Csornay Boldizsár - Hubai Péter szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 96. (Budapest, 2002)

VICTOR M. SCHMIDT: A Duccesque Painting Representing St John the Baptist Bearing Witness in the Museum of Fine Arts

A DUCCESQUE PAINTING REPRESENTING ST JOHN THE BAPTIST BEARING WITNESS IN THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS The Museum of Fine Arts owns two panel paintings currently attributed to the Sienese painter Duccio di Buoninsegna. The fragment of the Coronation of the Virgin (inv. no. 16) was discussed in an earlier issue of this Bulletin.

1 The purpose of this article is to discuss the attribution, iconography, and original destination of the second panel (fig. 20), which shows St John the Baptist Bearing Witness (inv. 6). Like the other Duccesque panel, and indeed many other early Italian paintings in the museum, this panel comes from the collection of Johann Anton Ramboux (17901866). Already in Ramboux's time the painting had been transferred to a new support. The structure of canvas has impressed itself into the paint layer, thus severely hampering the legibility of the image and any judgment of the attribution.

2 Ramboux attributed the painting to Duccio on account of the similarities with the predella panels from Duccio's Maestà for Siena Cathedral, but conceded that it could have been painted by a later hand.

3 The attribution to Duccio initially prevailed, but in 1907 Adolfo Venturi suggested that the panel may have belonged to Ugolino's polyptych for the high altar of Santa Croce in Florence.

4 Although the relationship with that polyptych, which is now divided among various collections, was subsequently denied, 1 Schmidt, V.M., 'A Duccesque fragment of the Coronation of the Virgin', Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 90-91 (1999), 39-52. 1 wish to thank Vilmos Tátrai for his kind help during a visit to the museum in November 1997, and Monika Butzek for generously allowing me to consult her documentation on churches in Siena. 2 Katalog der Gemälde alter italienischer Meister (1221-1640) in der Sammlung des Conservators JA. Ramboux, Cologne 1862, 14, no. 70; Catalog der nachgelassenen Kunst-Sammlungen des Herrn Johann Anton Ramboux, Conservator des städtischen Museums in Cöln. Versteigerung zu Cöln am 23. Mai 1867 ... durch J.M. Heberle (H. Lempertz), Cologne 1867, 16, no. 70. Cf. also Boskovits, M., review of: James H. Stubblebine, Duccio di Buoninsegna and his school (Princeton, 1979) and: John White, Duccio: Tuscan art and the Medieval workshop (London, 1979), in Art Bulletin 64 (1982), 496-502, esp. 499, note 1. 3 Katalog der Gemälde, cit., 14, no. 70; Catalog der nachgelassenen Kunst-Sammlungen, cit., 16, no. 4 A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, V, Milan 1907, 581, note 1, and 587, note 1.