This small painting of the celestial apparition of the Virgin with the Christ Child in her arms was probably intended as a private devotional image. The vision is beheld by St Catherine of Alexandria with the wheel of her martyrdom and St James leaning on a pilgrim’s staff, as well as St Francis and St Anthony Abbot in the middle distance almost hovering in mid-air. The Virgin is surrounded by rays thinly incised on the gold ground and is elevated on a pedestal of small floating clouds, through which the incisions run. A long, vertical crack runs nearly all the way through the surface of the panel in the part occupied by the figure of Mary. The blue of her mantle has disappeared entirely to leave the incisions of the drapery exposed. A laceration can be seen in the lower edge of James’s cloak. 

The painting entered the Cerruti Collection as a work attributed to the Master of the Misericordia but is actually by the Master of San Jacopo a Mucciana, as already registered in the margin of the photographs of the work in the archives of the Kunsthistorishes Institut (no. 438626) and the Zeri Foundation (no. 18515). In the latter case, information is also provided of a period spent in the Kisters Collection (Kreuzlingen, Switzerland) prior to 1960. The stamp by the customs office in the nearby city of Konstanz, still visible on the back of the work, can probably be associated with this change of hands. The painter was first singled out of the thick undergrowth of Florentine late-Gothic art by Richard Offner,¹ who named him after the triptych from the church of Mucciana (San Casciano in Val di Pesa) dated 1398 according to the Florentine calendar (now in the Museo Ghelli, San Casciano in Val di Pesa) and attributed him with an initial group of works, including the Madonna and Child of the Museo di Santa Verdiana in Castelfiorentino. Subsequent art-critical studies by Federico Zeri² expanded the anonymous artist’s catalogue through the addition of the works attributed to “Master X” by Offner. Further additions to the catalogue are due to the research of Miklós Boskovits³ and more recent studies⁴ have endeavoured to trace the artist’s stylistic development. The influence of the Master of the Strauss Madonna, probably Ambrogio di Baldese,⁵ can be detected in the earliest works, those falling within the last decade of the 14th century, above all in the slender, lively figures, delicate range of colours and profuse decoration. At the end of the century, the Mucciana triptych and the Castelfiorentino Madonna and Child by contrast display figures of increased monumentality, built up through bold chiaroscuro, lining the faces with deep shadows and thickening the folds of the heavy drapery. In this way they bear some resemblance to the work of followers of the Giotto-inspired painter Agnolo Gaddi active in the same period, such as Cenni di Francesco and especially Mariotto di Nardo. The work of our anonymous master underwent gradual standardisation during the first decade of the 15th century and it was not until the 1420s and the new wave of late-Gothic art that he returned to elongated figures and flowing drapery, as in the San Gimignano Madonna of Humility (Museo Civico), perhaps his last work.⁶ In the light of this trajectory, the Cerruti panel can be dated to the early years of the 15th century. The composition is a replica of the Celestial Madonna of Humility in the church of the Addolorata in Montesenario,⁷ which can be regarded as slightly earlier on the basis of its more calligraphic rhythms and greater decorative profusion. The execution still displays a certain sophistication of details, such as the depiction of the Child’s fingers clutching the Virgin’s transparent veil, an effect similar to the glimpse of St Catherine’s hand holding a book beneath her mantle in the Montesenario painting. The first signs of the neo-Giottesque approach are to be seen in the Cerruti altarpiece, above all in the more schematic drapery and the sculptural rendering of the faces through the interplay of light and shadow, characteristics shared with the Castelfiorentino Madonna and Child. This elegant work in tempera is the central panel of a polyptych painted for the local parish church of Santi Ippolito e Biagio,⁸ to which, in the present writer’s view, a left side panel auctioned in London⁹ with a generic reference to Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani also belongs.¹⁰ A photograph in the archives of Boskovits,¹¹ who attributes the work correctly to our anonymous master, shows the work in a state of preservation prior to the restoration of the face of St Blaise. The soldier beside him, hitherto identified as Julian, could instead be Hyppolitus, a Roman soldier and patron saint of horses, which would place the church’s two titular saints correctly in the position of honour. The presentation of the Virgin of Humility in mid-air rather than in the more common iconographic position on a cushion on the ground is a subject addressed more than once by the Master of San Jacopo a Mucciana.¹² The representation of the Virgin as Regina Coeli, Queen of Heaven, began to spread above all in the third quarter of the 14th century¹³ and enjoyed great success especially as depicted by the workshop of Tommaso del Mazza.¹⁴ The throng of seraphim and cherubim arranged in a mandorla around the Virgin is replaced by a mandorla of light evoked by the rays engraved on the gold. Finally, none of the panels on the same subject by the Master of San Jacopo a Mucciana repeats the motif of small clouds supporting the Virgin rendered in abstract fashion by means of wavy granulation, which is in truth a somewhat faint reflection of the elegant and original decorative solutions that constitute a constant feature in the work of our anonymous painter. 

Silvia De Luca

¹ R. Offner, in Parke-Bernet, New York, Catalogo della vendita della collezione McChenny di Philadelphia, 5-6 June 1946, p. 24.

² Zeri 1963, pp. 247, 256 no. 6.

³ Boskovits 1975, p. 138, no. 164.

⁴ Angelini 1987, no. 5; Labriola, in Florence 2005, pp. 122-124; Tartuferi, in Florence 2009a, pp. 108-115.

⁵ Chiodo 1996, pp. 295-305.

⁶ Labriola in Florence 2005, p.124.

⁷ Zeri 1963, p. 256 no. 6.

⁸ Proto Pisani 1992, pp. 33-34.

⁹ Sotheby’s, London, Old Master Paintings, 2 November 2000, lot 54.

¹⁰ The Castelfiorentino Madonna measures 151.4 x 74.4 cm and the side panel 142 x 69.9 cm.

¹¹ Florence, Archivio del Corpus della Pittura Fiorentina, Fondo Boskovits, Maestro di San Jacopo a Mucciana.

¹² In addition to the above-mentioned Monte Senario panel: Paris, D’Atri Collection (Zeri photograph no. 18538); Munich, Rosenthal Collection (Zeri photograph no. 18533); New York, Christie’s, 15 January 1985, lot 40; Florence, Galleria Gallori Turchi; Milan, Zen Collection (Boskovits 1975, fig. 403); London, Roland & Del Banco Collection (Boskovits 1975, fig. 407).

¹³ Meiss 1936, p. 447.

¹⁴ Pasquinucci, Deimling 2000, p. 290, no. 1.