(Siena active in the second quarter of the 15th Century)
Saint Nicholas of Bari,
tempera on silver ground panel, 126 x 39.5 cm, unframed

Provenance:
art market, France;
where acquired by the present owner

The present panel relates to Gentile da Fabriano’s sojourn in Siena in 1425, where he left a lasting impression on the local school of painters. The influence of Gentile is evident in the present painting, especially in the elegant pictorial description of the decorative elements of the composition: in the emphasis on the material refinement of the bishop’s damask mantle with gilded edges, set against a silver ground, and in the technique – notably peculiar to Gentile and his followers – of the delicate ‘a puntinato’ rendering, used to depict the shoes and the white under-robe with red and blue embroidery worn by the saint.

The subject’s features, however, are typically Sienese and reflect the style of Sassetta and the so-called Maestro dell’Osservanza, as does the softly modulated handling of light and shade and the gothicising drapery. In this work it is possible to discern the early phase, closely allied to Gentile, of the rare Sienese painter known as the Master of Saint Ansano tentatively identified as Pietro di Ruffolo. Indeed, the present painting can be compared to five panels attributed to this master by Miklós Boskovits: the Saint Nicholas of Bari, Saint John the Baptist, the Madonna, Saint John the Evangelist and the Saint Jerome from the Kress Collection now in the Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina (inv. no. CMA 1952.24; see M. Boskovits, Il Gotico rivisitato: proposte e commenti su una mostra, in: Arte Cristiana, LXXI, 1983, pp. 269, 275, note 51).

An outline of the Master of Saint Ansano’s artistic production was first advanced by Boskovits when he proposed uniting a small group of works in relation to a series of three miniatures in the Graduale 98.4 of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo di Siena, (op. cit. Boskovits 1983, pp. 259–76), as well as a section of the monochrome frescoes in the portico and cloister of the hermitage of Lecceto near Siena.

This mysterious master derives his moniker from two frescoes in the Oratorio di Sant’Ansano in Castelvecchio, Siena, representing the Adoration of the Magi and Saint Ansanus. In all likelihood the artist was active from 1430 through to the 1450s: starting from late Gothic models, his manner adopted and incorporated the currents of Sienese 15th century painting, in step with artists such as Sassetta, Domenico di Bartolo and Vecchietta, to achieve a refined and personal stylistic fusion of the Sienese Gothic inheritance and the new pictorial stylistic tendencies of the Quattrocento.