(Venice circa 1440-1501/2 Fermo)
Saint Clare,
tempera on panel, gold ground, 75.7 x 36.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Church of San Francesco in Monte Santo, now Potenza Picena, Macerata;
Private collection, Italy;
Art market, Italy, circa 1963-1964 (as Guidoccio Cozzarelli);
Private collection, Italy;
where purchased by the present owner.

Exhibited:
Sarnano (Macerata), Palazzo del Popolo, Vittore Crivelli da Venezia alle Marche. Maestri del Rinascimento nell’Appennino, 21 May – 6 November 2011, no. 18

Literature:
S. Di Provvido in S. Papetti (ed), Vittore Crivelli: e la pittura del suo tempo nel fermano, Milan 1997, p. 243, n. 63, p. 166, fig. LXXIV (as Vittore Crivelli);
C. Frugoni, in: Vittore Crivelli da Venezia alle Marche. Maestri del Rinascimento nell’Appennino, F. Coltrinari, A. Delpriori (eds.), exhibition catalogue, Venice 2011, pp. 134-135, illustrated (as Vittore Crivelli)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 19444) as Vittore Crivelli.

The present panel represents Saint Clare, three quarter length, as she turns her gaze in devotion upon the cross that she holds, while her lips appear to whisper a prayer. The Franciscan Saint wears a brown stripped mantle, a typical robe among penitents, which is fastened by a simple wooden clasp. On her head, meanwhile, she wears a black and white veil which is emblematic of seclusion.

The distinctive features of the Saint’s face, the elegant rendering of her hands and the precision of the pictorial line are all characteristic elements of Vittore Crivelli’s production. He was born in Venice in about 1440 and spent a long sojourn in Dalmatia. He subsequently established himself permanently in the Marches during the 1480s, probably arriving there at the request of his elder brother Carlo. He is distinguished for his rich production of devotional works made mostly in the area around Fermo.

The present panel was probably originally part of a polyptych commissioned on 17 October 1491 by the prior of the convent of San Francesco in Monte Santo, near Macerata, for the high altar of the church. Dispersed during the suppression of 1810, the now dismembered polyptych has in part been reconstructed by uniting various panels that are conserved in museums and private collections. The present Saint Clare could also be related to the panels of the dismembered polyptych on account of their common treatment of the damasked gold ground, the treatment of the halo, and their matching dimensions. The upper register of the altarpiece likely included, along with the present Saint Clare, a Saint Jerome (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts) a Saint Anthony of Padua (formerly Platt collection, Englewood, New Jersey) and a Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). The lower register of the altarpiece comprised of full-figure Saints, among which there was a Saint John the Baptist (formerly Serri collection, Camden, New Jersey) and three segments preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge respectively representing Saint Bonaventure, the Madonna and Child enthroned surrounded by angels and a Saint Louis of Toulouse. These three panels are at present integrated within a single polyptych structure, which has a predella that perhaps also belonged to the original altarpiece. This predella contains representations of eight Franciscan friars, including Saint Clare, a repetition which is not at all unusual for devotional works of the era. It would therefore seem that only one figure is missing from the lower register of the altarpiece. This would almost certainly have been Saint Francis since all the other Saints refer to the friar from Assisi’s order, and because this great altarpiece was commissioned for a Franciscan church. The prior of Monte Santo moreover had requested of Crivelli a work identical in size and materials to the one he had made for the Euffreducci chapel in the church of San Francesco at Fermo, which today is preserved in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The striking similarities that exist between the Euffreducci altarpiece and the reconstructed polyptych to which the present Saint Clare may once have belonged, suggest that this painting may indeed have been part of the altarpiece that once ornamented the high altar of San Francesco in Monte Santo (see literature)