Spoleto, reunited and exhibited for the first time the triptych by the Master of the Madonna Straus

At the Diocesan Museum in Spoleto, the triptych by the Master of the Madonna Straus will be reunited and will be on public view for the first time, from June 15 to Nov. 7, 2021, thanks to the collaboration of the Vatican Museums.

The work depicts the Madonna Enthroned with Child and Angels in the center, a part currently housed in the Diocesan Museum in Spoleto, while the side compartments depict St. Paula Romana and St. Eustochio, which were saved from the 1703 earthquake, entered the collectors’ market and from 1867 are documented in the Vatican.

Curated by Adele Breda, Curator of the Department for Byzantine-Medieval Art of the Vatican Museums, Stefania Nardicchi, Curator of the Diocesan Museum of Spoleto, and Anna Pizzamano, PhD candidate in “History and Cultural Heritage of the Church” at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the exhibition Late Gothic Enchantment. The Recomposed Triptych of the Master of the Madonna Straus presents the reunited masterpiece.

On the occasion of the recent restoration of the two side compartments conserved in the Vatican Collection, which as stated depict two little-known saints, Paula Romana and Eustochius, mother and daughter who lived at the time of St. Jerome (late 4th century), the study of the work was deepened and the search for the lost central compartment began. Research had revealed a fragmented panel painting at the Diocesan Museum in Spoleto depicting an enthroned Madonna and Child between two holding angels. The painting, although lacking the lower part, seems stylistically similar and was recognized as the central part of the triptych. The work was originally on the altar of the church of Santa Maria near the castle of Abeto di Preci, hence the appellation “Maria Santissima di Piè di Castello.”

In order to compare the three elements of the triptych, careful scientific investigations were carried out: the Spoleto Madonna was transferred to the Cabinet of Scientific Research Applied to Cultural Heritage of the Vatican Museums, where the different elements were thoroughly examined, and the wooden essence, pigments, engravings and punches confirmed its full compatibility. The Department for Byzantine-Medieval Art continued the art-historical research and arrived at the reconstructive hypothesis presented here.

In order to further the study of a painter of very high quality who is not sufficiently known, a later work by the same master was compared, namely the Madonna Enthroned with Child between two angels, now kept at the Museum of Sacred Art and Popular Religiousness “Beato Angelico” in Vicchio del Mugello.

There are several reasons that led to this choice: these are polyptychs made by one of the most refined and sought-after Florentine workshops of the time, intended for the liturgical decoration of chapels and parishes in the rural areas of Umbria and Tuscany (later dismembered, reconfigured partly as autonomous works and partly dispersed). The survival of only the panel with the Madonna, both in the case of Abeto di Preci and that of Vicchio, also testifies to a devotion that was never interrupted and to an affective and centuries-old bond with the territory, which has resisted even the dispersion of the side compartments. Thanks to this juxtaposition, it is also possible to guess the original dimensions of the Madonna of Spoleto, which was severely damaged in the 1703 earthquake.

Two moments in the stylistic journey of the Master of the Madonna Straus, active in Florence between 1385 and 1415, a painter who, from an initial neo-Giottism, slowly opened up to the new international style, welcoming in part the manners of Lorenzo Monaco and Gherardo Starnina, but always maintaining his own original archaic style.

For more info: www.duomospoleto.it

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Pictured: Master of the Madonna Straus, Madonna Enthroned with Child and Angels, detail

Spoleto, reunited and exhibited for the first time the triptych by the Master of the Madonna Straus

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