On view
Madonna and Child with Saint Anne,
1340–45
More Context
Handbook Entry
This painting of Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, with the Virgin and Child formed the central panel of a multipart altarpiece whose original location has recently been identified as a Benedictine convent church dedicated to Saint Paul the Hermit at Pugnano, near Pisa. An eighteenth-century description, written before the altarpiece was dismembered, allows for a reconstruction of some of the other parts: half-length figures of Saint Gregory the Great (location unknown) and Saint Paul (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy) were among the four panels flanking the central panel, while a Saint Benedict and a Saint Michael (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) were on the upper tier. Saint Anne is not mentioned in the Bible but appears in oral traditions compiled in the thirteenth century by Jacopo da Voragine in <em>The Golden Legend</em>. Traini used <em>pastiglia</em>, a plaster and glue mixture, for the millet seeds held by Christ, and for his fingers, the goldfinch, and the coral necklace. Such raised motifs, employed here by Traini to coax the viewer toward a visual and emotional response, occurred in twelfth-century Tuscan painting as an unusual melding of sculpture and painting. Another archaism is the tiny donor, a nun, in the lower right corner of the panel.
Information
1340–45
Church dedicated to St. Paul, Pugnano, Tuscany. [1]
Unknown shop, New York; [2]
Frank Jewett Mather Jr., Princeton, NJ, by 1915 (?); [3]
Bequest of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. in 1953 to The Princeton University Art Museum. [4]
NOTES:
[1] The small church formed part of a female Benedictine monastery. See Linda Pisani, "Un Nuovo Polittico di Francesco Traini: Provenienza, Riconstruzione, Cronologia e Ricezione," Nuovi Studi 13, Rivista di arte antica e moderna, anno. XII (Trento: Terni, 2007): 7-14.
[2] See Millard Meiss, "The Problem of Francesco Traini," Art Bulletin 15, no. 2 (June 1933): 119, note 16, where he stats that Mather claimed to have purchased the painting from a "small shop" in New York.
[3] See seminar report by Jeffrey C. Anderson for Professor Felton Gibbons dated 1970 in the curatorial file, who states that the painting is first mentioned as being in the Mather collection in 1915. See Osvald Siren, Leonardo da Vinci: The Artist and the Man (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1916), 133, who gives the date as 1916.
[4] The accession card notes that his wife waived life-tenure in 1963.
- Chandler R. Post, "A triptych by Allegretto Nuzi at Detroit", Bulletin of the Detroit Museum of Art 10, no. 2 (Oct., 1915)., p. 214, no. 1
- Osvald Siren, Leonardo da Vinci, the artist and the man, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916)., p. 132, 133
- Umberto Gnoli, "Pietro da Montepulciano e Giacomo da Recanati", Bollettino d’arte 15 (n.s. 2), no. 12 (Jun., 1922): p. 574-580., p. 579 (illus.)
- Raimond van Marle, The development of the Italian schools of painting, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1923-1938)., Vol. 1: p. 373
- Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A critical and historical corpus of Florentine painting, (New York: College of Fine Arts, New York University, [1930]-). , Section 3, vol. 2, Part 2: p. 134
- Millard Meiss, "The problem of Francesco Traini", Art bulletin 15, no. 2 (Jun., 1933): p. 97-173., p. 119-120, 123-124, 127
- Millard Meiss, "A "Madonna" by Francesco Traini", Gazette des beaux-arts 56 (n.s. 6) (Jul., 1960): p. 49-56., p. 49-56; fig. 4, 6
- Mario Bucci "Un "San Michele Arcangelo" di Francesco Traini nel Museo nazionale di Pisa", Paragone. Arte 13, (1962): p. 40-43., p. 41-43; fig. 38, 40a
- Roberto Longhi, "Qualche altro appunto sul Traini e suo séguito", Paragone. Arte 13 (1962): p. 43-47., p. 43-47
- Patrick J. Kelleher, "College museum notes", Art journal 23, no. 1 (Autumn, 1963): p. 46-56., p. 50
- Bernard Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works, with an index of places: Florentine school, (London: Phaidon Press, 1963)., p. 86
- Germain Bazin, Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, (Zürich: Kindler Verlag, 1964-)., Vol. 5: p. 159, 160-162 (illus.)
- "Summary of Acquisitions, 1963," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, vol. 23, no. 1 (1964): p. 29-31., p. 31
-
"Recent acquisitions", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 23, no. 2 (1964): p. 34-55.
, p. 41 - Millard Meiss, "An illuminated inferno and Trecento painting in Pisa", Art bulletin 47, no. 1 (Mar., 1965): p. 21-34., p. 21-34; fig. 16; p. 26, note 30, 32
- Robert Oertel, Die Frühzeit der italienischen Malerei, Stuttgart; Berlin; Köln; Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1966., p. 182; p. 243, note 14
- Joseph Polzer, "Observations on known paintings and a new altarpiece by Francesco Traini", Pantheon 29 (1971): p. 39-389., p. 379ff; fig. 1, 9
- Bernard Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places. Central Italian and North Italian schools, (London: Phaidon, 1968)., p. 205
- B. B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of pre-nineteenth-century Italian paintings in North American collections, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972)., p. 99
- Program III: "Images of Mary", (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1975)., no. 37; p. 76-78
- Majmir S. Frinta, "The puzzling raised decorations in the paintings of Master Theodoric", Simiolus 8, no. 2 (1975-1976): p. 49-68., p. 49-68; p. 65, fig. 30
- Millard Meiss, Francesco Traini, (Washington, D.C.: Decatur House Press, 1982)., fig. 21, 23, 38
-
Sherwood A. Fehm, Jr., Luca di Tommè: a Sienese fourteenth-century painter, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).
, fig. 22 - Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 248 (illus.)
- Luciano Bellosi, "Sur Francesco Traini", Revue de l'Art 92 (1991): p. 9-19., p. 9-19; fig. 8, p. 13
- Eling Skaug, Punch marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: attribution, chronology, and workshop relationships in Tuscan panel painting: with particular consideration to Florence, c.1330-1430, (Oslo, Norway: IIC, Nordic Group,the Norwegian section, 1994)., Vol. 1: p. 121
- Barbara T. Ross, "The Mather years 1922-1946," in "An art museum for Princeton: the early years", special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 55, no. 1/2 (1996): p. 53–76., p. 65, fig. 17
- Jane Turner, The Dictionary of Art, (New York: Grove, 1996)., Vol. 29: p. 624 (entry for "Stella, Jacques")
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 263 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 315
