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Lot Essay
The present work, which was last exhibited in 1936, is relatively unknown to modern art historians. When first recorded in 1811 as belonging to A.F. Artaud de Montor, the pioneering collector of early Italian paintings, it was implausibly ascribed to Domenico Ghirlandaio. It was subsequently attributed to such followers as Bartolommeo di Giovanni and the Master of the Apollo and Daphne Legend. The painting also has close affinities with the work of Sandro Botticelli (circa 1444-1510) dating from the 1490s. Thus the thinly painted landscape background, with its many lagoons and coniferous rock formations, recalls the natural scenery depicted in Botticelli's Coronation of the Virgin with Four Saints (Lightbown no. B55; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), which was commissioned circa 1490 and completed three years later. The motif of Saint Mary Magdalen, with her head in profile silhouetted against the Cross and one hand visible, recalls the same saint's pose in Bottocelli's Mystic Crucifixion (Lighbown
no. B81; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.), which dates from circa 1497. Moreover, the rugged features of penitent Saint Jerome can be compared with those of the Church Father in a panel in The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Lighbown, no. B84). Finally, the drapery defining the forms of all the saints in the present painting is rendered in a similarly tight, nervous, linear style typical of Botticelli's later work, perhaps best epitomized by the master's Mystical Nativity of circa 1501 (Lightbown, no. B90; National Gallery, London).
The emotional theme of the present work is enhanced by the expressive isolation of the figures of the crucified Christ and the Magdalen who, together with the symbols of the Church and Synagogue above and instruments of the Passion (the sponge and the lance), are set in relief against a plain, dark green cloth of honor. There is thus nothing to distract the worshipper contemplating the figure of Christ on the Cross, in a way reminiscent of Rogier van der Weyden's Christ on the Cross with the Mourning Virgin and Saint John in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Although the attribution to the present painting has been convincingly given to The Master of Apollo and Daphne by Everett Fahy (op. cit.), Federico Zeri, in a written communication dated December 7, 1959, stated emphatically: 'I believe that there is no reason to deny that this painting is by Botticelli and his pupils: that is to say that Botticelli was responsible for the entire design and executed at the very least the figures of the two female saints at either end, leaving the other parts to the studio, but adding here and there such passages as the robes of the Magdalen'.
Because of the painting's size and subject matter, one can surmise that it was intended for a private patron with a special devotion to the fourteenth-century mystic, Saint Bridget of Sweden (died in Rome, 1373), the nun at the far right of the composition. Bridget was attached to the Swedish royal court, to whose ruling family she was related, and in 1316 she married Ulf, Prince of Norica, by whom she had eight children. She had experienced visions since childhood and later inspired her husband to retire to the Cistercian abbey of Alvastra, where he died in 1344. Christ then appeared to Bridget, instructing her to found a community of nuns that would follow the rule of Saint Augustine. In 1310, Pope Urban V confirmed Bridget's Order of the Holy Savior, more commonly known as the Bridgittines. Saint Bridget recounted her many mystical visions, especially those relating to the birth and Passion of Christ, in a book of Revelations, which in the present painting she holds in her left hand. Her cult was promulgated by, among others, her daughter, the future Saint Catherine of Sweden, and she was soon venerated throughout Europe. Saint Bridget was canonised in 1391.
Among the earliest representations of Saint Bridget in Italian art are a late fourteen-century fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and a panel attributed to an anonymous Sienese painter of the mid-fourteenth century (for those works, see Lexikon der Marienkunde, I, Regensburg, 1967, col. 806. illus. col. 802, fig 2. [entry by G. Wentzel], and G. Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting, Florence, 1952, col. 218, fig. 235.) In the present painting Bridget is somewhat larger than the other saints, thereby stressing her relative importance in the composition. Bridget's visions most often relate to the birth of Christ, and most of the iconography associated with her concerns that event. In this rarer depiction of the saint's devotion to the crucified Savior, she gazes raptly at the Cross, as she does in a triptych by Paolo Uccello now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
no. B81; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.), which dates from circa 1497. Moreover, the rugged features of penitent Saint Jerome can be compared with those of the Church Father in a panel in The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Lighbown, no. B84). Finally, the drapery defining the forms of all the saints in the present painting is rendered in a similarly tight, nervous, linear style typical of Botticelli's later work, perhaps best epitomized by the master's Mystical Nativity of circa 1501 (Lightbown, no. B90; National Gallery, London).
The emotional theme of the present work is enhanced by the expressive isolation of the figures of the crucified Christ and the Magdalen who, together with the symbols of the Church and Synagogue above and instruments of the Passion (the sponge and the lance), are set in relief against a plain, dark green cloth of honor. There is thus nothing to distract the worshipper contemplating the figure of Christ on the Cross, in a way reminiscent of Rogier van der Weyden's Christ on the Cross with the Mourning Virgin and Saint John in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Although the attribution to the present painting has been convincingly given to The Master of Apollo and Daphne by Everett Fahy (op. cit.), Federico Zeri, in a written communication dated December 7, 1959, stated emphatically: 'I believe that there is no reason to deny that this painting is by Botticelli and his pupils: that is to say that Botticelli was responsible for the entire design and executed at the very least the figures of the two female saints at either end, leaving the other parts to the studio, but adding here and there such passages as the robes of the Magdalen'.
Because of the painting's size and subject matter, one can surmise that it was intended for a private patron with a special devotion to the fourteenth-century mystic, Saint Bridget of Sweden (died in Rome, 1373), the nun at the far right of the composition. Bridget was attached to the Swedish royal court, to whose ruling family she was related, and in 1316 she married Ulf, Prince of Norica, by whom she had eight children. She had experienced visions since childhood and later inspired her husband to retire to the Cistercian abbey of Alvastra, where he died in 1344. Christ then appeared to Bridget, instructing her to found a community of nuns that would follow the rule of Saint Augustine. In 1310, Pope Urban V confirmed Bridget's Order of the Holy Savior, more commonly known as the Bridgittines. Saint Bridget recounted her many mystical visions, especially those relating to the birth and Passion of Christ, in a book of Revelations, which in the present painting she holds in her left hand. Her cult was promulgated by, among others, her daughter, the future Saint Catherine of Sweden, and she was soon venerated throughout Europe. Saint Bridget was canonised in 1391.
Among the earliest representations of Saint Bridget in Italian art are a late fourteen-century fresco in Santa Maria Novella, Florence, and a panel attributed to an anonymous Sienese painter of the mid-fourteenth century (for those works, see Lexikon der Marienkunde, I, Regensburg, 1967, col. 806. illus. col. 802, fig 2. [entry by G. Wentzel], and G. Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting, Florence, 1952, col. 218, fig. 235.) In the present painting Bridget is somewhat larger than the other saints, thereby stressing her relative importance in the composition. Bridget's visions most often relate to the birth of Christ, and most of the iconography associated with her concerns that event. In this rarer depiction of the saint's devotion to the crucified Savior, she gazes raptly at the Cross, as she does in a triptych by Paolo Uccello now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.