PIETRO LORENZETTI (documented in Siena from 1306... Lot 18

PIETRO LORENZETTI (documented in Siena from 1306 to 1345) Saint Helena Altarpiece panel Egg painting and gold ground on rectangular poplar panel with vertical grain, surrounded by a modern gilded wood frame. panel alone : 69.8 x 37 x 3 CM - 27.5 x 14 x 1.2 in. PROVENANCE Alfred Ramé (1826-1886), between Paris and Rennes. Alfred Ramé, magistrate, medievalist and archaeologist, owned a number of works of great museum quality. In 1873, he donated Le Gisant de Blanche de Champagne (died 1283), wife of Jean I, Duke of Brittany, to the Musée du Louvre (now on display at the Louvre in Lens) and the glass roof of the Betton parish church to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes. Kept by his descendants to this day. DESCRIPTION The saint, seen in three-quarter view, is placed under a tier-point arcade highlighted on the gold background by a frieze of punched motifs. She occupies almost the entire surface of the rectangular panel, her face and gaze directed to the left towards a hypothetical Madonna. She wears a light, transparent wimple elegantly holding her face. A reddish-brown mantle with gold braid covers her head and wraps her left arm. In a gesture of deference, she raises her right hand to her chest. Above, the prophets, seen at mid-body, unfurl a phylactery bearing their names. All the figures are encircled by a halo of elaborate punched motifs. ICONOGRAPHY Like her companion, this saint is not accompanied by any attribute or inscription. We suggest recognizing St. Helena, given her links to St. Silvester and his son Constantine. She is generally portrayed as a high-ranking figure, since she was an empress and the wife of Constantius Chlorus, but converted and worked for the propagation of the Christian faith, and was canonized as a saint by both the Catholic and Byzantine churches. According to legend, she invented the true cross of Christ1. As such, around 1380, she appears in the Discovery of the Cross, one of the scenes from the Legend of the True Cross, frescoed in Florence in the choir of the Santa Croce church by Agnolo Gaddi, son of Giotto's pupil Taddeo Gaddi. The artist depicts her with features very similar to those on our panel, dressed in the same reddish-brown cloak and wearing an elegant wimple around her face, but with a fur collar and crown (fig. 5). In the same church, on the walls of the adjacent chapel belonging to the Bardi di Vernio family and decorated with frescoes of the life of Saint Silvester painted by Maso di Banco in the second quarter of the 14th century, Saint Helena appears again in the scene of the Miracle of the Bull (fig. 6).2 in an appearance very similar to our panel. CONDITION Like the previous panel, this one has retained its original width, and features the same cut-out in the upper part, depriving it of the elements that were intended to surmount it. In the thickness of the panel, there are mortises used to assemble the panels. The tiers-point arch and spandrel moldings are original. The reverse, painted black, shows signs of wood-eating insect damage. At the bottom of the panel is the trace of the old 7cm-high reinforcing crosspiece that held the panels together. Pictorial surface and gold background: mantle wear and restorations to the hand and halo. Above the saint, on the phylacteries worn by the figures in the spandrels, we read the names of the prophets Anne and Micah, in Latin and black-painted Gothic letters, poorly restored: The letter P is a Latin abbreviation of the word Prophet. On the reverse, an old label bears the inscription "Rame" in black ink. 1 "L'invention de la Sainte Croix" story from La Légende Dorée du XIIIe siècle, by Jacques de Voragine, ed. Garnier Flammarion, 1967, vol I, p. 341-350. The representation of this saint is much more popular in Byzantine religious art than in Western art. However, she appears in 1246 in the fresco of the Discovery of the Cross, in the Church of the Four Crowned Ones in Rome and, in addition to the frescoes by Agnolo Gaddi and Maso mentioned above, she features in the cycle of the Legend of the True Cross, in the choir of the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo, painted by Piero della Francesca around 1482. All these frescoes are linked to the papacy and Franciscanism (cf. Jane C. Long "Franciscan Chapel decoration, the St Silvester cycle of Maso di Banco at Santa Croce in Florence" in Studies in Iconography, vol.30, 2009, p. 75). It would not be surprising if our panels had some connection with this