Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death (Princeton, 1951), 9 n. 2; Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Pittura del Dugento a Firenze (Florence, 1955), 127; Sergio Samek Ludovici, Cimabue (Milan, 1956), 42–44; Hellmut Hager, Die Anfänge des ita­lienischen Altarbildes: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgechichte des toskanischen Hochaltarretabels (Munich, 1962), 111–112; Mario Salmi, “La donazio­ne Contini Bonacossi,” Bollettino d’arte 52 (1967): 223; Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-­Nineteenth-­Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 54, 403, 440, 645; Enio Sindona, L’opera completa di Cimabue e il momento figurativo pregiottesco (Milan, 1975), 119–120; Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:134–135; Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art (New York, 2004), 422. Longhi’s 1963 attribution to the Master of San Gaggio, in Roberto Longhi, “In traccia di alcuni anonimi trecentisti,” Paragone 14 (1963): 10, was accepted in turn by Ugo Galetti and Ettore Camesasca, Enciclopedia della pittura italiana, 3 vols. (Milan, 1951), 2:1486 (though the three paintings were also listed among the works of Cimabue on p. 672 of the same publication); Michel Laclotte, De Giotto à Bellini: Les primitifs italiens dans les musées de France (Paris, 1956), 15; Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 1, I dipinti toscani del secolo XIII (Rome, 1958), 56; Luisa Marcucci, in Le Musée des Beaux-­Arts de Chambéry (Chambéry, 1960), n.p., fig. 15; Giovanni Previtali, La fortuna dei primitivi: Dal Vasari ai neoclassici (Turin, 1964), 232; Giovanni Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega (Milan, 1967), 26; Carlo Volpe, “La formazione di Giotto nella cultura di Assisi,” in Giotto e i giotteschi in Assisi (Rome, 1969), 38; Miklós Boskovits, “Cenni di Pepe (Pepo), detto Cima­bue,” in Dizionario biografico degli ita­liani, 82 vols. (Rome, 1979), 23:452; Fra Ludovico da Pietralunga and Pietro Scarpellini, Descrizione della Basilica di S. Francesco e di altri Santuari di Assisi (Treviso, 1982), 416; Alessandra Guerrini, “Maestro di San Gaggio,” in La Pittura in Italia: Il Duecento e il Trecento, ed. Enrico Castelnuovo, 2 vols. (Milan, 1986), 2:625; Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 202, 286; Angelo Tartuferi, La pittura a Firenze nel Duecento (Florence, 1990), 63, 109; Véronique Damian and Jean-­Claude Giroud, Peintures florentines, Collections du Musée de Chambéry (Chambéry, 1990), 23, 66–67; “Artaud de Montor, Jean Alex Francis,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner, 34 vols. (New York, 1996), 2:514. In 1987, the present writer tentatively proposed the identification of this anonymous master with Grifo di Tancredi,[21]  [21]
Miklós Boskovits, ed., Frühe italienische Malerei: Gemäldegalerie Berlin, Katalog der Gemälde, trans. Erich Schleier (Berlin, 1988), 122, proposed an integration of the fragmentary inscription of the triptych in the collection of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres. and this proposal has since met with growing consensus.[22]  [22]
Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. 1, vol. 1, The Origins of Florentine Painting, 1100–1270 (Florence 1993), 732 n. 1, 809; Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, ed. Giovanna Ragionieri (Milan, 1998), 129; Luciano Bellosi, “La lezione di Giotto,” in Storia delle arti in Toscana: Il Trecento, ed. Max Seidel (Florence, 2004), 96; Rolf Bagemihl, “Some Thoughts about Grifo di Tancredi of Florence and a Little-­Known Panel at Volterra,” Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 413–414; Angelo Tartuferi, “Grifo di Tancredi,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 82 vols. (Rome, 2002), 59:398; Sonia Chiodo, in L’arte a Firenze nell’età di Dante (1250–1300), ed. Angelo Tartuferi and Mario Scalini (Florence, 2004), 110–114; Andrea Staderini, “Un contesto per la collezione di ‘primitivi’ di Alexis-­François Artaud de Montor (1772–1849),” Proporzioni 5 (2004): 38; Pierluigi Leone De Castris, “Montano d’Arezzo a San Lorenzo,” in Le chiese di San Lorenzo e San Domenico: Gli ordini mendicanti a Napoli, ed. Serena Romano and Nicolas Bock (Naples, 2005), 109. On the other hand, different opinions have been expressed about the dating of the former Artaud de Montor polyptych: Luiz C. Marques (1987) proposed the date 1275–1280; Edward Garrison (1949), Angelo Tartuferi (1990, 2002), and Rolf Bagemihl (1999), the years between 1280 and 1290; Sonia Chiodo (2009), the last decade of the thirteenth century; and others have preferred a dating around or even after 1300.[23]  [23]
