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Lot Essay
The present panels depicting Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Peter Martyr were formerly framed with a panel showing a fourth Dominican saint, Saint Antoninus, in a matching niche (Christie's, London, 6 July 2010, lot 2, £109,250). As Van Marle observed and Dalli Regoli agreed, the four panels must originally have flanked a fifth, frontally-oriented saint of the same size, sometimes identified as the Saint Vincent Ferrer most recently recorded in the Colonna collection, Turin (Dalli Regoli, 1966, op. cit., no. 125, fig. 157).
A sixth panel depicting Saint Catherine of Siena surfaced at Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1997, lot 60: this may have been the left-hand element, and was probably balanced on the right by another panel depicting a female saint of the order. The entire group presumably formed the predella of a Dominican altarpiece in which the Saint Dominic and Saint Thomas Aquinas would have been on the left side and Saint Peter Martyr on the right, along with the Saint Antoninus. Although the present panels were regarded by Venturi as early works by Credi, the predella is instead characteristic of Credi's later maturity, and was dated by Dalli Regoli to the first decade of the Cinquecento, well after Credi had taken over the workshop of Andrea del Verrochio in which he had trained alongside Leonardo da Vinci and Pietro Perugino (G. Dalli Regoli, 1978, loc. cit.).
Saint Dominic (1170-1221) was the founder of one of the two great mendicant orders established in the 13th century, formally securing papal approval for 'The Order of the Preachers', as the Dominicans were then called, in 1216. Saint Thomas Aquinas, his great theologian-disciple, was born just a few years later in 1225. A Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas most famously wrote the Summa Theologica and Summa contra Gentiles, whose lasting importance in the history of Western thought are uncontested. Saint Peter Martyr, also known as Saint Peter of Verona (1206-1252), was also a Dominican friar as well as a celebrated preacher said to have studied at the University of Bologna, where he met Saint Dominic. Peter's attribute, the symbol of his martyrdom, is the knife with which he was assassinated in April 1252, visible in the present depiction plunged into his back. Peter's canonization, which took place in March of 1253, was the swiftest in papal history.
A sixth panel depicting Saint Catherine of Siena surfaced at Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1997, lot 60: this may have been the left-hand element, and was probably balanced on the right by another panel depicting a female saint of the order. The entire group presumably formed the predella of a Dominican altarpiece in which the Saint Dominic and Saint Thomas Aquinas would have been on the left side and Saint Peter Martyr on the right, along with the Saint Antoninus. Although the present panels were regarded by Venturi as early works by Credi, the predella is instead characteristic of Credi's later maturity, and was dated by Dalli Regoli to the first decade of the Cinquecento, well after Credi had taken over the workshop of Andrea del Verrochio in which he had trained alongside Leonardo da Vinci and Pietro Perugino (G. Dalli Regoli, 1978, loc. cit.).
Saint Dominic (1170-1221) was the founder of one of the two great mendicant orders established in the 13th century, formally securing papal approval for 'The Order of the Preachers', as the Dominicans were then called, in 1216. Saint Thomas Aquinas, his great theologian-disciple, was born just a few years later in 1225. A Doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas most famously wrote the Summa Theologica and Summa contra Gentiles, whose lasting importance in the history of Western thought are uncontested. Saint Peter Martyr, also known as Saint Peter of Verona (1206-1252), was also a Dominican friar as well as a celebrated preacher said to have studied at the University of Bologna, where he met Saint Dominic. Peter's attribute, the symbol of his martyrdom, is the knife with which he was assassinated in April 1252, visible in the present depiction plunged into his back. Peter's canonization, which took place in March of 1253, was the swiftest in papal history.