Extremely Rare Paintings by Pietro Lorenzetti on Sale in Paris

Simone Martini and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti do not just embody the apex of 14th-century Sienese painting; they are also proof that art history will remain a fertile, surprise-filled field of study for years to come. In his introduction to the catalog of Michel Laclotte's pioneering 1956 exhibition at the Orangerie, "De Giotto à Bellini" (From Giotto to Bellini), André Chastel made an observation whose first sentence is in itself a tad amusing, since it was subsequently challenged by Giovanni Previtalli: "Before 1800, early paintings had little history. As works of art in churches, they usually survived in situ, piling up in sacristies, side chapels, attics or storerooms, as they were replaced in line with modern taste, and the frescoes slumbered, many of them, under the whitewash." In the 19th century, following Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, a scholar emeritus and translator of Dante and Tasso, Frenchmen such as the Cacault brothers, Cardinal Fesch and Alfred Ramé (1826-1886), who has been known since part of his collection, especially works from the High Middle Ages , was dispersed…