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Vittore Crivelli, Saint Peter

Artist Vittore Crivelli, Venice, ca. 1435/40–1501
Title Saint Peter
Date ca. 1480–85
Medium Tempera, gold, and silver on panel
Dimensions overall 104.8 × 35.2 cm (41 1/4 × 13 7/8 in.); picture surface: 97.9 × 29.6 cm (38 1/2 × 11 5/8 in.)
Credit Line Gift of Robert Lehman, B.A. 1913
Inv. No. 1946.313
View in Collection
Provenance

Pietro Vallati, Rome, 1857; Paolo Paolini, Rome; Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878–1955), Rome and Florence(?);1 Robert Lehman (1891–1969), New York, by 1932

Condition

The panel support, of a vertical wood grain, is 2.3 centimeters thick and exhibits a moderate convex warp. It has been waxed but neither thinned nor cradled, and it is untrimmed on either side. A large knot in the wood at the lower right, 14 centimeters from the bottom edge of the panel, was once covered by an applied column base; a smaller knot on the left edge, 20 centimeters from the bottom of the panel, has opened a diagonal crack, visible in the pavement behind the saint. The lower 3 centimeters of the surface, formerly covered by an engaged member of the altarpiece frame, has been partly filled with later gesso. The gilding and paint surface are extremely well preserved, although covered at present by an old, discolored varnish. Stenciled glazes over the gold leaf decorating the hems of the saint’s cloak are abraded and partly missing.

Discussion

This panel, in an exceptional state of preservation, was one of the laterals of an unidentified altarpiece. Notable for the profusely gilt surfaces and elaborate tooling, it shows Saint Peter dressed in sumptuous pontifical robes, holding a Bible and the keys of the Church in one hand and a processional cross in the other. The concern for precious details is evident in the execution of the magnificent gold-and-red damask cope, lined in green velvet and ornamented by intricately incised gold bands accented by rows of white pearls; in the silver embossed Bible and tiny gems on the white liturgical gloves; and in the elaborately punched gold crowns of the papal tiara. The saint is shown standing on a marbleized gray platform before a low red parapet against a gold background. The direction of his gaze and stance indicate that he stood to the left of the central compartment of the dismembered structure.

A painted inscription on the reverse of the Yale panel (see fig. 4) reveals that it was in the collection of the artist and dealer Pietro Vallati in Rome, in 1857. According to Federico Zeri, it was with the dealer Paolo Paolini in Rome before being purchased at an unknown date by Robert Lehman.2 The earliest mention of the painting in the literature is in Bernard Berenson’s 1932 lists, where it appears under Vittore Crivelli’s name and is already recorded as being in the Lehman collection.3 Berenson’s attribution has never been questioned by subsequent authors, although discussions of the work have been scarce and confined primarily to the observations of Sandra Di Provvido, who included the Yale Saint Peter in her monograph on Vittore and in her later studies of the artist.4 For Di Provvido, the refined execution of the Yale panel pointed to a date in the first half of the 1480s, in proximity to the commissions awarded to the painter upon his arrival in the Marchigian city of Fermo and, in particular, to the polyptychs he executed for the Augustinian church of Torre di Palme (fig. 1) and for Ludovico Eufredduci’s family chapel in the church of San Francesco.5 Di Provvido tentatively associated the Yale panel with a little-known Virgin and Child by Vittore at Saint John’s University in Queens, New York (fig. 2),6 and proposed that both works might be fragments of a triptych commissioned between around 1480–83 by Giovanni di Ser Leonardo di Ser Antonio of Fermo for the altar of Saint Peter in the church of Santa Maria della Carità in Fermo.

