Maestro del Dittico Sterbini
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The anonymous painter known as the Maestro del dittico Sterbini is a fourteenth-century master named after a small devotional diptych in the Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia in Rome. The Palazzo Venezia entry and the restoration catalogue of 2018 place him most probably in Venice, as an itinerant painter of Greek origin working for Latin patrons, rather than in Angevin Naples.
The Sterbini Diptych
Left Panel
The left panel of the Sterbini Diptych sets out its devotional programme in two superimposed registers on a continuous burnished gold ground, enclosed by a raised integral frame carved from the same board. Its small format and its hinged, closable structure place it among the images made for private devotion, intended to be opened in a domestic or personal setting and closed for protection or transport.
The upper register is dominated by the half-length figure of the Virgin, identified by the inscription
MATER DEI.
She wears a deep blue mantle scattered with gold stars and edged with a gilded border, drawn over her head and lined at the face with a pale, rose-tinted veil whose folds frame her oval features. A narrow red cuff appears at her wrist, adding a sharp accent of colour against the blue. Her head is gently inclined towards the Child, and her gaze turns slightly outward to the beholder. The effect combines the solemn frontality of the icon with a more intimate affective register.
The Child, accompanied by a Christological inscription that the restoration catalogue transcribes «IHCO XPICTOC», is seated in the crook of his mother’s arm. He wears a pale silvery tunic beneath a rose mantle enriched with fine gold ornament. His body turns away from the Virgin towards the right, and he extends his hand towards a small bird held out by Saint Joseph. The museum literature identifies the bird as a robin. The motif lends the scene a familiar, almost anecdotal tone, while recalling the symbolic associations of birds with the soul and with the Passion that were widespread in Trecento devotional imagery.
Saint Joseph, named by the inscription
S. IOSEPH,
occupies the right half of the upper register. He is shown as an elderly man with grey hair and a short beard, his head encircled by a tooled halo. His pale lilac mantle falls in broad folds over a blue tunic, and his hand is raised in a gesture that answers the Child’s movement. His presence beside the Virgin and Child is iconographically significant. Joseph rarely appears in the half-length Marian icon type, and including him here turns the image into a small Holy Family, with the bird as the link between the figures.
The lower register presents three full-length saints standing side by side on a narrow rose-coloured strip of ground. Each is identified by an inscription in red letters on the gold. On the left stands
S. LAURENTIUS,
youthful and beardless. He wears the deacon’s dalmatic, rendered in a vivid red-orange enriched with a dense pattern of gold, and holds a small gilded object. The restorers speak of a censer and a pyx in describing the lacquer outlines of the figure, and the censer is an attribute consistent with his liturgical office. The minute, jewel-like treatment of his vestment is among the most refined decorative passages of the panel.
At the centre stands
S. PHILIPPUS,
likewise young and beardless. He wears a blue tunic and a full pink mantle whose folds are modelled with soft gradations of light, and his right hand is raised before his chest. The calm verticality of his figure balances the composition between the brilliant red of Lawrence and the cooler green of the Baptist. The choice of the apostle Philip, less common than Peter or Paul in images of this kind, may reflect a devotional preference of the original owner, whose identity remains unknown.
On the right stands
S. IOHANNES BAPTISTA,
gaunt and long-haired. He wears a hair garment beneath a green mantle that hangs in loose, irregular folds. He raises his right hand in a gesture of indication and holds in his left an unrolled scroll inscribed «ECCE / AGNU/S DE/I» (John 1:29). These are the words with which the Baptist proclaims Christ, and they bind the lower register to the image of the Child above. The ascetic thinness of his limbs and the angular fall of his drapery contrast with the more measured, rounded forms of the other two saints.
The panel’s style shows the double cultural allegiance that defines the whole diptych. The use of Latin inscriptions in Gothic letters, the choice of Western saints and the narrative warmth of the robin motif belong to Italian devotional painting. The burnished gold ground, the Virgin’s star-strewn maphorion, the modelling of the faces and the icon-like structure of the integral frame recall Byzantine models. The red inscriptions, the tooled haloes and the sober placement of the figures against the gold create a surface of great preciousness, suited to close viewing in private prayer.
