The picture apparently was a polyptych of three, five, or seven panels with columns and round arches, with an upper order of gables and tabernacles. It seems to have been the first well-peopled Madonna in Majesty, and it probably served as Duccio’s exemplar. Cimabue died before finishing it, but since in Nov. 1302 he received a large installment of 40 Pisan lire, he must at least have fully drawn the composition on the panel.
[20]. Simone Martini. See the standard work by Raimond van Marle, Simone Martini, Strasbourg, 1920.
There is considerable difference among critics in dating these frescoes, and no objective evidence. The early date, 1322–25, suggested by Venturi and Van Marle, is confirmed by the stylistic character of the work. It lacks the calligraphic, linear formulas which abound in Simone’s works after 1330. The early date also agrees with the general probabilities of the course of events in the decoration of the Lower Church at Assisi.
[21]. Frey’s ed. Berlin, 1886, p. 42.
[22]. The contract for this altar-piece is translated in the illustrations to chapter II, p. 106.
[23]. Venturi, Vol. V, pp. 680–694, offers a sensible compromise view of the authorship of this series, assigning to Pietro himself only the Deposition, Entombment, Stigmatization of St. Francis and a Madonna and Saints, ascribing most of the subjects to an assistant. Dr. Ernest Dewald in a forthcoming Princeton dissertation takes a more skeptical view than Venturi as to Pietro’s presence at Assisi.
[24]. However the “Cecelia Master,” active about 1300, deals ably with such spatial problems. See O. Sirén, Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXIV, p. 234, and XXXVI, p. 4. and Giotto, plates 11–13, Vol. II.
[25]. Sassetta. Bernard Berenson. A Painter of the Franciscan Legend, (Sassetta), London and New York, 1909.
[26]. Matteo di Giovanni. We have the standard work of G. Hartlaub, Matteo da Siena, Strassburg, 1910. Mr. Berenson in Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting, New York, 1918, essay on Cozzarelli, has made useful criticisms of the list of pictures usually ascribed to Matteo.
[27]. Sodoma. Hobart Cust, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, usually styled “Sodoma,” New York, 1906.