Currently not on view

Madonna and Child with Saint Anne

Francesco Traini, Italian, active 1321–1345

y1963-2

Francesco Traini was the most important artist in mid-fourteenth-century Pisa. This panel, formed the center of an altarpiece in a monastery outside the city; related panels are in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy, and the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. The Madonna and Child with Saint Anne is an unusual subject for the time; this is one of the first Italian images of Mary’s mother, based on oral traditions compiled in the early thirteenth century in The Golden Legend. Anne, a hieratic, otherworldly figure, protects the intimate embrace of mother and child. To focus attention on key elements in the painting, Traini used pastiglia work, raised designs in gesso (plaster) that are painted or gilded. The goldfinch eating millet grain, symbolic of Jesus’s Passion, and the Child’s coral necklace, intended to ward off evil, are executed in this technique. The small donor figure, a Benedictine nun, was apparently added later, since she is painted over Saint Anne’s robe.

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Handbook Entry

This painting of Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, with the Virgin and Child formed the central panel of a multipart altarpiece whose original location has recently been identified as a Benedictine convent church dedicated to Saint Paul the Hermit at Pugnano, near Pisa. An eighteenth-century description, written before the altarpiece was dismembered, allows for a reconstruction of some of the other parts: half-length figures of Saint Gregory the Great (location unknown) and Saint Paul (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy) were among the four panels flanking the central panel, while a Saint Benedict and a Saint Michael (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) were on the upper tier. Saint Anne is not mentioned in the Bible but appears in oral traditions compiled in the thirteenth century by Jacopo da Voragine in The Golden Legend. Traini used pastiglia, a plaster and glue mixture, for the millet seeds held by Christ, and for his fingers, the goldfinch, and the coral necklace. Such raised motifs, employed here by Traini to coax the viewer toward a visual and emotional response, occurred in twelfth-century Tuscan painting as an unusual melding of sculpture and painting. Another archaism is the tiny donor, a nun, in the lower right corner of the panel.

Information

Object Number

y1963-2

Maker

Francesco Traini

Medium

Tempera on wood panel transferred to pressed wood panel

Dates

1340–45

Dimensions

84.9 x 56.0 cm (33 7/16 x 22 1/16 in.) frame: 101.3 x 76.5 x 14.6 cm (39 7/8 x 30 1/8 x 5 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Bequest of Frank Jewett Mather Jr.

Type

paintings

Subject

children (people by age group), mothers, saints, religious art, Christianity, birds, Christ, Mary

Materials

panel (wood), tempera

Church dedicated to St. Paul, Pugnano, Tuscany. [1] Unknown shop, New York; [2] Frank Jewett Mather Jr., Princeton, NJ, by 1915 (?); [3] Bequest of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. in 1953 to The Princeton University Art Museum. [4] NOTES: [1] The small church formed part of a female Benedictine monastery. See Linda Pisani, "Un Nuovo Polittico di Francesco Traini: Provenienza, Riconstruzione, Cronologia e Ricezione," Nuovi Studi 13, Rivista di arte antica e moderna, anno. XII (Trento: Terni, 2007): 7-14. [2] See Millard Meiss, "The Problem of Francesco Traini," Art Bulletin 15, no. 2 (June 1933): 119, note 16, where he stats that Mather claimed to have purchased the painting from a "small shop" in New York. [3] See seminar report by Jeffrey C. Anderson for Professor Felton Gibbons dated 1970 in the curatorial file, who states that the painting is first mentioned as being in the Mather collection in 1915. See Osvald Siren, Leonardo da Vinci: The Artist and the Man (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1916), 133, who gives the date as 1916. [4] The accession card notes that his wife waived life-tenure in 1963.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41934534

Chandler R. Post, "A triptych by Allegretto Nuzi at Detroit", Bulletin of the Detroit Museum of Art 10, no. 2 (Oct., 1915)., p. 214, no. 1

4634 1915

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1740838

Osvald Siren, Leonardo da Vinci, the artist and the man, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916)., p. 132, 133

4635 1916

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/888312083

Umberto Gnoli, "Pietro da Montepulciano e Giacomo da Recanati", Bollettino d’arte 15 (n.s. 2), no. 12 (Jun., 1922): p. 574-580., p. 579 (illus.)