Right Panel
The right panel answers the Marian imagery of its companion with a meditation on the Passion and on its reflection in the life of Saint Francis1. It is likewise divided into two registers on a burnished gold ground within a raised integral frame. The two leaves were designed to be read together when the diptych was opened. The left panel presents the Incarnation and the witnesses who announce Christ, and the right panel his sacrifice and the saints who most closely imitated it. The coherence of the programme reinforces the identification of the work as an object of personal devotion, probably within a Franciscan setting.
The upper register shows the Crucifixion. Christ hangs on a dark wooden cross that reaches almost to the upper edge of the field. His body is pale and elongated, his head sinks onto his shoulder, and a white loincloth is knotted about his hips. The anatomy is articulated with delicate modelling of the torso and a gentle curve of the body, in keeping with the type of the suffering Christ, the Christus patiens, which by the fourteenth century was common to Italian and Byzantine painting. A small angel in orange-red robes hovers in flight to the left of the cross, a further accent of colour against the gold.
To the left of the cross stands the Virgin, identified once again by
MATER DEI.
She is wrapped entirely in a dark blue mantle, her body slightly bowed and her face lifted towards her Son. Her compact, columnar silhouette expresses contained grief rather than violent lament. Mary Magdalene kneels at the foot of the cross in a brilliant red mantle, her long hair loose over her shoulders, embracing the wood of the cross. Her pose introduces into the scene a passionate, diagonal movement that contrasts with the vertical stillness of the other figures.
On the right stands Saint John the Evangelist, named
S. IOHANNES EVANGELISTA.
He wears a pink mantle over a blue tunic and rests his cheek on his hand in the traditional gesture of mourning. Behind the figures, the lower part of the scene is closed by a pale green wall with small architectural details. It is a summary indication of the walls of Jerusalem, giving the episode a sense of place without disturbing the abstract unity of the gold sky. The disposition of the mourners at the two sides of the cross follows a long-established compositional scheme. Its emotional emphasis on the Magdalene, however, reflects the devotional sensibility of the Western mendicant orders.
The lower register is divided between two subjects. On the left, Saint Francis, identified by the inscription
S. FRANCISCUS,
receives the stigmata. He kneels in a landscape of pale, angular rocks that evokes the mountain of La Verna, with red-roofed buildings, a slender cypress and a small leafy tree completing the setting. Dressed in the brown habit of his order and girded with the cord, he raises both hands in a gesture of wonder and acceptance, his face turned upward towards the vision.
Above him appears the seraph, its six red wings spread around the small figure of the crucified Christ. Fine golden lines run from the wounds of the vision to the hands, feet and side of the saint. This visual device, common in Italian representations of the subject, makes the transmission of the stigmata explicit. Placed directly beneath the Crucifixion, the episode presents Francis as the alter Christus, the saint who bore in his own flesh the wounds of the Passion depicted above.
On the right stands
S. LUDOVICUS,
Saint Louis of Toulouse2. He is youthful and beardless, crowned with a bishop’s mitre and holding a crozier. Beneath his ample blue cope, sown with gold fleurs-de-lis, the brown Franciscan habit is visible. The two garments sum up his identity: a prince of the Angevin dynasty who renounced his royal rights, entered the Franciscan Order and became Bishop of Toulouse. His canonisation in 1317 provides the work’s terminus post quem, and his presence beside Saint Francis reinforces the Franciscan character of the devotional programme.
Like its companion, the right panel joins an icon-like structure with a markedly Western narrative and devotional vocabulary. The burnished gold, the integral frame and the modelling of the faces belong to the Byzantine tradition. The Latin inscriptions, the episode of the Stigmatisation, the figure of an Angevin Franciscan saint and the expressive treatment of the Magdalene belong to Italian Trecento painting. The juxtaposition of brilliant reds, deep blues and pale greens against the gold, and the miniaturist precision of details such as the fleurs-de-lis on Louis’s cope, show a painter of considerable refinement. That refinement was put at the service of a work meant to be held, opened and contemplated at close range.
Technique and Material Evidence
The most detailed material description of the work comes from the technical study that accompanied its restoration. The restoration was carried out by L’Officina Consorzio of Rome under the direction of Stefano Petrocchi for the Polo Museale del Lazio, and the work was presented in the Restituzioni 2018 exhibition at the Reggia di Venaria Reale.
