NUZI, Allegretto

This painting was created in Siena under the influence of the Lorenzetti brothers. It was the right wing of a diptych of which the left wing in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The two panels of the diyptych depict the Virgin and Child and the Man of Sorrows. On the left side the infant Jesus holds a goldfinch. Fond of eating thistles and thorns, the bird is often shown as a reminder of Christ’s later suffering at the time of his death, being forced to wear a crown of thorns.

This panel is attributed to Allegretto Nuzi with the possible collaboration with Francescuccio Ghissi who worked in the Nuzi’s workshop. It was part of an altarpiece designed by Nuzi. Stylistically, iconographically and in decorative vocabulary it is heavily indebted to Bernardo Daddi.

St Catherine wears a patterned robe and a crown. She carries a decorated book and rest her hand on the spiked will on which she was tortured. St Bartholomew wears a patterned mantle, and carries the knife with which he was flayed alive and a book.

The detail shows the head of St Catherine.

The detail shows the head of St Bartholomew.

This panel was probably part of the same altarpiece from which the panel in the National Gallery, London, representing Sts Catherine and Bartholomew, came.

This is one wing of a diptych, the other wing is in the Christian Museum, Esztergom. The represented figures are St Lucy, St John the Baptist, St Anthony Abbot, a Female Martyr, and the Annunciate Angel.

Mary Magdalene holds a jar that contained the perfume she used to bathe Christ’s feet. James the Great holds a staff and scallop shell like those carried by pilgrims to his burial site in Spain. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, holds a palm frond, the symbol of martyrdom. Several stones rest on his head, a reminder that he was executed by stoning. The last saint on the right bears no clear attribute other than a bishop’s robes. In the late 1800s, when the altarpiece received a new frame, the bishop was identified as Nicholas of Bari, but he is more likely Zenobius, an early bishop of Florence.