Fig. 1. Vittore Crivelli, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Augustine (Torre di Palme Polyptych), ca. 1480–85. Tempera and gold on panel. Sant’Agostino, Torre di Palme
Fig. 2. Vittore Crivelli, Virgin and Child, ca. 1485–90. Tempera and gold on panel, 122 × 63.5 cm (48 × 25 in.). Saint John’s University, Queens, New York

A dating for the Yale Saint Peter in the early 1480s seems consistent with the subtleties of execution that distinguish this panel, beyond its decorative concerns. In tracing the evolution of Vittore’s development, recent scholarship has emphasized the qualitative levels attained by the artist in those images painted between around 1479, when he signed and dated the Virgin Adoring the Christ Child in Falerone (Fermo), and about 1484/85, when he completed the Eufreducci Polyptych.7 After this period, the artist’s approach, already defined by a prosaic, vernacular interpretation of the models of his more talented brother, Carlo Crivelli, became increasingly formulaic and stiff, and more artisanal in quality. The concern for three-dimensional effects and sensitive handling of passages in the Yale painting, such as the foreshortened view of the book and the hand holding it and the realistic rendering of the heavy folds of fabric, as well as the nuanced modeling of the hair and facial features, clearly situate the panel among Vittore’s most accomplished early efforts. The incised lines still visible around the Yale Saint suggest a framing structure with polylobed arches similar to those enclosing the figures in the Torre di Palme, Sanseverino Marche, and Sant’Elpidio al Mare polyptychs, which Francesca Coltrinari dated in successive order over a period between 1479 and 1485.8 The figure of Saint Augustine in the Torre di Palme altarpiece (see fig. 1), clearly based on the same physiognomic type as the Yale Saint Peter, shows a similar handling of the facial features and of details like the hanging sleeves of the liturgical gloves and the identical folds of cloth gathered at the feet. These elements seem to suggest a closer proximity to that work, regarded by both Di Provvido and Coltrinari as Vittore’s first commission in Marchigian territory.

No other surviving lateral fragments of altarpieces by Vittore Crivelli can be associated with the Yale panel on the basis of style as well as dimensions and framing elements. Di Provvido’s identification of the Queens Virgin and Child (see fig. 2) as the central compartment of the same structure is plausible based on its dimensions, but the vicissitudes suffered by that panel make any proper judgment difficult; the classicizing throne of the Virgin, moreover, seems to point to a later moment in the artist’s career, closer to around 1490. Based on its provenance and early date, another possible candidate is the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Two Angels and a Donor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (fig. 3), which is recorded in the collection of Pietro Vallati in 1858 and may have been acquired at the same time as the Yale Saint Peter.9 While this provenance alone does not guarantee that the two works belonged to the same structure, the Metropolitan Virgin and Child, at one time believed to be a work of Carlo Crivelli, shares the same delicate handling and subtleties of execution as the Yale picture. Dated by Zeri and Di Provvido between 1480 and 1485,10 the Metropolitan painting is virtually contemporary to the Saint Peter but is larger in scale than would be expected, considering the relative sizes of the panels in Vittore’s other altarpieces. Issues of reconstruction aside, Di Provvido’s suggestion that the Yale fragment might belong to the triptych painted by the artist for the altar of Saint Peter in the church of Santa Maria della Carità in Fermo remains valid.

Fig. 3. Vittore Crivelli, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Two Angels and a Donor, ca. 1480–85. Tempera and gold on panel, 137.2 × 65.4 cm (54 × 25 3/4 in.). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 41.100.32

An architectural sketch on the back of the Yale panel showing a triangular pediment with two balls resting on the ends of the entablature (fig. 4), seemingly anticipating the classicizing Renaissance forms of some of Vittore’s later triptychs,11 raises the issue of the artist’s role in the design of his frames. It also calls to mind a 1472 document recording Vittore’s activity as an architect during his residence in Zadar, Croatia, when he was asked by the erudite archbishop and humanist Maffeo Vallaresso to provide drawings for the new facade of the collegiate church of Saint Mary Major.12 —PP

Fig. 4. Infrared photograph of the reverse of Saint Peter, showing architectural sketch

Published References

, 164; , 84; , 1:72; , 241–42, no. 181; , 186; , 120–21, 134, pl. 28; , 60, 601; , 136; Sandra Di Provvido, in , 99, 127; Sandra Di Provvido, in , 208–9, 113, 263, nos. 13–14, pl. 16