Each panel was carved from a single board so as to leave a raised integral frame with a softly moulded groove. This hollowed “scrigno” or “arca” construction is characteristic of icons. Over the wood lies a linen canvas, then layers of gesso and animal glue smoothed to receive the gilding and paint. The gold covers ground and frame without interruption. It was laid as water gilding over yellow bole, then burnished to a high lustre.
The haloes are tooled with three punches: a three-dot punch on the outer edge, a smaller single punch inside, and a still finer one for granulation. Their contours and volutes are incised. The ornament of the Virgin’s garment and the rays of the Holy Spirit are in mordant gilding.
The most telling observation concerns the use of gold beneath the paint. The mantles of Lawrence, Philip and the Baptist were painted over the gold leaf. In the figure of Saint Lawrence the gold appears to have been glazed with red lake and then selectively revealed by scraping, which the restorers describe as a Venetian variant of sgraffito. Gold also lies beneath the paint in the mitre of Saint Louis and in parts of the landscape around Saint Francis. The medium is egg tempera.
The restorers describe the state of conservation as good. They record old movements of the support along the frame, abrasions of the gilding, traces of earlier antiquarian reburnishing of the gold ground, and an earlier hatched retouching between Philip and the Baptist.
These findings matter for the attributional debate. They show a workshop that combined an icon-like structure with decorative procedures the technical team associated with Venetian practice.
The diptych’s earlier history is unknown. At the end of the nineteenth century it was acquired by the lawyer Giulio Sterbini, described in the museum sources as a trusted man of Pope Leo XIII. In his palace in via del Banco di Santo Spirito in Rome, Sterbini kept a precious collection of medieval paintings, above all of Byzantine character. Luisa Morozzi’s essay “Da Lasinio a Sterbini, ‘primitivi’ in una raccolta romana di secondo Ottocento” (2006) is the study of that collection that the museum cites.
The collection passed in part, by inheritance, to the Lupi family, and the diptych was then bought by the banker Giovanni Armenise, who gave it to the Italian State in 1940. The restoration catalogue speaks of a donation and the museum’s online entry of a bequest, and the published sources do not settle the legal form of the transfer.
The work’s exhibition history is brief but significant. It was shown at the Esposizione di arte italo-bizantina at the abbey of San Nilo in Grottaferrata in 1904–1905, at the exhibition Cipro e l’Italia al tempo di Bisanzio at Palazzo Venezia in 2009, and at Restituzioni 2018 at Venaria Reale.
Reconstruction of the Corpus
Around the Roman diptych a small group of paintings has gradually been assembled, although the boundaries of this oeuvre have always remained fluid. The Notname rests on one work whose attribution is not in question, because it gives the name, and on four or five others that were joined to it by stylistic comparison. The online entry of the Palazzo Venezia lists five of them. Two are Madonnas with the Child: one formerly in the Bagnarelli collection in Milan, whose present whereabouts are unknown, and one formerly owned by Kenneth Clark, offered at Christie’s in London on 8 July 2021. To these are added the triptych with the Madonna and Child between Saints Agatha and Bartholomew in the Museo Regionale of Messina, the Madonna from the collection of Frederick Mason Perkins, now in the Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi, and the portable altarpiece at Polesden Lacey in Surrey, owned by the National Trust.
The restoration catalogue of 2018 is more restrictive. It records that the many proposals for the catalogue of the master were reduced to four works in the most recent intervention, that of Michele Bacci in 2017: the two Madonnas, the Messina triptych and the Polesden Lacey altarpiece. The Assisi Madonna is not among them. The degrees of certainty can therefore be set out in this order. The diptych is the nucleus. The Clark Madonna, the Messina triptych and the Polesden Lacey triptych are retained in the restricted list, and each has its own proposer: Edward B. Garrison grouped the diptych and the Clark panel in his Adriatic group in 1949, Federico Zeri gave the Messina triptych to the master in 1992, and Rebecca Corrie tied the Polesden Lacey triptych to the diptych in 2005 and 2006. The Bagnarelli Madonna is in the same list but cannot be judged, since its whereabouts are unknown and none of the published sources describes it. The Assisi Madonna, filed under the master by the Fondazione Zeri, is the outermost and most debatable piece.
