The Nativity of the Virgin
Andrea di Bartolo·c. 1400/1405
Historical Context
Andrea di Bartolo's Nativity of the Virgin from around 1400-05 depicts the birth of Mary to her aged parents Joachim and Anne, a subject derived from the apocryphal Gospel of James rather than canonical Scripture but immensely popular in medieval Christian art. The scene — Anna reclining in her chamber while attendants wash the newborn Mary — offered painters opportunity for the kind of intimate domestic narrative that could make sacred figures humanly accessible. Andrea di Bartolo was a significant Sienese painter of the late Trecento and early Quattrocento, son of the prominent Bartolo di Fredi and a painter in the tradition of the great Sienese Gothic masters. His work maintained the gold ground tradition and formal elegance of Sienese painting while showing sensitivity to the developing interest in spatial naturalism characteristic of the International Gothic style.
Technical Analysis
The tempera on poplar panel features the refined linear style and warm color palette of the late Sienese school. The carefully structured interior space with attending women demonstrates the Sienese tradition of combining decorative pattern with spatial depth.
Provenance
This panel, along with NGA 1939.1.41 and 1939.1.43, are stated to have come from the collection of a contessa Giustiniani, Genoa;[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome); sold July 1930 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA. [1] See the bill of sale described in note 2. No documented collection of the conti Giustiniani at Genoa seems to have existed, at least in the early years of the twentieth century. The works that Elisabeth Gardner (_ A Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private Collections_, ed. Chiara Ceschi and Katharine Baetjer, 4 vols., Vicenza, 1998-2011: 2(2002):183) cites as formerly the property of the contessa Giustiniani almost all seem to have been purchased on the art market shortly before 1930, when Contini Bonacossi sold them to Samuel H. Kress. The contessa is thus more likely to have been a dealer, or agent, than a collector. See also Miklós Boskovits and David Alan Brown, _Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century_, National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue, Washington and New York, 2003: 616 n. 3. [2] The painting is included on a bill of sale dated 15 July 1930 that included eight paintings from the Giustiniani collection (copy in NGA curatorial files); see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2260.
