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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 143: 

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single thick hardwood
board (poplar), vertical in grain and slightly worm-eaten. The verso
and the edges are painted grey. The gesso ground is white and
there is a layer of red bole under the gilding. There is underpainting
with green earth under the flesh tones. The haloes of the saint and
bishop are incised. The painting is in good condition. Documented
restoration: 1950: Consolidation of paint layer.

PROVENANCE: Capella di San Lorenzo, Monastery Church of
Galuzzo; Art collector Edward Solly; gift of Herman Rasch, 1928.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sirén 1929, pp. 13–18; Sirén 1933, pp. 27–28; Pudelko
1938, pp. 47–63; Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220; Van Waadenoijen
1974, pp. 82–91; Syre 1979; Van Waadenoijen 1983, p. 38; NM Cat.
1990, p. 339 (as Gherardo Starnina); Lenza 2011.

This is a fragment which originally formed a
part of a polyptych consisting of a corpus with
two wings. Judging from the angle at which St
Benedict is standing, it probably served as the
right wing, as the saint seems to be turning to
the central scene of the corpus. The two saints
are standing on a golden carpet or gold brocade,
achieved by sgraffito technique, and against a
gilded background. The bishop saint is dressed
in pontificals and a mitre, holding a crozier in his
left hand and raising his right hand in a blessing
gesture. He is wearing a white Carthusian cloak
and a mantle made of ultramarine blue with a
pattern of golden crosses and a green border with
plant ornamentation punched into the surface
of the painting, which gives the dress a plastic
texture. He has no significant attributes, but as
he has much in common with the depiction of St
Donatus of Arezzo (?–362) in Pietro Lorenzetti’s
Tarlati Polyptych in Santa Maria della Pieve in
Arezzo, dated around 1320, it has been suggested
that it is a depiction of the same saint.¹ Subsequently,
the saint has been suggested to be St Zenobius
(337–417), the first bishop of Florence and
a patron saint of the city.² But as St Zenobius did
not belong to any monastic order, the Carthusian
cloak he is wearing has always been confusing to
researchers, and the recent identification of the
saint with one of the first Carthusian saints, St
Hugh of Lincoln (1135–1200), seems to be most
convincing.³ Although we can now identify the
figure with St Hugh, the painter seems to have
been inspired by Lorenzetti’s depiction of St Donatus
in Arezzo.

In contrast to St Hugh of Lincoln, the saint
to the right of him is easier to identify. As one of
the most important saints for the entire monastic
community, St Benedict of Nursia (480–543) is
holding a book in his left hand and a birch rod in
his right, common attributes in other depictions
of this saint.⁴ St Benedict has the same features
and follows the same type as the depiction of the
saint in a pinnacle attributed to the Master of the
Fogg Pietà (NM 6862, cat. no. 130) and Nardo di
Cione’s depiction of St Benedict in the Nationalmuseum
(NM 2259, cat. no. 122), although he is
dressed in a dark cloak instead of the white one he
is wearing in the version by Nardo.

When the painting was donated to the Museum
in 1928 it was attributed by Osvald Sirén
to the anonymous Maestro del Bambino Vispo
(Master of the Lively Child).⁵ As early as 1904,
Sirén had attributed a number of paintings with
a conspicuously lively Christ Child to an artist
he named the Maestro del Bambino Vispo,
described as a pupil of Lorenzo Monaco.⁶ The
attribution was widely accepted, and in an article
from 1964, Robert Oertel connected the painting
to the Laurentius altarpiece, which he thought
was commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Corsini
in 1391 and executed for the cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiore in Florence some thirty years
later.⁷ The panels from the Laurentius altarpiece
are dispersed between several European museums
and the central piece is only preserved in
two fragments, depicting the Virgin’s head and a
head of an angel.⁸ Based on the punched brocade
pattern and other stylistic evidence, Oertel made
a plausible reconstruction of the altarpiece.⁹ In
that reconstruction, the Nationalmuseum panel
serves as the right wing and the panel with SS
Mary Magdalene and Lawrence and the patron
himself, now in Berlin, is presented as the left
wing. Since then, Jeanne van Waadenoijen
has identified the Maestro del Bambino Vispo
with the Florentine painter Gherardo Starnina,
and the altarpiece and the Nationalmuseum panel
have subsequently been re-attributed to him.¹⁰
As mentioned above, there are great similarities
between the depictions of St Benedict by Starnina
and Nardo di Cione, and Starnina seems to
have been inspired by the work of Nardo, Agnolo
Gaddi and Spinello Aretino. After a sojourn in
Valencia he was influenced by the Spanish tradition
and became an important exponent of the
International Gothic Style in Florence.¹¹

Based on the fact that the original polyptych
must have been about 2.40 metres wide and the
width of the pillar under which Cardinal Corsini
obtained the right to erect the altar is only 1.13
metres, Waadenoijen has also questioned whether
the altarpiece was in fact commissioned for the
Duomo in Florence. With the representation of
the Carthusian St Hugh in mind, she suggests an
original provenance in the Carthusian monastery
of San Galuzzo, south of Florence.¹² The monastery
was founded by the Acciaiuoli family in the
12th century and the church was dedicated to the
patron St Lawrence. An altarpiece which Vasari
attributed to Fra Angelico seems to correspond
to the present one, although he confused St
Hugh with the Florentine St Zenobius.¹³ The
altarpiece was commissioned by Cardinal Angelo
Acciaiuoli and the work was initiated in 1404 and
paid for in 1407.¹⁴ With this change of date, the
identification of the Maestro del Bambino Vispo
with Gherardo Starnina (1387–1412) is further
strengthened, and with the recent identification
of St Hugh, the Nationalmuseum panel in fact
becomes the main key to the original provenance
of this important altarpiece.
je

1 Sirén 1929, pp. 13–18; Sirén 1933, pp. 27–28.
2 This was proposed by as early a writer as Pudelko 1938, pp.
47–63.
3 Van Waadenoijen, 1983.
4 St Benedict founded twelve communities for monks at
Subiaco before moving to Monte Cassino in southern Italy.
He is considered to be one of the most important saints for
the monastic orders, and although he did not found any
monastic order himself, his rule became one of the most
influential religious rules in western Christendom.
5 Sirén 1929, pp. 13–18; Sirén 1933, pp. 27–28.
6 Osvald 1904b, pp. 349 ff.
7 Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220.
8 The three predella panels are dispersed between the
Galleria Colonna, Rome, the Musée Municipal, Douai, and
the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan; a panel with Sts Mary
Magdalene and Lawrence is in the Staatliche Museen,
Berlin; three panels for the cimasa are preserved in
Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, and the fragment
with the head of the Madonna is in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie
in Dresden. See Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220.
9 Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220.
10 Van Waadenoijen 1974, pp. 82–91. For Starnina’s oeuvre, see
also Syre 1979; Van Waadenoijen 1983; Weppelmann 2005,
pp. 143–147.
11 For recent research on Starnina, see Lenza 2011.
12 Van Waadenoijen 1983, pp. 55–57.
13 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite…, “Vita di Fra Angelico”.
14 ASF, Conventi Soppressi, nos. 51 f., 226. See also Van
Waadenoijen 1983, p. 56. [End]

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Gherardo Starnina | St Benedictus och biskop Donatus | Nationalmuseum

Gherardo Starnina | St Benedict and Bishop Donatus | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2011