Notes

  1. The Paolini provenance is recorded in the Fototeca Zeri, Federico Zeri Foundation, Bologna, where there is also an old photograph of the picture in a pseudo-Gothic nineteenth-century frame (inv. no. 53294). According to a note in Zeri’s handwriting, the photo had been given to him by “S. Contini,” leaving open the possibility that the painting may have passed through Contini Bonacossi’s hands. For the Roman art dealer Paolo Paolini, who seems to have been active in the art world from the mid-1890s through the early 1920s but about whom there is scant information, see , 281–85. The Saint Peter does not appear in the 1924 New York sale of Paolini’s collection: American Art Association, New York, December 10–11, 1924. ↩︎

  2. See note 1, above. ↩︎

  3. , 164. ↩︎

  4. , 120–21, 134; Sandra Di Provvido, in , 99, 127; and Di Provvido, in , 113, 208–9, 263, nos. 13–14. ↩︎

  5. , 120–21; and Di Provvido, in , 208–9. The Torre di Palme Polyptych is still located in the church of Sant’Agostino, Fermo. All the surviving fragments of the Eufreducci Polyptych are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; inv. no. W1896-1-11a-e, https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/104378. ↩︎

  6. First published in , 60. ↩︎

  7. , 61. ↩︎

  8. See , 58–62, where the author discusses the collaboration of the painter with local frame makers. ↩︎

  9. The painting was described by Otto Mündler in a journal entry dated May 9–10, 1858, when he went to visit Pietro Vallati in Rome “to examine his, lately purchased, pictures by Carlo Crivelli”; see , 233, fol. 80r. Possibly between the end of 1857 and the beginning of 1858, Vallati had acquired all of the fragments of Carlo Crivelli’s polyptych from Montefiore dell’Aso, near Fermo, which he was anxious to sell to his English clients; see , 53. Although Mündler appears to have been shown the Metropolitan Virgin and Child as one of Carlo’s works, he recognized it as a product of Vittore’s hand. The next reference to the panel is in the 1873 sale of the collection of the Marquis du Blaisel, in Paris (Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 9, 1873, lot 13), where it was listed with an attribution to Carlo Crivelli and was said to be the center of a triptych that included two wings in the National Gallery, London, and the Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels. That assertion, however, was most likely the result of a confusion between this work and the Montefiore dell’Aso fragments—two of which were acquired by the Brussels museum from Vallati in 1862 and the rest by the National Gallery, London, and other English collectors; see , 52–54. The Metropolitan Virgin and Child was first published as a work of Vittore by , pl. 42. ↩︎

  10. , 235; and Di Provvido, in , 207, no. 12. The painting was associated by Di Provvido with the commission for an altarpiece supposedly painted by Vittore Crivelli in the early 1480s for the church of the Annunziata in Fermo, but that identification was questioned by Coltrinari on circumstantial grounds; see , 57. ↩︎

  11. One thinks, in particular, of the two-tiered triptych executed by Vittore in 1489 for the church of San Martino in Monte San Martino. For this work, see Alessandro Delpriori, in , 186–87, no. 43. ↩︎

  12. For this document and a discussion of Vittore’s architectural expertise, see , 54; , 193, doc. 69; and , 39–40. ↩︎

Fig. 1. Vittore Crivelli, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Augustine (Torre di Palme Polyptych), ca. 1480–85. Tempera and gold on panel. Sant’Agostino, Torre di Palme
Fig. 2. Vittore Crivelli, Virgin and Child, ca. 1485–90. Tempera and gold on panel, 122 × 63.5 cm (48 × 25 in.). Saint John’s University, Queens, New York
Fig. 3. Vittore Crivelli, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Two Angels and a Donor, ca. 1480–85. Tempera and gold on panel, 137.2 × 65.4 cm (54 × 25 3/4 in.). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 41.100.32
Fig. 4. Infrared photograph of the reverse of Saint Peter, showing architectural sketch
of