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Provenance: Sacristy of the Venerabile Compagnia degli Artisti, Montepulciano, 1862 (see Brogi).
with Alois Stegmüller.
Anonymous sale; Berlinghof, Heidelberg, 21-2 December 1980, lot 76, pls. 170-1, as by an unknown northern painter, circa 1500, where acquired by the present owners.

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Exhibited: Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, on loan.

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Literature: F. Brogi, Inventario generale degli oggetti d'arte della provincia di Siena, Siena, 1897, p. 305.
J. Pope-Hennessy, Giovanni di Paolo, London, 1937, p. 178.
C. Brandi, Giovanni di Paolo, Florence, 1947, pp. 78 ff.
P. Riedl, 'Eine wiederentdeckte "Verkündigung Mariä" von Giovanni di Paolo', Sitzungsberichte del Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosphisch-historische Klasse, 1986, 2, Heidelberg, 1985.
C.B. Strehlke, in the exhibition catalogue, Painting in Renaissance Siena 1420-1500, New York, 1988, p. 210.
A.B. Rave, 'Die Italienische Malerei in der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Mitteilungen aus der Museumwesen Baden-Württemburg, 1992, p. 45.
R. Klapproth and G. Ewald, Katalog alte meister, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 1990, pp. 148-9, illustrated.
A.B. Rave, Frühe Italienische Tafelmalerei, Stuttgart, 1999, pp. 105-7, illustrated.

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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN FAMILY
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The correct attribution of these characteristically sinuous pinnacles to the most individual and eccentric of mid-quattrocento Sienese masters was due to Pieter Riedl, who realised that they must correspond with the two panels of matching measurements (106 by 42 cm.) recorded in the sacristy of the Compagnia degli Artisti at Montepulciano in 1862 (see above). Riedl suggested that the pinnacles may have belonged to a major altarpiece of 1453, of which the main panels, Saint Nicholas enthroned with Saints Bernardino, Francis, Clare and Louis of Toulouse, with roundels of Saints Paul and Jerome, are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (no. 173), hypothesising that this evidently Franciscan commission might have been intended for the church of Saint Francesco at Montepulciano. Riedl considered that the scale of the figures, and their style, as well as the elaborate ornamentation of the gold in these panels is compatible with that of the altarpiece now in Siena.

The Siena altarpiece is, however, iconographically incompatible with the three predella panels also recorded by Brogi in the Compagnia degli Artisti at Montepulciano in 1862, the Baptism (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum), the Crucifixion (private collection), and The attempted Martyrdom of Saint John the Evangelist at the Porta Latina (Florence, Dr. Lino Pasquali). A further panel, not seen by Brogi, was associated with these by Sir John Pope-Hennessy, the Saint John the Evangelist raising Drusiana (New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehman Collection). Carl Strehlke noted that the main register is likely to have shown the Madonna and Child between Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist and at least two other lateral saints. He notes that the Chapel of the Compagnia degli Artisti took the site of the former Silvestrine church of San Giovanni del Poggiolo, for which Giovanni di Paolo's polyptych would have been an appropriate high altarpiece. The Compagnia degli Artisti altarpiece is likely to have been closely contemporary with the Saint Nicholas of Tolentino altarpiece, signed and dated 1456, now in the church of Sant' Agostino at Montepulciano; this was presumably painted for that church, or for that of Santa Mustiola, also an Augustinian foundation. Strehlke fairly considers that stylistically the predella panels fit with pictures of the period encompassed by the 1456 panel and works of the early 1460s.

Intended to be seen from below, so that the forms literally float on the gold grounds, these pinnacles demonstrate Giovanni di Paolo's unremitting attention to the preparation of his engraved grounds. Such details as the head of the angel, in which the artist retracts the lower line of the chin from the outline established in the ground, demonstrate his ability to refine his visual ideas and express the tremulous conviction that underlay a visionary artistic personality that was sublimely impervious to alien influence, but expresses a very Sienese fluidity of both form and line, inherited from the world of Simone Martini and his early trecento contemporaries, but filtered through the art of Jacopo della Quercia as well as the artist's older contemporary Sassetta.