Together with two other small panels, this depiction of Saint Margaret emerging from the mouth of a dragon formed part of the predella of an unidentified altarpiece. Supposedly martyred in 304, legend had it that Margaret was swallowed by Satan in the guise of a dragon, but emerged unscathed due to the cross she possessed.
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Title:Saint Margaret and the Dragon
Artist:Workshop of Agnolo Gaddi (Italian, Florentine, active by 1369–died 1396)
Date:ca. 1390
Medium:Tempera on wood, gold ground
Dimensions:9 1/8 x 8 in. (23.2 x 20.3 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941
Accession Number:41.190.23
Herbert P. Horne, Florence (ca. 1910); Harold Mellor, Florence (until ca. 1912; sold to Perkins); F. Mason Perkins, Lastra a Signa (from ca. 1912; sold to Blumenthal); George Blumenthal, New York (by 1925–d. 1941; cat., vol. 1, 1926, pl. V, as by Spinello Aretino)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Florentine Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," June 15–August 15, 1971, no catalogue.
Stella Rubinstein-Bloch. Catalogue of the Collection of George and Florence Blumenthal. Vol. 1, Paintings—Early Schools. Paris, 1926, unpaginated, pl. VI, attributes it to Spinello Aretino, noting analogies with other works by the artist; considers it part of a polyptych with two companion pieces in the Carlo Loeser collection, Florence.
Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 548, lists it as a work of Spinello Aretino.
Bernhard Berenson. Pitture italiane del rinascimento. Milan, 1936, p. 471, lists it as a work of Spinello Aretino.
[F. Mason] Perkins inAllgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Vol. 31, Leipzig, 1937, p. 386, attributes it to Spinello Aretino.
Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 93.
Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School. London, 1963, p. 205, lists it as a work of Spinello Aretino and erroneously gives accession number as 41.190.203.
Luciano Bellosi. "Da Spinello Aretino a Lorenzo Monaco." Paragone 16 (September 1965), pp. 41–42 n. 16, attributes it to Mariotto di Nardo and erroneously gives accession number as 41.190.203.
Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School. New York, 1971, pp. 48–49, ill., attribute it to the workshop of Agnolo Gaddi on stylistic grounds; discuss two other panels representing a Franciscan saint (possibly Francis) and Saint Elizabeth that probably came from the predella of the same altarpiece.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 76, 427, 608, as a work of Agnolo Gaddi's "school, shop, or studio".
Miklòs Boskovits. Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, 1370–1400. Florence, 1975, p. 301, attributes it Agnolo Gaddi, dates it to 1390–96, and tentatively identifies it as a fragment of a predella panel.
Erling S. Skaug. Punch Marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico: Attribution, Chronology, and Workshop Relationships in Tuscan Panel Painting. Oslo, 1994, vol. 1, p. 261; vol. 2, punch chart 8.2, lists it with the works of Agnolo Gaddi, and identifies a punch mark that it shares with works ascribed to Taddeo Gaddi and possibly the Master of the Straus Madonna.
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 10, ill. p. 11.
Mojmír S. Frinta. "Part I: Catalogue Raisonné of All Punch Shapes." Punched Decoration on Late Medieval Panel and Miniature Painting. Prague, 1998, p. 519, ill. (detail of punch mark), classifies a punch mark appearing in this painting and attributes it to either Agnolo Gaddi or tentatively to Giovanni Bonsi.
Stefan Weppelmann. Spinello Aretino e la pittura del Trecento in Toscana. Florence, 2011, p. 367, no. A 168, lists it among rejected works.
Fausto Nicolai. "'Primitives' in America: Frederick Mason Perkins and the Early Renaissance Italian Paintings in the Lehman and Blumenthal Collections." Journal of the History of Collections (April 28, 2018), pp. 11, 20 n. 103, online fig. 20 (color) [https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhy005], states, without documentation, that Blumenthal acquired the picture in about 1917; records the annotation on the back of the photograph in the Perkins archive, Assisi: "Spinello Aretino-Santa Margherita-Raccolta Blumenthal, New York. Formerly in Horne Coll - Florence, now in Blumenthal Coll, New York. First recognized as a work by Spinello by me when in Hornes's [sic] possession (1910?). Bought of Mellor, ca. 1912.".
This work originally formed part of the predella of an unidentified altarpiece. Two other panels, depicting a Franciscan saint (possibly Francis) and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, have been identified as coming from the same predella. These two panels were on the art market, Paris and Amsterdam, in about 1955, and may be the same two works that Rubinstein-Bloch mentions as in the Carlo Loeser collection, Florence, in 1926.
Giotto di Bondone (Italian, Florentine, 1266/76–1337)
possibly ca. 1320
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