Triptych depicting Madonna and Child between Saints John the Evangelist and James on the left and George and Anthony Abbot on the right.

The artifact is a dismembered triptych whose different sections, held in storage at Palazzo Venezia, are from the Collezione Giulio Sterbini. The first to mention the work, Adolfo Venturi in his essay on the Galleria Sterbini, only mentions the panel with the Madonna and Child, completely ignoring the other two (Venturi 1907, p. 47). On the other hand, Santangelo, in his catalog on the Palazzo Venezia paintings, intuited that all the panels were part of a triptych, and stated that the right-hand compartment, however, is not part of the whole and should be attributed to an inferior artist who was trained either in Lucca or Pisa (Santangelo 1948, p. 32). Federico Zeri also attributes the central and left compartments to Nanni and the right section to an anonymous artist (Zeri 1955, p. 7, nos. 78–79). Venturi also states that art scholars have chronicled two artists, both sculptors, with the same name—one from Siena and active in Pisa, and the other from Lucca. According to Venturi, the author of our artifact is the former, especially considering that the panel in question, before becoming a part of the Collezione Sterbini, came from Pisa. 
The central section of the triptych (a) is almost entirely occupied by the throne of the Virgin. A red drape with plant decorations and parrots, held up on either side by two angels in pastel-green garb, provides a backdrop for the haloed figures of the Virgin and Child. The Virgin is facing rigidly forward, her body massive, the three-dimensional rendering accentuated by the dark folds of the gown and the tight rope under her breast, which forces the red dress to curl up. Another painterly strategy that lends depth and luminosity is the veil that sits above her knees, allowing a glimpse of its yellow inner lining. The Virgin’s face is austere and pensive, her fair hair, almost entirely covered by the veil, frames two elongated eyes whose curve of the eyebrows leads the observer’s gaze toward her nose. Over the tip of her nose, her chin, and her upper lip, the light glides as if over a smooth, polished, marble-like surface. The illusion that we are observing a sculpture might well favor Venturi’s theory that the author was a sculptor who was also accustomed to painting. 
The Child is calmly seated in his mother’s lap, wearing a yellow ochre gown and holding a goldfinch on his little hand. Along the lower edge of the throne runs an inscription with the author’s signature, “NANNES IACHOPI PINSIT“.
At the foot of the throne and to its side, the scene is complete by two pairs of angels, two of which are musicians.
In the left panel (b), Saints James and John are set out against a gold background, resting on a bucolic, green-colored plane, their feet barely emerging from the edge of their robes. Both are facing slightly to the left in the direction of the Virgin. The two saints have been provided with their typical iconography—James is mature, with staff and book symbolizing his commitment to preaching the Gospel; John is depicted with gray hair and beard, a goose feather clutched in his right hand and Gospel in his left. The color choice for the robes is unexpected yet and visually pleasing. The artist has decided to use the pink, black, and yellow for both, but while James is given a black robe and pink cloak, John is given a pink robe and black cloak. The lining of the cloaks of both the saints is yellow. The light hues of the robes, the complexion of the saints’ face, the gold background, and the light that caresses the folds of the robes confer brightness on the painting as well as a feeling of calm and serenity to the scene.
In the right section (c) the two saints, whose bodies are slightly turned to the right in the direction of the Virgin and Child depicted in the central compartment of the triptych, occupy almost all the horizontal and vertical space available to them. Unlike the color harmony found in the left section, this section’s two saints are wearing robes of very different hues, and the complexion of the faces is also rendered very differently. Saint George, with his iconographic spear, crusading banner, and dragon whose tail twists around his left leg, has pastel-colored pink and light blue armor, from which his bright red tights emerge, a color that echoes that of the large cross on the banner. In contrast, Saint Anthony is wearing a gray tunic almost entirely covered by a heavy black cloak with a wide collar that echoes the gray underneath. The staff in his right hand crosses the robe and interrupts our view of his girdle and leaves it unresolved. We are unsure whether this was accidental on the part of the artist, who did not continue the belt after the staff crosses the tunic, or whether it is the result of a repainting job where the gray ended up covering the thin brown band. Part of a large, red-covered book with gilded decorations can be seen emerging from the cloak. The rendering of the haloes also suggests that the artist responsible for this section is not the same as the artist who worked on the other two sections. The haloes here are thinner and decorated with a single row of small flowers alternating with circles. As in the panel with Saints James and John, the gold background is also present here, but the green floor gives way to a band of black. This panel is in a much more parlous state than the others that form the triptychs. The gold background is almost completely lost and the paint on the right part of the decoration, starting from the lower corner which includes part of the body of Saint George, his hand, and the head of the dragon, has been completely eliminated and replaced by a rigatino that indicates restoration work that is not attested to in any of the documents.
The panel, specular in size and spatial organization to the left section of the triptych, does not seem to leave any doubts regarding its attribution to the work of Nanni di Jacopo. Although this has so far been questioned, no in-depth studies have been carried out that could either prove or disprove the thesis. It seems plausible that the panel, certainly more imprecise in the three-dimensional spatial rendering of the figures, the physiognomy of the characters’ face, and the management of light and chiaroscuro, was entrusted to the less experienced hands of a pupil, or is at any rate the product of a workshop, which worked following the master’s instructions. There is nothing to suggest that we are dealing with a work that is not an integral part of the triptych in question.

Valentina Fraticelli

Entry published on 12 February 2025

Good.

"NANNES IACHOPI PINSIT," an inscription running along the lower edge of the Virgin's throne.

Rome, Collezione Giulio Sterbini;
Roma, donation by Giovanni Armenise;
Rome, Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia, since 1940.
 

Venturi Adolfo, La collezione Sterbini in Roma, Roma 1907; 
Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo. 1. Dipinti, Santangelo Antonino (a cura di), Roma 1947, p. 31; 
Zeri Federico, I dipinti del Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Roma 1955; 
Skaug Erling, Vices and Virtues of Technical Evidence: Notes on the Alberto Crespi Collection, with Particular Attention to Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani and Nanni di Jacopo, in Boskovits Miklós (a cura di), I Fondi oro della Collezione Alberto Crespi al Museo Diocesano di Milano: questioni iconografiche e attributive, Atti della giornata di studi (11 ottobre 2004), Milano 2004, pp. 88-101.