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Lot Essay
These two panels were originally a part of an altarpiece of which the central panel is the Adoration of the Shepherds by Bartolo in The Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Their relationship to the New York Adoration was first proposed by Gaudenz Freuler, and has since met with acceptance; other components of the original altarpiece include a Coronation of the Virgin sold, Finarte, Milan, 16 December 1971, lot 36, as 'Workshop of Bartolo di Fredi', a lost Angel of the Annunciation and a Virgin Annunciate in the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (a hypothetical reconstruction of the original arrangement of the altarpiece was depicted by Freuler, 1994, loc. cit., fig. 107).
This type of altarpiece, with a central narrative scene flanked by two panels of standing Saints, derives from the 1333 Annunciation with two Saints by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi (Florence, Uffizi), painted for the Cappella di San Ansano in Siena Cathedral. That Bartolo should have been influenced by that work is unsurprising given the clear stylistic links between his early works and those by the followers of Simone Martini, especially Lippo Memmi and the Master of the Madonna di Palazzo Venezia, with whom it has been suggested that Bartolo trained.
Bartolo was active not just in Siena itself - where he established a studio with Andrea Vanni in 1353 - but also in many of its outlying towns, including Volterra, Montalcino and San Gimignano. The Adoration altarpiece, painted in 1374, was one of several works that the artist painted in the latter town, including (before the present commission) the frescoes of the Life of the Virgin in San Agostino, the four saints added (c. 1362-3) to Lippo Memmi's Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints of 1317 in the Palazzo del Popolo, and the fresco cycle of Scenes from the Old Testament (1367) on the north wall of the Collegiata. Subsequent comissions there include the altarpiece of the Presentation in the Temple painted in 1388 for San Agostino (Paris, Louvre) and a Virgin and Child (Iano, oratory of Pietrina) for the chapel of Castello La Pietra in Iano, near San Gimignano.
This type of altarpiece, with a central narrative scene flanked by two panels of standing Saints, derives from the 1333 Annunciation with two Saints by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi (Florence, Uffizi), painted for the Cappella di San Ansano in Siena Cathedral. That Bartolo should have been influenced by that work is unsurprising given the clear stylistic links between his early works and those by the followers of Simone Martini, especially Lippo Memmi and the Master of the Madonna di Palazzo Venezia, with whom it has been suggested that Bartolo trained.
Bartolo was active not just in Siena itself - where he established a studio with Andrea Vanni in 1353 - but also in many of its outlying towns, including Volterra, Montalcino and San Gimignano. The Adoration altarpiece, painted in 1374, was one of several works that the artist painted in the latter town, including (before the present commission) the frescoes of the Life of the Virgin in San Agostino, the four saints added (c. 1362-3) to Lippo Memmi's Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints of 1317 in the Palazzo del Popolo, and the fresco cycle of Scenes from the Old Testament (1367) on the north wall of the Collegiata. Subsequent comissions there include the altarpiece of the Presentation in the Temple painted in 1388 for San Agostino (Paris, Louvre) and a Virgin and Child (Iano, oratory of Pietrina) for the chapel of Castello La Pietra in Iano, near San Gimignano.