Luiz Marques, La peinture du Duecento en Italie centrale (Paris, 1987), 202, 286; Edward B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Painting: An Illustrated Index (Florence, 1949), 172–173; Angelo Tartuferi, La pittura a Firenze nel Duecento (Florence, 1990), 63, 109; Angelo Tartuferi, “Grifo di Tancredi,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 87 vols. (Rome, 2002), 59:398; Rolf Bagemihl, “Some Thoughts about Grifo di Tancredi of Florence and a Little-­Known Panel at Volterra,” Arte cristiana 87 (1999): 413–414; Sonia Chiodo, “Grifo di Tancredi,” in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, ed. Günter Meißner, 87 vols. (Munich, 2009), 62:129. See also Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 1, I dipinti toscani del secolo XIII (Rome, 1958), 56; Hellmut Hager, Die Anfänge des italienischen Altarbildes: Untersuchungen zur Entstehungsgechichte des toskanischen Hochaltarretabels (Munich, 1962), 111–112; Roberto Longhi, “In traccia di alcuni anonimi trecentisti,” Paragone 14 (1963): 10.

An aid for solving the problem of dating may come from the panel that gave its name to the painter, namely the Maestà now in the Accademia. This is not dated, but some clues suggest that it was executed in the early years of the fourteenth century.[24]  [24]
The monastery of the Augustinian nuns dedicated to San Gaggio (= Caius), sometimes described as having been founded in the fourteenth century, in fact already existed in the 1270s, as demonstrated by a testament of 1274; cf. Guido Carocci, I dintorni di Firenze, vol. 2, Sulla sinistra dell’Arno (Florence, 1907), 289; Robert Davidsohn, Forschungen zur älteren Geschichte von Florenz, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1896), 4:416. At that time, the community of cloistered nuns, called “donne rinkiuse di San Gaggio,” probably was very small; perhaps they did not even have their own church. That such a church presumably existed around the turn of the century can, however, be inferred from documents of 1299 and 1304, cited by Domenico Moreni, Notizie istoriche dei contorni di Firenze, vol. 6, Dalla Porta a Pinti fino a Settignano (Florence, 1795), 207, which speak of a monastero and its badessa. Grifo’s painting, a Maestà, judging from its fame and size, cannot have been destined for the high altar: instead, it adorned the meeting place of a religious confraternity in the church; cf. Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich, 1990), 433–446. It therefore presupposes the existence of a church open to the public and for this reason additionally seems more likely to date after than before c. 1300. The very circumstance that the earlier literature related the altarpiece in the Accademia to the Master of Santa Cecilia, and the three panels in Washington to the earlier production of Pacino di Bonaguida, implies that their closest stylistic affinities should be sought in works dating to the early decades of the fourteenth century.[25]  [25]
No. 6115 of the Galleria dell’Accademia was attributed to the Master of Santa Cecilia by Mario Salmi, “Spigolature d’arte toscana,” L’Arte 16 (1913): 209–210; Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 2, The Sienese School of the 14th Century (The Hague, 1924), 293–294; Ugo Procacci, La R. Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (Rome, 1936), 22. On the other hand, Roberto Longhi noted in a youthful polyptych by Pacino di Bonaguida, now in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio of Florence, “un aspetto torvo simile a quello datoci” (a surly expression similar to the one given to us) by the “Maestro di San Gaggio” in the former Artaud de Montor altarpiece. Roberto Longhi, “In traccia di alcuni anonimi trecentisti,” Paragone 14 (1963): 10. The influence of the young Giotto (Florentine, c. 1265 - 1337) has even been aired.[26]  [26]
Even in his first intervention, Roberto Longhi noted in the San Gaggio altarpiece and in the panels now in Washington reflections of the “prime sterzature plastiche del Giotto giovane” (the first turns of the wheel towards the plasticity of the young Giotto). Roberto Longhi, “Giudizio sul Duecento,” Proporzioni 2 (1948): 19. For his part, Luisa Marcucci expressed the view that “l’autore della tavola di San Gaggio, quando la dipinse​ . . . ​aveva già veduto la Madonna [by Giotto] di Ognissanti” (the author of the San Gaggio altarpiece had, when he painted it, already seen Giotto’s Madonna from the Ognissanti), and that this implied that it would date no earlier (or not much earlier) than the second decade of the Trecento. Luisa Marcucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze, vol. 1, I di­pinti toscani del secolo XIII (Rome, 1958), 57.