The Fondazione Zeri photo archive classifies the master under Venetian painting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, within its “traditionalist current, provisional groups, anonymous masters”. Its records under his name cover the diptych, the Messina triptych, the Assisi Madonna, the Bagnarelli Madonna and a Madonna that passed through Christie’s in London, and not the Polesden Lacey triptych.
The Madonna and Child, formerly Clark collection
This half-length Madonna and Child is one of the most substantial panels attributed to the anonymous Master of the Sterbini Diptych. Its modern history is well documented. It was with Wildenstein as Pietro Lorenzetti, and with Matthiessen in London before 1949, and it was then in the collection of Sir Kenneth Clark at Saltwood in Kent. It was shown at the Italian Art and Britain exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1960 (no. 271) under the name of Vitale da Bologna. After Clark it passed through three London sales: Sotheby’s on 6 July 1988 (lot 3, as “School of Veneto, c. 1340”), Christie’s on 7 December 2006 (lot 43) and Christie’s again on 8 July 2021 (lot 34). Garrison’s index of 1949 classified it as “Adriatic, group C, probably Venetian, second quarter of 14th Century”, the same group in which the Fondazione Zeri records place the Sterbini diptych. The successive labels of Venetian, Bolognese and Adriatic summarise in a single object the attributional uncertainty that has long surrounded the whole group. The recorded dimensions differ slightly between the two Christie’s catalogues, 47.3 × 34 cm in 2006 and 47.5 × 34.2 cm in 2021.
The composition follows the established type of the half-length Virgin holding the Child on her arm. It derives ultimately from the Byzantine Hodegetria but is here inflected by the more tender relationship of the Eleousa. The Virgin occupies almost the entire height of the panel and is set slightly to the left of the vertical axis. Her body faces the beholder while her head inclines gently towards the Child seated on her left arm. The gold ground surrounds the figures on all sides, and her shoulders and mantle extend nearly to the lateral edges of the panel. This close framing gives the image a monumental presence despite its moderate size and makes clear its function as a devotional icon.
The Virgin’s face is a long oval, modelled with soft transitions from olive-toned half-shadows to lighter flesh on the cheekbones, the bridge of the nose and the chin. Her almond-shaped eyes, set beneath finely drawn arched brows, are turned slightly towards the viewer rather than towards the Child. This gives her expression a pensive, melancholy gravity that is typical of icons of the Mother of God and anticipates the Passion. The nose is long and narrow, the mouth small and closed. The neck is marked by the soft creases conventional in Byzantine models. The face is framed by a red-brown veil worked with fine gold ornament, visible at the forehead, the temples and the throat.
The Virgin’s clothing is the most distinctive feature of the panel. Over the red-brown veil she wears a dark blue mantle drawn over her head and shoulders, bordered with gold and marked with a small gilded star near the crown. Across her shoulders and breast the mantle turns back to reveal a broad white lining. This pale band, softly modelled in creamy whites and greys, falls diagonally across her figure. A gold-edged strip of the mantle’s border then descends in an elegant, sinuous curve to the lower edge of the panel. The white turned-back lining is recognisably related to the Virgin of the Sterbini Diptych, whose face is likewise framed by a pale lining, and it is one of the formal links on which the attribution of the present panel rests.
The Christ Child sits upright on his mother’s arm, turning his head towards the beholder with an alert, slightly questioning glance. His round face, framed by tight golden curls, is modelled more softly and with greater naturalism than the Virgin’s. He wears a light, almost transparent tunic. A rose-coloured mantle, enriched with dense gold hatching in the Byzantine manner of chrysography, is wrapped around his lower body and legs. One small hand reaches up to grasp the edge of his mother’s veil near her throat, a familiar gesture that brings the two figures together. With the other he holds a small white bird against his chest.
The bird adds an affective and symbolic note familiar from Trecento devotional painting. Birds held by the Christ Child were widely understood as allusions to the soul and, in particular, to the future Passion. This was a reading suited to the meditative function of the image. The motif links the panel thematically to the Sterbini Diptych itself, where the Child reaches for a small bird offered by Saint Joseph. The Virgin’s hands support the Child and present him to the viewer. Her right hand rests across his body, its fingers long and slender, and a red cuff shows at her wrist. Her left hand, at the lower right, holds his foot.
