Saint Apollonia, c. 1455/1460

[1] The altarpiece, commissioned by the friars and laity of the church of Sant'Agostino in Borgo San Sepolcro, must have been essentially complete by November 1469, and Piero must have received a final payment for it before 21 May 1470; see James R. Banker, "Piero della Francesca's S. Agostino Altarpiece: Some New Documents," The Burlington Magazine 129 (1987): 645-651. Vasari saw the polyptych, still complete, on the main altar of the church sometime before 1550 (Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piú eccellenti ittori, scultori e architettori, Florence, 1550: 362).

[2] The Augustinians moved to the Pieve di Santa Maria on 16 April 1555. It is known that "avevano portato con se le Reliquie...[and] le pitture portatili" ("they took with them the relics and movable pictures"), and they claimed the patronage rights of the altars of their former church (see Ercole Agnoletti, Memorie religiose inedite di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, 1970: 27-30). The literature was unaware for a long time that the polyptych was transferred to the new church, and Milanesi (in Vasari, Milanesi ed., 2:493 notes 2 and 3), as well as others (Giovanni Felice Pichi, La vita e le opera di Piero della Francesca, Sansepolcro, 1892: 101-108; Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, 11 vols. in 25 parts, Milan, 1901-1940: 7 part 2(1913):460, thought that the Peruginesque Assumption of the Virgin, placed on the main altar of the church of Santa Chiara (the original church of Sant'Agostino) in Sansepolcro, was the central element of Piero's polyptych. Tancred Borenius ("Professor Venturi on Quattrocento Painting," The Burlington Magazine 29 [1916]: 162 n. 4) corrected the error; however, even afterward the smaller panels from that complex continued to be identified as the "quadretti in tavola, alcuni de' quali sembrano di mano di Piero della Francesca" ("small panel pictures, some of which seem to be from the hand of Piero della Francesca") described by Giacomo Mancini (Istruzione storico-pittorica per visitare le chiese e palazzi di Città di Castello: colle memorie di alcuni artefici del disegno..., 2 vols., Perugia, 1832: 2:272) as being in the choir of the nuns of Santa Chiara. Thus Eugenio Battisti (Piero della Francesca, 2 vols., Milan, 1971: 2:45), and more recently Franco Polcri (Due ritrovamenti d'archivio a Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, 1990: 3-5, and Il Polittico Agostiniano di Piero della Francesca. Quaderni di Studi e Restauri del Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 2, Milan, 1996: 91) believe that parts of the altarpiece remained in the old church of the Augustinian friars, rededicated in 1555 to Santa Chiara.

[3] It is known that a wall of the church collapsed in 1652 (Agnoletti, Memorie religiose, 3, 1970); the polyptych on the main altar was probably moved and dismantled either on that occasion or during the subsequent restoration campaign. See also Miklós Boskovits, "Il San Nicola da Tolentino di Piero della Francesca restaurato," ACr n.s. 768 (May-June 1995): 227.

[4] In the unpublished Cronica di Borgo S. Sepolcro (Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Cod. Magl. cl. XXV, 202, fol. 70), datable to the second half of the seventeenth century, Giovanni Cinelli Calvoli describes in the house of Luca and Francesco Ducci four panels by Piero della Francesca representing four saints, which he says came from the high altar of the Pieve di Sant'Agostino. The identification of the individual saints is not always precise, but their description (see Alessandro Parronchi, "Ricostruzione del polittico di Sant'Agostino...," Michelangelo 13 [1984]: nos. 46-47, 30) leaves no doubt that these are Saints Augustine (now in Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, no. 1785), Michael (now in London, National Gallery, no. 769), John the Evangelist (now in New York, Frick Collection, no. 36.1.138), and Nicholas of Tolentino (now in Milan, Museo Poldo Pezzoli, no. 445/598). In the same collection are recorded also four "little pictures" attributed to Piero della Francesca, which very likely came from the same complex. They represent a Flagellation, a Crucifixion, and episodes of the Deposition and Resurrection, today all lost except the Crucifixion, which seems to be identifiable with a painting now in the Frick Collection in New York.

