MASP

The precise function of this small image – The Crucication and the Virgin with the Child among Angels, Saints, and the Evangelist Symbols – is unknown; perhaps it was meant for a small private devotional altar or for decorating ecclesiastical furnishings. e iconography is also di cult to decipher, particularly since the work is not well conserved. On the upper part there is a Crucixion with the Virgin on one side and Saint John on the other and smaller-sized gures of Saint Augustine and Saint Nicholas of Bari, according to the inscriptions on the base of the images. On the lower part of the piece, the Madonna sits on a throne, with the standing Christ as a Child, in the midst of four angels (?). Saint Peter and Saint Paul and the four symbols of the Evangelists are on the sides, where the inscriptions are illegible. In a letter to P. M. Bardi dated February 3rd, 1946, Roberto Longhi attributed the work to Deodato Orlandi, “precisely because of the intelligent fusion of the oldest Luccese painting style with the intensely dramatic Cimabue culture, which took place in the late 13th century” e attribution is maintained by Bardi in his e Arts in Brazil (1956, p. 165). In 1987, I attributed it to an Umbrian painter, active in the years 1290-1305, who combined the clear inuence of the frescoes by Cimabue and his Tuscan group in the upper and lower basilicas of St. Francis in Assisi (circa 1280-1285) with a more archaic, popular and expressive pictorial culture typical of southern Umbria. ese attributions and dates were accepted by Filippo Todini (verbal communication) and Bruno Toscano (verbal communication). e possibility of the artist being the Tuscan painter known as the Maestro di Panzano has also arisen (Sotheby’s, 1991). According to another suggestion from Bruno Toscano (verbal communication), the existence of the smaller images of Saint Augustine and St. Nicholas of Bari as donors indicates that the work may have originally been for a church belonging to the Augustinian order and consecrated to St. Nicholas. Since an Umbrian church of this type is only to be found in Spoleto, it is all the more probable that this town was the original location of the work.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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