The haloes are richly worked. The Virgin’s, wide and circular, is decorated with incised and punched foliate ornament standing out against the burnished gold, and the Child’s smaller halo repeats the pattern. Engraved lines run along the edges of the panel, framing the gold ground. The surface shows signs of age and wear. There are abrasions in the gold and in the blue of the mantle, small losses, and a network of fine cracks across the paint. These do not, however, compromise the legibility of the image or the quality of the modelling in the faces.
Stylistically, the panel shows the same fusion of Byzantine and Italian elements that defines the master’s oeuvre. The type of the Virgin, the melancholy gaze, the gold-worked veil, the chrysography of the Child’s mantle and the solemn frontality belong to the tradition of the icon. The softness of the modelling, the Gothic sinuosity of the falling border and the lively movement of the Child reflect Italian painting of the first half of the fourteenth century, with affinities to Venetian production around Paolo Veneziano. The panel is datable to the second quarter of the fourteenth century. It is a significant addition to the small group gathered around the Roman diptych, and a clear example of the hybrid devotional imagery that circulated in Venice and the Adriatic world.
Madonna and Child between Saints Agatha and Bartholomew
Left Panel: Saint Agatha
The left wing of the Messina triptych holds the half-length figure of Saint Agatha within a round-headed arch. The arch is framed by a moulded gilt border and borne on a twisted colonnette that separates it from the central panel. Today the triptych is in the Museo Regionale of Messina; it comes from the city’s church of San Gioacchino. Federico Zeri, in the 1992 catalogue of the museum written with Francesca Campagna Cicala, assigned the work to the Master of the Sterbini Diptych. It remains among the works most consistently associated with him, and it is still retained in the restricted reconstruction of his oeuvre reported by the restoration catalogue of 2018.
The saint is identified by a fragmentary vertical inscription in red letters on the gold ground at the left, of which only the initial letters survive. She is shown strictly frontally, in the manner of an icon, her body filling the field almost to the edges of the arch. This frontality, together with the absence of narrative context, gives the figure a hieratic, timeless quality. It suits her role as an intercessor standing at the side of the Virgin and Child.
Agatha’s head is covered by a pale veil that falls to her shoulders and frames her face. Unfortunately the face is among the most damaged areas of the panel. Abrasion and losses have reduced the modelling to a ghostly underlayer, from which only the general oval, the outline of the eyes and the long straight nose can still be read. Even in this state, the elongated proportions and the severe, symmetrical construction recall the Byzantine type of the female martyr.
The saint’s dress is the most striking element of the panel. Her robe, in a deep blue, is patterned with gold double-headed eagles arranged in regular rows across the garment. The double-headed eagle was an emblem of the Byzantine imperial house. It turns the martyr’s garment into a sumptuous imperial textile and evokes the costume of the Eastern court. The guide of the Messina museums names it as the emblem of the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Orthodox Church, and as a feature that complicates the philological analysis of the triptych.
Over the robe Agatha wears a red mantle, visible at her shoulders and along the sides of the figure, enriched with fine gold patterning. At her neck lies a broad jewelled collar rendered in gold. Together these details reinforce the image of the saint as a richly attired noblewoman. This accords with her legend as a high-born virgin of Catania martyred under Decius, whose cult was especially strong in Sicily.
In her right hand, raised before her breast, the saint holds a slender gold cross, the attribute shared by the martyrs, who bear witness to Christ through their death. The cross is drawn with a fine, precise line against the dark blue of the robe and stands out as one of the best-preserved passages of the panel. Below it the lower part of the figure is largely lost. Whatever further attribute the saint may have held there, if any, can no longer be determined.
The condition of the panel is poor. Extensive flaking and losses have exposed large areas of gesso and, in places, the wood of the support. Wormholes and abrasions run across the gold ground, and the halo, once surely tooled, is now barely legible. Above the arch, in the spandrel between this panel and the centre, a small roundel bears a black eagle on a gold field. This motif repeats, in emblematic form, the theme of the eagle on the saint’s garment.
