Currently not on view
Madonna and Child with Saint Anne
More Context
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 <em>The Golden Legend</em>. Traini used <em>pastiglia</em>, 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
1340–45
<p>Church dedicated to St. Paul, Pugnano, Tuscany. [1]</p> <p>Unknown shop, New York; [2]</p> <p>Frank Jewett Mather Jr., Princeton, NJ, by 1915 (?); [3]</p> <p>Bequest of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. in 1953 to The Princeton University Art Museum. [4]</p> <p>NOTES:</p> <p>[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," <em>Nuovi Studi </em>13, Rivista di arte antica e moderna, anno. XII (Trento: Terni, 2007): 7-14.</p> <p>[2] See Millard Meiss, "The Problem of Francesco Traini," <em>Art Bulletin </em>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.</p> <p>[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, <em>Leonardo da Vinci: The Artist and the Man </em>(New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1916), 133, who gives the date as 1916.</p> <p>[4] The accession card notes that his wife waived life-tenure in 1963.</p>
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 1915Osvald Siren, <em>Leonardo da Vinci, the artist and the man</em>, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916)., p. 132, 133
4635 1916Umberto Gnoli, "Pietro da Montepulciano e Giacomo da Recanati",<em> Bollettino d’arte</em> 15 (n.s. 2), no. 12 (Jun., 1922): p. 574-580., p. 579 (illus.)
4632 1922Raimond van Marle, <em>The development of the Italian schools of painting</em>, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1923-1938)., Vol. 8: p. 258
4249 1924Richard Offner and Klara Steinweg, <em>A critical and historical corpus of Florentine painting</em>, (New York: College of Fine Arts, New York University, [1930]-). , p. XI, note 69
4068 1930Millard Meiss, "The problem of Francesco Traini", <em>Art bulletin </em>15, no. 2 (Jun., 1933): p. 97-173., p. 119-120, 123-124, 127
4631 1933Millard Meiss, "A "Madonna" by Francesco Traini", <em>Gazette des beaux-arts</em> 56 (n.s. 6) (Jul., 1960): p. 49-56., p. 49-56; fig. 4, 6
4636 1960Mario Bucci "Un "San Michele Arcangelo" di Francesco Traini nel Museo nazionale di Pisa", <em>Paragone. Arte</em> 13, (1962): p. 40-43., p. 41-43; fig. 38, 40a
4637 1962Roberto Longhi, "Qualche altro appunto sul Traini e suo séguito", <em>Paragone. Arte</em> 13 (1962): p. 43-47., p. 43-47
4638 1962Bernard Berenson,<em> Italian pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works, with an index of places: Florentine school</em>, (London: Phaidon Press, 1963)., p. 86
4166 1963Patrick J. Kelleher, "College museum notes",<em> Art journal</em> 23, no. 1 (Autumn, 1963): p. 46-56., p. 46
4606 1963<p>"Recent acquisitions", <em>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University</em> 23, no. 2 (1964): p. 34-55.</p>, p. 43 (illus.)
3385 1964Germain Bazin, <em>Kindlers Malerei Lexikon</em>, (Zürich: Kindler Verlag, 1964-)., Vol. 5: p. 551
4642 1964"Summary of Acquisitions, 1963," <em>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University</em>, vol. 23, no. 1 (1964): p. 29-31., p. 29; p. 43 (illus.)
545 1964Millard Meiss, "An illuminated inferno and Trecento painting in Pisa", <em>Art bulletin</em> 47, no. 1 (Mar., 1965): p. 21-34., p. 21-34; fig. 16; p. 26, note 30, 32
4639 1965Robert Oertel, <em>Die Frühzeit der italienischen Malerei,</em> Stuttgart; Berlin; Köln; Mainz: Kohlhammer, 1966., p. 182; p. 243, note 14
4640 1966Joseph Polzer, "Observations on known paintings and a new altarpiece by Francesco Traini", <em>Pantheon</em> 29 (1971): p. 39-389., p. 379ff; fig. 1, 9
4633 1968Bernard Berenson, <em>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</em>, (London: Phaidon, 1968)., p. 432; pl. 291
4076 1968B. B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, <em>Census of pre-nineteenth-century Italian paintings in North American collections</em>, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972)., p. 625, 205
572 1972<em>Program III: "Images of Mary"</em>, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1975)., no. 27; p. 57-59
2468 1975Majmir S. Frinta, "The puzzling raised decorations in the paintings of Master Theodoric", <em>Simiolus</em> 8, no. 2 (1975-1976): p. 49-68., p. 49-68; p. 65, fig. 30
4644 1976Millard Meiss, <em>Francesco Traini</em>, (Washington, D.C.: Decatur House Press, 1982)., fig. 21, 23, 38
4643 1982<p>Sherwood A. Fehm, Jr., <em>Luca di Tommè: a Sienese fourteenth-century painter</em>, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986).</p>, fig. 22
4641 1986Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones,<em> Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, </em>(Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 55 (illus.)
1899 1986Luciano Bellosi, "Sur Francesco Traini", <em>Revue de l'Art</em> 92 (1991): p. 9-19., p. 9-19; fig. 8, p. 13
4645 1991Eling Skaug, <em>Punch marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: attribution, chronology, and workshop relationships in Tuscan panel painting: with particular consideration to Florence, c.1330-1430</em>, (Oslo, Norway: IIC, Nordic Group,the Norwegian section, 1994)., p. 289
4207 1994Barbara T. Ross, "The Mather years 1922-1946," in "An art museum for Princeton: the early years", special issue, <em>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University</em> 55, no. 1/2 (1996): p. 53–76., p. 68, fig. 22
3053 1996Jane Turner, <em>The Dictionary of Art</em>, (New York: Grove, 1996)., Vol. 31: p. 277
4031 1996<em>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection</em> (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 172 (illus.)
474 2007<em>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections </em>(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 222
1994 2013
