A Triptych with the Madonna in Majesty

(The Master of Panzano)

SS. John and Francis with the Road to Calvary;
The Virgin & Child with several Saints; Saint Nicholas and the Magdalen with
the Crucifixion; The Annunciation in tondo

In 1930, Berenson removed a number of works from Paolo di Giovanni Fei’s oeuvre and by adding a further group of paintings identified the independent hand of a master who had painted a triptych of The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine with SS. Peter and Paul in the Parish Church of San Leolino in Panzano, from which he took the name, Master of Panzano.

This graceful and rather humorous artist was active during the last three decades of the fourteenth century, and all the paintings attributed to his hand show the same characteristics. A close comparison can be made between the Baltimore triptych and the exhibited triptych, including a Christ on the Road to Calvary which is rarely represented in a Maestà triptych of this kind. Stylistically this triptych depends on prototypes by Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini (the paired saints in the wings).

A clue confirms what previous scholars, and particularly Zeri, have proposed regarding the period of activity of the Master of Panzano. A panel of the Virgin with St. Ansamo and St. Lawrence in the Montalcino Museum, attributed to the Circle of Luca di Tommè, but clearly by the hand of the Master of Panzano, is dated 1382. (For further discussion of works by this artist see also D. Boucher de Lapparent, ‘Le Maître de Panzano,’ Revue du Louvre, March 1978.)

Matthiesen Gallery, London, ‘Gold backs’, 1996