4632 1922

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/631047131

Raimond van Marle, The development of the Italian schools of painting, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1923-1938)., Vol. 8: p. 258

4249 1924

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2547340

Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, A critical and historical corpus of Florentine painting, (New York: College of Fine Arts, New York University, [1930]-). , p. XI, note 69

4068 1930

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3045490

Millard Meiss, "The problem of Francesco Traini", Art bulletin 15, no. 2 (Jun., 1933): p. 97-173., p. 119-120, 123-124, 127

4631 1933

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26253726

Millard Meiss, "A "Madonna" by Francesco Traini", Gazette des beaux-arts 56 (n.s. 6) (Jul., 1960): p. 49-56., p. 49-56; fig. 4, 6

4636 1960

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/888617047

Mario Bucci "Un "San Michele Arcangelo" di Francesco Traini nel Museo nazionale di Pisa", Paragone. Arte 13, (1962): p. 40-43., p. 41-43; fig. 38, 40a

4637 1962

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/888477640

Roberto Longhi, "Qualche altro appunto sul Traini e suo séguito", Paragone. Arte 13 (1962): p. 43-47., p. 43-47

4638 1962

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/971269

Bernard Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works, with an index of places: Florentine school, (London: Phaidon Press, 1963)., p. 86

4166 1963

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5548422164

Patrick J. Kelleher, "College museum notes", Art journal 23, no. 1 (Autumn, 1963): p. 46-56., p. 46

4606 1963

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774279

"Recent acquisitions", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 23, no. 2 (1964): p. 34-55., p. 43 (illus.)

3385 1964

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1902540

Germain Bazin, Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, (Zürich: Kindler Verlag, 1964-)., Vol. 5: p. 551

4642 1964

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774404

"Summary of Acquisitions, 1963," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, vol. 23, no. 1 (1964): p. 29-31., p. 29; p. 43 (illus.)

545 1964

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3048232

Millard Meiss, "An illuminated inferno and Trecento painting in Pisa", Art bulletin 47, no. 1 (Mar., 1965): p. 21-34., p. 21-34; fig. 16; p. 26, note 30, 32

4639 1965

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5821997

Robert Oertel, Die Frühzeit der italienischen Malerei, Stuttgart; Berlin; Köln; Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1966., p. 182; p. 243, note 14

4640 1966

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/888394243

Joseph Polzer, "Observations on known paintings and a new altarpiece by Francesco Traini", Pantheon 29 (1971): p. 39-389., p. 379ff; fig. 1, 9

4633 1968

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/21407

Bernard Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places. Central Italian and North Italian schools, (London: Phaidon, 1968)., p. 432; pl. 291

4076 1968

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/488066386

B. B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of pre-nineteenth-century Italian paintings in North American collections, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972)., p. 625, 205

572 1972

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/83624284

Program III: "Images of Mary", (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1975)., no. 27; p. 57-59

2468 1975

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3780416

Majmir S. Frinta, "The puzzling raised decorations in the paintings of Master Theodoric", Simiolus 8, no. 2 (1975-1976): p. 49-68., p. 49-68; p. 65, fig. 30

4644 1976

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/502335541

Millard Meiss, Francesco Traini, (Washington, D.C.: Decatur House Press, 1982)., fig. 21, 23, 38

4643 1982

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10230474

Sherwood A. Fehm, Jr., Luca di Tommè: a Sienese fourteenth-century painter, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986)., fig. 22

4641 1986

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14244748

Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 55 (illus.)

1899 1986

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/887297335

Luciano Bellosi, "Sur Francesco Traini", Revue de l'Art 92 (1991): p. 9-19., p. 9-19; fig. 8, p. 13

4645 1991

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/32081138

Eling Skaug, Punch marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: attribution, chronology, and workshop relationships in Tuscan panel painting: with particular consideration to Florence, c.1330-1430, (Oslo, Norway: IIC, Nordic Group,the Norwegian section, 1994)., p. 289

4207 1994

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774780

Barbara T. Ross, "The Mather years 1922-1946," in "An art museum for Princeton: the early years", special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 55, no. 1/2 (1996): p. 53–76., p. 68, fig. 22

3053 1996

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34409675

Jane Turner, The Dictionary of Art, (New York: Grove, 1996)., Vol. 31: p. 277

4031 1996

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/191864564

Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 172 (illus.)

474 2007

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/865020505

Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 222

1994 2013