The MASTER OF THE DOMINICAN EFFIGIES, Painter and illuminator working in Florence between 1325 and 1345 The Virgin and Child on a throne between Saint Francis and Saint Peter Tryptic with closing shutters Egg painting and gold background on wooden panels 72.5 cm x 60 cm open size Center : The Virgin and Child on a throne H. 72cm : L. 28,5cm Left panel: Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata Right flap : Saint Peter Each panel : H. 49cm : L. 15cm On the back of the central panel : presence of xylophagous parasites galleries Pictorial surface and gold background : Wear and restoration Original gilded wood frame except for the added base; original hooks for the shutters Original punched and engraved ornamentation INSCRIPTIONS On the right flap in gilded letters on black background : SANTV' PETV' (Sanctus Petrus) On the reverse side old labels Provenance: Collection of baron Cosson, florence Collection Bresset, Paris Exhibitions : L'Art du Moyen Age, Marseille Musée Cantini, 1952, n°7 The Virgin, dressed in a dark blue mantle covering her head, holds the Child in her arms as he tries to escape. She is seated on a marble throne, the back of which is covered with an orange cloth of honor, punctuated with golden geometric motifs. The group is placed under a tri-lobed arcade in third points. In a mountainous and wooded landscape with a small oratory, the left panel shows St. Francis, kneeling, receiving the stigmata of Christ the Seraph flying in the air; in the right panel, St. Peter, standing on a platform decorated with a balustrade motif, turns dynamically towards the Virgin and the Child, holding in his hands two large golden keys, symbol of his power. He is dressed in a large blue-green robe covered by a purplish-pink mantle and wears the pallium. This triptych must be placed in the production of the Master of the Dominican Effigies, an artist whose conventional name was given by R. Offner (Corpus of Florentine Painting, New York 1930, section III, vol. 2, part I and 1957, Section III, vol.VII)) from a panel depicting Christ and the Virgin on a throne and seventeen Dominican saints and blesseds (Florence, Archivio de Santa Maria Novella). Following Offner, critics have gradually established the personality of this painter and illuminator, for whom no documents are known: he must have been trained around 1320 and worked with Giotto painters, whose influence he underwent: the Master of Santa Cecilia, Jacopo di Casentino and, later, around 1340, that of Bernardo Daddi. He also worked as a miniaturist with Pacino di Bonaguida. The Master of Biadaiolo, (published by Offner, op. cit. 1930) author of the illustrations of a codex of Domenico Lenzi: the Biadaiolo (Florence, Laurentian Library cod. Tempiano 3) whose style is close to that of the Master of the Dominican Effigies, was considered for a time, as an artist distinct from the latter. Nowadays, some critics consider the production of these two artists as the initial phase of the evolution of the only Master of the Dominican Effigies (cf. M. Boskovits in Offner, Corpus of Florentine Painting, Section III, Vol. 9, Florence 1984 p. 54-56; B.L. Kanter, in Painting and Illuminationnnn in early Renaissance florence 1300-1450, exhibition New York The Metropolitan Museum 17 November 1994- 27 February 1995, p. 56-57 and A.Tartuferi, in Cataloghi della Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, I Dipinti, Vol. I, florence 2003, p.145). Thus, the panel of the Last Judgment, Virgin and Child, Crucifixion, Glorification of St. Thomas, Nativity (New York, The Metropolitan Museum, Lehman Collection, no. 1975.1.99) long given to the Master of Biadaiolo and generally dated to around 1335 like the Codex Lenzi, offers stylistic as well as iconographic and ornamental similarities with our triptych: the same presentation of the Virgin in Throne, the same liveliness of the characters, the use of an identical motif of arches engraved on the edge of the panels. On the other hand, the elements borrowed by the Master of the Dominican Effigies from the Giottesque models remain important: from the Master of Saint Cecilia, whose frescoes he must have seen in Assisi (Superior Church), he retained, in the Saint Peter of the triptych, the high stature of the characters surmounted by a small head, the impetuosity of the attitudes, the refined coloring of the clothes: As for the balustrade of the terreplein on which the saint takes his place, it also emanates from Assisi in the scene of Isaac and Esau by Giotto (cf. B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Florentine School, Florence 1963, Vol. I, figs. 84-88 and 25). A final source of inspiration is the Stigmatization of St. Francis from the Cagnola triptych by Jacopo di Casentino (documented in Florence in 1339) (Florence, Uffizi; cf. Berenson, op. cit., fig. 102), a scene that is repeated in its entirety here in the left pane, as well as the ornamentation of the painting.