That seems improbable, for some characteristic aspects of the art of Grifo da Tancredi, such as the incongruities and chaotic perspective of his architectural structures or of his marble thrones, suggest that his models in this phase were derived not from Giotto but from the works of Cimabue and artists of his own generation, as yet unable to accept the rationality of Giotto’s way of creating pictorial space. The model for the panel in the Accademia, for example, could have been an image of the type of the Maestà of Santa Margherita at Montici, or Saint Peter Enthroned (dated 1307) in the church of San Simone in Florence.[27]  [27]
For these panels, generally (though not unanimously) assigned to the Master of Santa Cecilia, cf. Richard Offner and Miklós Boskovits, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, sec. 3, vol. 1, The St. Cecilia Master and His Circle, new ed. (Florence, 1986), 114–121, 132–137.

If the San Gaggio altarpiece in the Accademia belongs, as I believe, to the first decade of the fourteenth century, a similar dating may also apply to the former Artaud de Montor panels. The two share close affinities. Among the saints in the Florentine Maestà, the Baptist in particular is almost a replica of the image of the same saint in the painting now in the Musée des Beaux-­Arts in Chambéry, but the Saint Peter [fig. 3]   [fig. 3] Detail of Saint Peter, Grifo di Tancredi, San Gaggio altarpiece, c. 1300, tempera on panel, Galleria dell'Academia, Florence standing alongside the protagonist in the San Gaggio altarpiece also is very close to the representation of that saint in our panels. Their faces are energetically modeled, with marked contrasts of light and shade and characterized by very pronounced cheekbones, short nose, fleshy lips, small eyes, and penetrating gaze. Their facial features and their intense brooding expressions are further enlivened by the undulating curls that frame their faces, while their stiff, simplified drapery, furrowed by few folds and given an almost metallic consistency and sheen, assumes a subordinate role. The artist’s unfamiliarity with the rules of perspectival foreshortening is also betrayed in the panels now in the Gallery, notably by the rendering of the book held in Christ’s left hand [fig. 4]   [fig. 4] Detail, Grifo di Tancredi, Christ Blessing, c. 1310, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection: its pages, instead of opening, improbably seem to bend backwards.[28]  [28]
Painters of the thirteenth century often represented the blessing Christ with a closed book in his hand. In contrast, examples of Christ holding an open book reveal the problems involved in foreshortening. It is enough to mention in this regard the already cited altarpiece in the Museo Nazionale in Pisa and the mosaic of Magister Francesco in the apse of Pisa Cathedral. See Mariagiulia Burresi and Antonino Caleca, eds., Cimabue a Pisa: La pittura pisana del Duecento da Giunta a Giotto (Pisa, 2005), 202–203; Adriano Peroni, ed., Il Duomo di Pisa, 3 vols. (Modena, 1995), 2, pt. 2: pl. 1571. Offner (1924) rightly observed that, although the frowning expression of the energetically squared faces [fig. 5]   [fig. 5] Detail, Grifo di Tancredi, Saint Peter, c. 1310, tempera on poplar, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection may recall those of the Florentine caposcuola, “Cimabue’s figures possess a higher intensity.”[29]  [29]
Richard Offner, “A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings,” The Arts 5 (1924): 244. At least during his late phase, Grifo emphasized solemnity and elegance in his figures, delineated with a graphic style that Fern Rusk Shapley correctly deemed “more suave and flowing than in Cimabue’s commonly accepted paintings.”[30]  [30]
Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols. (Washington, DC, 1979), 1:134. It is just in this respect that Grifo went beyond the example of Cimabue. His human ideal is gentler, more graceful in movement, neater in dress. He conforms more faithfully to the conventions of the 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 style in Florentine painting, as did the Master of Santa Cecilia (that is, probably Gaddo Gaddi) and Lippo di Benivieni during these same years. The style of the Washington panels suggests that their dating be placed between the first and the second decade of the fourteenth century. But if we are right in assuming that they were intended for the church of Sant’Orsola in Florence, they cannot have been any earlier than 1309.

Miklós Boskovits (1935–2011)

March 21, 2016