[5] A pamphlet published in 1835 (Vita di Piero della Francesca pittore del borgo Sansepolcro scrita da Giorgio Vasari Aretino, dedicata a Giuseppe Franceschi Marini. Nozze Franceschi Marini - Frescobaldi, ed. by Margherita Vedova Pichi, with notes by Francesco Gherardi Gragomanni, Sansepolcro) mentions four works by Piero preserved in the house of the Franceschi Marini: a youthful Self-Portrait (now lost, but recorded by Milanesi, 1878: 488, note 1, as a copy; see also Lajos Vayer, "Il problema degli autoritratti di Piero della Francesca," in Studi di storia dell'arte sul Medioevo e il Rinascimento nel centnario di nascita di Mario Salmi, 2 vols., Florence, 1992: 2:433-447), a Nativity (now in the National Gallery in London, no. 908), "e due altri quadretti in tavola" ("and two other little panel pictures"). Several years later, the notes to Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, 14 vols., Florence, Le Monnier, 1846-1870 (originally 1568): 4(1848):13 n. 2), mention instead "quattro quadretti dell'altezza di circa due terzi di braccio [a Florentine braccio equals 58.4 cm], raffiguranti San Niccolò di Bari, Sant'Apollonia, [una] Santa Monaca ed un Santo Vescovo" ("four little pictures about two-thirds of a braccio high, representing Saint Nicholas of Bari, Saint Apollonia, a nun saint, and a bishop saint"), thought to be the work of Piero, in the Franceschi Marini collection. This is undoubtedly the group now divided among the Frick Collection in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, and an unknown location. In fact, on the occasion of his visit around 1860 (see Donata Levi, Cavalcaselle. Il pionere della conservazione dell'arte italiana, Turin, 1988: 140-141, 152) to Sansepolcro, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle noted the existence of paintings by Piero with images of "St. Anthony between Chiara, Apollonia and another figure" (see 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: 551), giving sufficient elements for the identification of the first three figures. From their description it appears that the panels were at that time framed together, alongside each other, while in 1835 they were probably framed in pairs in two separate frames. Although the Franceschi Marini were considered descendants of Piero della Francesca, the paintings probably came into that household only at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Augustinians left their church in Sansepolcro (see Agnoletti, Memorie religiose, 1970: 57-58). Ranieri Benedetto Marini in 1698 assumed the name Franceschi, thus becoming the founder of the Franceschi Marini family (see Vittorio Spreti, Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italica, Milan, 1930: 2:250-251).

[6] The archives of the National Gallery in London holds a letter of 25 July 1904 from Piero Franceschi Marini, in which he affirms: "I still possess a few small panel pictures (figures of saints) once forming part of a predella of...my great ancestor," offering them for sale; see Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca, 2 vols., Milan, 1971: 2:46.

[7] According to the Kleinberger files, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (communicated by Rolf Bagemihl). In all probability the three panels were sold together, sometime between 1904 and 1909; in 1909 they were said to be untraceable at their former location (Edward Hutton in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy..., 3rd ed., 3 vols., ed. Hutton, London and New York, 1908-1909: 3(1909):20 n. 3). By 1911 the two panels now in the Frick Collection were recorded in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna (David Charles Preyer, The Art of the Vienna Galleries, Boston, 1911: 215). They have been in their present location since 1950 (nos. 50.1.157-158).

[8] The date of acquisition by the Lehman collection is given in the Kleinberger files (see note 7).

[9] The bill of sale between Robert Lehman and the Kress Foundation for three paintings, including Saint Appolonia, is dated 15 September 1943 (copy in NGA curatorial files). The documents concerning the 1943 sale indicate that Philip Lehman’s son Robert Lehman (1892-1963) was the owner of the paintings, but it is not clear in the Lehman Collection archives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, whether Robert made the sale for his father or on his own behalf. See Laurence Kanter’s e-mail of 6 May 2011, about ownership of the Lehman collection, in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1799.