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Sano di Pietro

Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome, Saint Bernardino, and Angels, c. 1460/1470

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 8

Medium

tempera on panel

Dimensions

painted surface: 62.5 x 42 cm (24 5/8 x 16 9/16 in.)
overall: 64.8 x 43.8 cm (25 1/2 x 17 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.274

Artists / Makers

Sano di Pietro (artist) Sienese, 1405 - 1481

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

upper center in Virgin's halo: AVE*GRATIA*PLENA*DO[MINUS TECUM] (Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee), from Luke 1:28

Provenance

Family chapel of a country house at Larniano, near San Gimignano,[1] by about 1900. Count Silvio Piccolomini Clementini della Triana [1878-1962], Siena, in the 1920s and early 1930s.[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold June 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] A Brogi photograph (no. 11770) reproduces the painting as located in a "capella gentilizia" at Larniano, close to Siena. Actually Larniano is a locality not belonging to Siena but to the administrative district of San Gimignano (see Emmanuele Repetti, Dizionario geografico, fisico, storico della Toscana, Florence, 1835: 2:650, and Leone Chellini, Sam Gimignano e dintorni, Modena, 1921: 204-206). Chellini cites various villas in the area, some of them with private chapels, but neither he nor other authors of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries mention the NGA painting. The Brogi photograph is undated, but to judge from its number it must have been executed sometime before 1904; no. 15109 appears already in a volume by Corrado Ricci (Il Palazzo Pubblico di Siena e la mostra d'antica arte senese, Bergamo, 1904: fig. 66).

[2] The bill of sale to the Kress Foundation that includes this painting (see following note) lists the painting as "From Countess Piccolomini Collection, Siena." Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:413, gives Count Silvio Piccolomini as the former owner. In his expertise (in NGA curatorial files) written probably in 1937, F. Mason Perkins confirms that the panel used to belong to the Piccolomini family: "in one of whose palaces at Siena it was still hanging when first known to me." The fact, communicated to Mrs. Shapley by Everett Fahy (letter of 25 August 1972, in NGA curatorial files), that a copy of the NGA painting, made by A. Everett Austin, Jr. [1900-1957], and now in the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, no. 1926.49, has on its back a handwritten note by the Museum's former director, Edward Forbes, possibly offers further information toward a reconstruction of the painting's history. Forbes writes: "I think it was painted by Austin in the studio of Federigo Ioni, Siena, about 1924." The Fogg copy was possibly made to replace the original in the Larniano chapel, and not utilized. In any case, by the mid-1920s the NGA painting must already have been in Siena, in one of the Piccolomini palaces.

[3] The bill of sale for a number of paintings and one sculpture, including NGA 1939.1.274, is dated 18 June 1937 (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1367.

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Piccolomini Clementini della Triana, Silvio, Count

Bibliography

1925: Trübner, Jörg. Die stilistische Entwickelung der Tafelbilder der Sano di Pietro (1405-1481). Strasbourg, 1925: 84.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 177, no. 385.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 183.

1946: Friedmann, Herbert. The Symbolic Goldfinch. Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art. Washington, DC, 1946: 154, 241, pl. 83.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 120.

1966: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 146, fig. 392.

1968: Bereson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968:1:383.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 107, repro.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 182, 646.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 318, repro.

1977: Levi d'Ancona, Mirella. The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting. Florence, 1977: 114.

1977: Torriti, Piero. La Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. I Dipinti dal XII al XV secolo. Genoa, 1977: 287.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:413-414, 2:pl. 294.

1983: Shearman, John. The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge, 1983: 220.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 366, repro.

1987: Pope-Hennessy, John, and Laurence B. Kanter. The Robert Lehman Collection. Vol. 1, Italian Paintings. New York, 1987: 220.

1993: Lloyd, Christopher. Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. Princeton, 1993: 214.

1998: Frinta, Mojmír S. Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998: 328.

1998: Knauf, Marion. "Sano di Pietro's Madonna Panels: A Survey and Catalogue Raisonne of his Madonna and Child Pictures for Private Devotion." Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington, 1998: 47, 78, 241, 316, 325-326, cat. A66.

2003: Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 617-621, color repro.

2012: Freuler, Gaudenz. "Sano di Pietro, la sua fortuna critica e il "problema" del Maestro dell'Osservanza." In Gabriele Fattorini et al, eds. Sano di Pietro: Qualità, devozione e pratica nella pittura senese del Quattrocento. Giornate di studio nel sesto centenario della nascita. Siena 5 dicembre 2005 – Asciano 6 dicembre 2005. Milan, 2012: 29, fig. 2.

2013: Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 235, 246, 248, 250.

2015: Sallay, Dóra. Corpus of Sienese Paintings in Hungary 1420-1510. Florence, 2015: 104-105, fig. 6.

2023: Ahl, Diane Cole. Painting in Fifteenth-Century Italy: "This Splendid and Noble Art". New Haven and London, 2023: 205, fig. 6.9.