Skip to main content

Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Peter, Paul, and George (?), Four Angels, and a Donor

(Italian (Florentine), about 1395/1400–1455)
about 1446–49
Medium/TechniqueTempera on panel
Dimensions24.9 x 24.8 cm (9 13/16 x 9 3/4 in.)
Credit LineGift of Mrs. Walter Scott Fitz
Accession number14.416
On View
On view
ClassificationsPaintings
Collections
Description
Although the Virgin Mary, seated on a throne, occupies the center of this composition, the gazes of several of the figures are drawn toward the kneeling figure in clerical dress at lower left. This figure, whom Saint Peter presents to the Christ Child, is the donor, who commissioned the painting. The work was originally two-sided, with a head of Christ on the reverse, but its original function remains a mystery since it is much smaller than the trays presented as gifts to new mothers in fifteenth-century Florence.
ProvenanceBy 1869, Henri-Joseph-François, Baron de Triqueti (b. 1804-d. 1874); 1874, by descent to his daughter, Madame Lee Childe, Baronness de Triqueti, Paris; May 4, 1886, Madame Lee Childe sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 1, sold to Hecht [see note 1]. By 1909, Edouard Aynard (b. 1837-d. 1913), Lyon, France [see note 2]; December 1-4, 1913, Aynard sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, lot 35, sold to F. Kleinberger Galleries, Paris and New York (stock no. 9421) [see note 3]; April 1, 1914, sold by Kleinberger to Mrs. Walter Scott Fitz (Henrietta Goddard Wigglesworth; b. 1847 - d. 1929), Boston; 1914, gift of Mrs. Fitz to the MFA. (Accession Date: April 2, 1914)

NOTES:
[1] According to catalogue annotations. [2] See Bernard Berenson, Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1909), p. 107. [3] Kleinberger Galleries Records, Watson Library Digital Collections, Metropolitan Museum of Art, stock card 9421.
Restricted
Fra Carnevale (Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini)
about 1467
Story of Psyche
Jacopo del Sellaio
about 1490
Scenes from the Life of the Virgin and Life of Christ
Unidentified artist, Russian (Palekh School), 18th century
The Coronation of the Virgin
Pietro Nardi
1859–60
Virgin and Child with Saint Lucy
Unidentified artist, Greek (Veneto-Cretan), 16th century
The Adoration of the Christ Child with the Dove of the Holy Spirit
Argonaut Master
last third of the 15th century
Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew
Lorenzo di Niccolò di Martino
about 1404–10
Virgin and Child with Two Angels
Guidoccio Cozzarelli
about 1480
Saint Lucy
Jacopo del Casentino
about 1340
Battle of Pharsalus and the Beheading of Pompey
Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso
about 1456–65