Even in its damaged state, the figure of Saint Agatha shows the cultural duality characteristic of the Master of the Sterbini Diptych. The Byzantine character of the imperial costume, the frontal pose and the icon-like severity of the face combine with Latin lettering and with an arched, colonnetted frame of Western Gothic type. The museum’s guide describes the work as a fusion of Sienese culture and Byzantine echoes.
Central Panel: Madonna and Child
The central panel is taller than the wings and crowned by a wider round arch. It is the devotional focus of the triptych. It holds the half-length Virgin with the Child on her arm, a composition derived from the Byzantine Hodegetria and softened by the affectionate intimacy of the Eleousa type. The figures fill the field almost completely and stand out against a burnished gold ground. Twisted gilt colonnettes on either side carry the arch and separate the centre from the two saints. This visual hierarchy makes the Virgin the dominant presence, towards which the flanking saints are directed.
Fragmentary red letters in the gold ground identify the figures. At the left of the Virgin’s head the remains of the Marian monogram can be read. At the right, next to the Child, part of the Christological abbreviation “IHS X[PS]” survives. Greek abbreviation and Latin forms appear side by side here, as in the eponymous diptych in Rome. This epigraphic mixing is among the most consistent features of the master’s works.
The Virgin’s head is inclined towards the Child, while her gaze turns gently towards the beholder. Her face is a long oval with almond-shaped eyes, a long narrow nose and a small closed mouth, modelled in olive-toned shadows and soft lights. A vertical split in the wood and scattered losses cross the face and the upper part of the figure, but its quiet, melancholy gravity is still clearly perceptible. That expression, conventional in icons of the Mother of God, foreshadows the Passion.
The Virgin’s mantle is of deep blue, strewn with small gold stars and edged with a gold border, and is drawn over her head above a white veil with a red inner edge. Across her shoulders and breast the mantle turns back to reveal a broad white lining, which falls diagonally across the figure. This distinctive motif closely matches the Madonna formerly in the Clark collection and the white lining around the Virgin’s face in the Sterbini Diptych. It is one of the strongest formal links binding the Messina triptych to the rest of the group. At the lower left the gold-bordered hem of the mantle descends in an angular fold, and a red cuff is visible at the Virgin’s wrist.
The Christ Child sits on his mother’s left arm. He is turned towards her, but his face, framed by golden curls, looks out towards the viewer. He is bare-chested, his torso modelled with a soft, rounded naturalism, and a pink mantle is wrapped around his hips and thrown over one shoulder. With one hand he reaches towards the edge of the Virgin’s mantle at her throat, while the other is extended outward. This lively movement contrasts with the composed stillness of the mother.
The Virgin’s hands support and present the Child. Her right hand rests across his body at the level of his waist, its long fingers drawn with elegant precision. Her left hand, at the lower right, holds his leg. Both the arrangement of the hands and the pose of the Child correspond closely to the Madonna formerly in the Clark collection. The two works appear to be variants of one compositional formula, worked out in the master’s workshop and repeated, with variations, for different clients.
The condition of the central panel is, like that of the wings, compromised. A long vertical split runs through the left part of the panel, and a crack descends from the top of the arch. Flaking has removed paint and gold in many places, revealing the white gesso beneath, and wormholes are scattered across the surface. The tooled haloes have largely lost their legibility. The overall composition and the main passages of modelling nonetheless remain readable. The central panel sums up the hybrid language of the master. The type of the Virgin, the starred mantle, the monograms and the solemn frontality come from the icon. The softly modelled, playful Child, the Gothic articulation of the frame and the broad turned-back lining belong to Italian painting of the first half of the fourteenth century. The Enciclopedia dell’Arte Medievale records that the cultural definition of the Messina work was refined by the recognition of proto-Duccesque elements on Byzantinising foundations (Santucci, 1981), and places it in the Adriatic area and more specifically in the Veneto. The comparison with the Venetian production around Paolo Veneziano, which recent literature has stressed for the whole group, is equally relevant here.
Right Panel: Saint Bartholomew
The right wing matches the left in format. It is a round-arched field framed by a moulded gilt border and separated from the central panel by a twisted colonnette. Here the apostle Bartholomew appears in half length, set frontally against the gold ground. Above the arch, the small roundel in the spandrel between this wing and the centre is badly damaged. Its subject, perhaps a second emblem paired with the eagle on the opposite side, can no longer be identified with certainty.
