Lot Essay
Saint Bridget of Sweden, who was born in 1303 and belonged to a branch of the Swedish royal family, was the wife of Ulf, or ‘Ulpho’, Gudmarsson, Lord of Ulfasa in Sweden, by whom she had eight children. In 1341 she and her husband made the pilgrimage to Compostella. On their return both led monastic lives: Ulf entered the Cistercian house at Alvastra, where he died in 1344; while Bridget joined the same monastery where she had the first of her visions of Christ instructing her to found a religious order. The rule of her Order of the Holy Savior, the Bridgettines, based on that of the Augustinians, was confirmed by Pope Urban V in 1370. It says much for Bridget’s reputation with her contemporaries that she was in a position to write to the kings of both England and France to urge the two to make peace. She died at Rome in 1373 and was canonized by Pope Boniface IX in 1391. Roughly half of her order’s monasteries were in Scandinavia but significant houses were founded elsewhere, including that at Syon endowed by King Henry V in 1415. Surviving panels demonstrate that the cult of Saint Bridget was widely diffused in Italy during the decades that followed her canonization.
Lippo d’Andrea was a significant Florentine master, documentary evidence establishing an independent activity from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the early 1440s. In the past, pictures by him have been variously attributed to Ambrogio di Baldese or – as in this case – to a ‘Pseudo-Ambrogio di Baldese’, Ventura di Moro and Rossello di Jacopo Franchi. He was based in Florence but also worked in Prato and elsewhere in Tuscany. Chiodo in her major article on the artist of 2002 established a coherent chronology for the extant corpus of his oeuvre. She dated about 1420 or slightly later a coherent group of four panels of scenes from the life of Saint Bridget. The first of these to be recognized as by Lippo – by Andrea de Marchi – is the dramatic panel of Saint Bridget appearing to cure a woman afflicted by a demon, formerly in the Rothermere collection: subsequently, by 1991, Miklòs Boskovits proposed that the Saint Bridget borne to Heaven by Angels observed by a Monk at Budapest was from the same series (Chiodo, op. cit., figs. 17 and 16, respectively). Both panels were thought to represent scenes from the life of Saint Monica. Boskovits later identified two further components of the series, also in private collections, this panel, showing the saint kneeling in prayer experiencing her vision of Christ while confronted by the Devil, and the Saint Bridget crowned by the Virgin, also arched.
Chiodo recognized that the four panels illustrate the life not of Santa Monica but of Saint Bridget, as documented in the biography compiled by the Beata Birger Gregerssonn, a nun of Wadstena, who followed Saint Bridget to Rome and in other early lives of her. As Chiodo noted, this panel does not depend on a specific scene recorded by Gregersonn, but ingeniously conflates her vision of Christ with references to temptation in her and other early biographies of the saint: the composition is closely related to that of an earlier illuminated initial by a Neapolitan hand at Palermo (Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana, ms. IV G 2, Initial ‘F’: Chiodo, op. cit., p. 14, fig. 15) in which the Devil is also shown as if endeavoring to argue with the saint who kneels serenely in prayer while experiencing her vision.
Chiodo plausibly suggests that the four panels may have flanked a full-length representation of the saint, the arched top of which would have been echoed by those of this panel and the Saint Bridget crowned by the Virgin. The Budapest and ex-Rothermere panels would have been placed below these.
Lippo d’Andrea was a significant Florentine master, documentary evidence establishing an independent activity from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the early 1440s. In the past, pictures by him have been variously attributed to Ambrogio di Baldese or – as in this case – to a ‘Pseudo-Ambrogio di Baldese’, Ventura di Moro and Rossello di Jacopo Franchi. He was based in Florence but also worked in Prato and elsewhere in Tuscany. Chiodo in her major article on the artist of 2002 established a coherent chronology for the extant corpus of his oeuvre. She dated about 1420 or slightly later a coherent group of four panels of scenes from the life of Saint Bridget. The first of these to be recognized as by Lippo – by Andrea de Marchi – is the dramatic panel of Saint Bridget appearing to cure a woman afflicted by a demon, formerly in the Rothermere collection: subsequently, by 1991, Miklòs Boskovits proposed that the Saint Bridget borne to Heaven by Angels observed by a Monk at Budapest was from the same series (Chiodo, op. cit., figs. 17 and 16, respectively). Both panels were thought to represent scenes from the life of Saint Monica. Boskovits later identified two further components of the series, also in private collections, this panel, showing the saint kneeling in prayer experiencing her vision of Christ while confronted by the Devil, and the Saint Bridget crowned by the Virgin, also arched.
Chiodo recognized that the four panels illustrate the life not of Santa Monica but of Saint Bridget, as documented in the biography compiled by the Beata Birger Gregerssonn, a nun of Wadstena, who followed Saint Bridget to Rome and in other early lives of her. As Chiodo noted, this panel does not depend on a specific scene recorded by Gregersonn, but ingeniously conflates her vision of Christ with references to temptation in her and other early biographies of the saint: the composition is closely related to that of an earlier illuminated initial by a Neapolitan hand at Palermo (Biblioteca Centrale della Regione Siciliana, ms. IV G 2, Initial ‘F’: Chiodo, op. cit., p. 14, fig. 15) in which the Devil is also shown as if endeavoring to argue with the saint who kneels serenely in prayer while experiencing her vision.
Chiodo plausibly suggests that the four panels may have flanked a full-length representation of the saint, the arched top of which would have been echoed by those of this panel and the Saint Bridget crowned by the Virgin. The Budapest and ex-Rothermere panels would have been placed below these.