Martino di Bartolomeo

Private collection near Ludlow, England until 1948;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, May 28, 1948, lot 114 (as by Agnolo Gaddi) to Mallett and Son (buying for Hearst);
William Randolph Hearst, New York and Los Angeles;
Gift of William Randolph Hearst to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1949 (acc. no. 49.17.6).

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Acquisitions of the Art Division of the Los Angeles County Museum, 1946-50, 1950, cat. no. 2 (as Florentine);
Vancouver, B.C., Vancouver Art Gallery, Italian Renaissance Exhibition, 1953;
Riverside, California, University of California Art Gallery, Early Italian Renaissance, 1971;
Santa Barbara, California, University of California, Santa Barbara, art Museum, In her Image: The Great Goddess in Indian Asia and the Madonna in Christian Culture, 1980-1;
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Italian Panel Painting of the Early Renaissance in the Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1994, cat. no. 10.

P. Wescher, Los Angeles County Museum Catalogue of Paintings I: A Catalogue of Italian, French, and Spanish Paintings XIV-XVIII Century, Los Angeles 1954, p. 9 (as by a minor Florentine master);
G. Coor-Achenbach, "Contributions to the Study of Ugolino di Nerio's Art", in The Art Bulletin, vol. 37, September 1955, p. 158, no. 24 (as Florentine); 
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Central Italian & North Italian Schools, London 1968, vol. I. p. 246, reproduced vol. II, plate 439;
B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge, MA 1972, pp. 91, 122, 592 (as by Martino di Bartolomeo and Giovanni di Pietro da Napoli);
E. Neri Lusanna, "Un episodio do collaborazione tra scultori e pittori nella Siena del primo Quattrocento: La 'Madonna del Magnificat' di Sant' Agostino", in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 1981, vol. 25, pp. 331, 338 (n. 17), 339-40 (n. 19), reproduced fig. 18;
S. Schaefer et al, European Painting and Sculpture in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles 1987, p. 65, reproduced;
S.L. Caroselli, Italian Panel Painting of the Early Renaissance in the Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles 1994, p. 104, cat. no. 10, reproduced p. 25, fig. 19.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This heavy panel has received two vertical structural restorations applied to reinforce some joins in the wood and there are some dovetailed battens supporting these vertical reinforcements. As a result the surface is in healthy condition and the joins addressed are very stable, as is the paint layer and the remainder of the picture. The frame is new, or at least re-gilded, and in the immediate surrounding of the frame there is also a good deal of filling and there is restoration. In the figures themselves the condition is very fresh and the restoration is well handled. Across the waist of the figure of Christ there is some paint loss and the vertical join in the panel runs through the female saint on the left side, through her gown and also through the side of her head. The red tooled areas in the background look very well; they may have received some restoration, perhaps in the red yet this is not immediately apparent. The saints on the left and right are in beautiful state. The gilding may have been augmented at some point around the dove in the upper center. Nonetheless, all of the restorations have been sensitively applied and the condition is very good, particularly given the period of this painting.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Until shortly after its bequest to the Museum in 1949 this Coronation was surmounted by a pair of spandrels, at the upper left and upper right, depicting music-making angels (five on each side; see Fig. 1). At the 1948 sale the panel (including spandrels) was attributed to the Florentine Agnolo Gaddi and indeed until 1955 it was always considered Florentine (published as such in Wesscher's 1954 catalogue, see Literature). It was Philip Pouncey, in a letter dated November 24, 1955, who first recognised the Coronation panel as the work of the Sienese painter Martino di Bartolomeo, an attribution subsequently endorsed by Bernard Berenson in 1968 and one which has accompanied the painting ever since. The spandrels, removed in the 1950s, have since been identified as the work of Ugolino di Nerio (1280? - 1349) and now constitute a separate work in the Los Angeles County Museum (acc. no. 49.17.40). The central panel itself was enlarged during the 19^th century to accommodate the spandrels, with an extra angel added on either side of the Virgin and Christ;¹ this extension too has since been removed.

Pouncey and others dated the Coronation to circa 1408 on the basis of a comparison with Martino's frescoes depicting the Sixteen Virtues which were commissioned in 1407 and paid for the following year (Siena, Palazzo Pubblico). Another theory however, proposed by Enrica Neri Lusanna, would date the painting as late as 1425; an 18^th century manuscript by G.G. Carli describes an altarpiece signed by Martino di Bartolomeo and dated 1425 in the chapel of the Butcher's Guild in the church of Sant' Antonio in Fontebranda. Above the niche containing the central wood sculpture of St. Anthony Abbot by Francesco di Valdambrino (c. 1380-1435; polychromed by Martino) the manuscript describes a "beautiful little painting of Jesus Christ crowning the Virgin, with angels."² If, as Neri Lusanna proposes, this is indeed the present Coronation, it would place it much later in the artist's career, a notion by no means impossible given the artist's somewhat conservative approach to panel painting throughout the 1410s and 1420s.

 

1.  Reproduced with the extension in Berenson, under Literature.
2.  "...bel Quadretto di Gesu Cristo, che corona la Vergine, con Angeli".