It is possible to divide the long and complex artistic career of Michele di Matteo¹ into a number of key stages. Initial training in the style of Giovanni da Modena during the construction of San Petronio in Bologna was followed by a journey to Venice in the 1420s or 1430s and a stay in Siena, where he decorated the apse of the baptistry with scenes from the Passion,² in 1447. On returning to Bologna, he then resumed the local style and entered into closer contact with the city’s painters, especially Jacopo di Paolo. 

These two small panels can be attributed to the Venetian period. The sainted bishop depicted in one can be identified as Ambrose by the flail with three thongs, a symbol of the Trinity and the fight against the Arian heresy, and the elderly female saint in profile with a stick is identifiable as St Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (figs. 1, 2). They were side panels of a polyptych produced for the chapel dedicated to St Helena in the church of Sant’Elena in Venice, belonging to the monastic order of Olivetans (named for the monastery of Monte Oliveto near Siena, their first hermitage. This painting was moved to the Accademia, where it still remains, after the Napoleonic suppression in 1812 (fig. 3). Evidence of the original configuration of this monumental work, the frame of which still survives but was largely remade in the 19th century, is provided by a minute description and drawing in pen and ink in an 18th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana.³ This tells us that it was flanked by two robust wings, now missing, and that the cusped cornice was crowned with bust-length figures of carved wood, probably representing prophets (fig. 4), interspersed with pinnacles. 

The wings consisted of five panels and were horizontally divided into seven rows of figures: one corresponding to the predella, with scenes from the finding of the true cross; three to the main register, with the enthroned Virgin and Child and four saints, including St Helena; one with bustlength figures of saints in continuity with the cornice separating the two registers; and two to the upper register, with the crucifixion and the four evangelists. The manuscript also tells us that the two pillars presented fortyeight figures, the precise arrangement of which is still unknown. 

The saints were purchased before 1812 by Edward Solly, who then sold them in 1821 to the Königliches Museum in Berlin in various lots. The total of thirtyeight comprised thirty-two full-length and six bust-length figures. While the latter were sold in 1887, ten of the former are still owned by the museum and the other twenty-two were sold between 1921 and 1923. This group includes our St Ambrose and St Elizabeth, which changed hands various times on the antiques market before entering the collection of Alain Cortreille in Paris, where Federico Zeri saw them in 1983.⁴ After much debate, the art historian Roberto Longhi attributed the ten remaining saints in Berlin to Michele di Matteo.⁵ In 1987, on the basis of measurements and stylistic elements, Boskovits suggested that they originally belonged to the pillars of the Venetian polyptych.⁶ 

This work was designed for the altar of the chapel dedicated to St Helena, built by Alessandro Borromeo between 1418 and 1420⁷ to hold an ancient, openable, wooden chest containing the relics of the saint. 

St Helena was the mother of Constantine and responsible for the rediscovery of the True Cross, upon which Christ was crucified. The polyptych was commissioned by his nephew, Galeazzo Borromeo. 

A recent study by Fabio Massaccesi⁸ suggests that this polyptych, which was traditionally dated around 1439, when the Bolognese Bernardo de’ Scapi was appointed prior,⁹ or between 1428 and 1436 (a period in which there is no documentation of the painter’s presence in Bologna)¹⁰ may have been produced before the construction of the chapel. His argument is based on the painter’s radical switch to the sumptuous, sophisticated Venetian Gothic style and above all the influence of Gentile da Fabriano, which suggest a date closer to Gentile’s period in Venice (c. 1408-14). While the question must remain open until more solid evidence is forthcoming, it is well worth reconsideration in relation to the Venetian context and to the course and timing of the reception in Venice of an internationally-oriented culture. While it is true that the Olivetan polyptych displays precise instances of Gentile’s influence, such as the delicate way in which Mary Magdalene holds the jar of ointment, the decorative profusion and the delight in the undulating folds of the heavy drapery are related, in our view, to the late or flowery Gothic, which was not practiced in Venice - above all by Jacobello del Fiore, Zanino di Pietro and Giambono - until the 1420s and 1430s. Other works by the Bolognese painter that can be assigned to this later period, probably produced during or shortly after his stay in Venice, include the Dream of the Virgin in Pesaro,¹¹ the Madonna and Child of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the Madonna of Humility of the Chiaromonte Bordonaro Collection in Palermo (formerly part of the Gozzadini Collection in Bologna) and the Madonna of Humility formerly in the Balboni and Rossi collections in Bologna.¹² 

It should also be noted that the elegance of the major saints from the pillars is accompanied by a more vigorous and less sophisticated approach reminiscent of Jacopo di Paolo, which appears characteristic above all of Michele’s mature period and could, at the risk of being overly deterministic, be connected with the fact that he married Jacopo’s daughter Lucia in 1425. In any case, these developments are not yet visible in one of the milestones of his career, namely the St Anthony of Padua in the Santa Brigida Chapel of San Petronio, at the bottom of which Marcello Oretti saw the date 1430.¹³ In this work, it is the underlying Bolognese technique that can be discerned in the dense, rosy flesh tones rather than the superficial, chiaroscuro typical of the Venetian faces. The St Anthony therefore constitutes a terminus post quem and the Olivetan polyptych with its saints can be regarded as commissioned between 1430 and 1436 by Alessandro Borromeo or his nephew Galeazzo, both munificent benefactors of the church and responsible for furnishing the chapel in which they were to be buried. 

Cristina Guarnieri

¹ Filippini-Zucchini 1968, pp. 122-126; M. Medica, in Zeri 1987, p. 710; A. Galli, in The Alana Collection 2009-11, vol. I, p. 125, cat. 22.

² Milanesi 1854-56, II, p. 320.

³ Cose spettanti al monastero di Sant’ Elena (1740), Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, Ms. it., Cl. 7, Nr. 1676 (9037).

⁴ Boskovits 1987, pp. 137-140; Galli 2009-11 cit., pp. 126-129, cat. 22; F. Massaccesi, in Strehlke, Brüggen Israëls 2015, pp. 465-470.

⁵ Longhi (1935-36) 1973, pp. 107-110.

⁶ Boskovits 1987, p. 139.

⁷ Gallo 1926, p. 432.

⁸ Massaccesi 2009, pp. 171-180.

⁹ R. Longhi, “Il tramonto della pittura medioevale nell’Italia del Nord (1935-36)”, in Longhi 1973, p. 108.

¹⁰ C. Volpe, “La pittura in Emilia nella prima metà del Quattrocento” (1958), in Volpe 1993, pp. 81-82; De Marchi 1987, pp. 17, 22; Anselmi 2012, p. 39.

¹¹ M. Medica, in Bologna 2002-03, pp. 50-51.

¹² De Marchi 1987, figs. 3, 18-19, 33, 35.

¹³ Oretti 18th century, c. 385.