The apostle is identified by an inscription in red letters, divided by his head into two parts: “S BARTO” at the left and “LOME…” at the right. The use of Latin, in a Gothic script consistent with the other inscriptions of the triptych, confirms that the work was intended for a Latin-rite setting. Bartholomew is depicted as a mature man with short, dark hair and a dark, full beard. His face is the most expressive of the three figures. The large, wide-open eyes, set beneath heavy brows, fix the beholder with an intense, almost severe stare. The long, straight nose and the strongly marked cheekbones give the head a forceful structure. This type of the apostle, with dark hair and beard and a commanding gaze, belongs to the Byzantine tradition of apostolic portraiture.
The apostle wears a pink mantle, broadly draped over his shoulders and falling across his body. Beneath it a blue-green tunic is visible on the left side of the figure. The folds of the mantle are modelled with soft gradations from pale highlights to deeper rose, and the lights along the ridges of the drapery are rendered with a fluency that recalls Italian practice. The palette of pink against blue-green echoes the colour harmonies of the Sterbini Diptych, where the same combination appears in the garments of the standing saints.
In his left hand, at the lower right of the panel, Bartholomew holds a white scroll, partly unrolled, the conventional attribute of the apostles as bearers of the Gospel message. His right hand is no longer clearly legible because of losses in the lower left of the field. No knife, his usual sign of martyrdom, is visible in the surviving paint. The figure is thus presented primarily as an apostle and witness, in keeping with the icon-like character of the whole ensemble.
The state of conservation is uneven. The face and the upper part of the mantle are relatively well preserved. Extensive losses, however, affect the beard, the chest and the lower part of the figure, where the paint has flaked away to reveal the gesso. The halo has lost most of its tooling. The gold ground is abraded and pitted with wormholes. As in the other panels, the twisted colonnettes and moulded arches of the frame have lost much of their gilding, exposing the preparation and the wood.
The relation between the two saints flanking the Virgin is significant for understanding the work’s origin and function. Agatha, a martyr of Catania, was among the most venerated saints of Sicily. Her presence, together with the provenance from a Messina church, may point to a Sicilian patron. Zeri proposed that the master was active chiefly in eastern Sicily. The Palazzo Venezia entry and the restoration catalogue prefer a Venetian origin for the master. Even so, the Messina triptych remains the clearest evidence for the circulation of his works, or of the painter himself, along the Mediterranean routes linking the Adriatic and Sicily.
Stylistically, the figure of Bartholomew confirms the master’s ability to fuse two traditions within a single image. The severe frontality, the staring eyes and the facial type derive from the Byzantine icon. The soft, luminous modelling of the drapery, the Latin inscription and the Gothic framing belong to Italian painting of the first half of the fourteenth century. The three panels together make the Messina triptych one of the most important works of the group. Despite its compromised condition, it shows the same hybrid language as the Sterbini Diptych in a larger and more public format.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints (Polesden Lacey Triptych)
Left Panel
The left wing of the Polesden Lacey Triptych is one of two hinged leaves which, as the National Trust entry notes, were designed to close over the central panel. Closing them protected the images when the triptych was not in use and made the object portable. Like its counterpart on the right, the wing is a tall, narrow panel crowned by a gable and divided internally into three fields set one above another. The arrangement echoes the central panel and turns the open triptych into a coherent, densely populated image of the celestial court. The whole is painted in tempera on a continuous gold ground, with a raised integral frame.
The gable holds the Angel of the Annunciation, the first half of an Annunciation completed by the Virgin in the corresponding gable of the right wing. Gabriel strides forward on a narrow strip of green ground, his wings spread in red and blue. He wears a red mantle over a blue tunic, and his right hand is raised in the gesture of announcement and blessing. A red inscription, now only partly legible, runs along the gold above him. Dividing the Annunciation between the two outer gables was common in Italian portable altarpieces. When the wings were open, the protagonists faced each other across the Crucifixion, binding the Incarnation to the Passion.
Below the gable, the upper part of the middle field forms a lunette, in which a segment of blue sky frames the winged lion of Saint Mark. Painted in vivid red, it holds a book. Its pendant on the right wing is a second evangelist symbol, and two further symbols appear in the spandrels of the central panel. These symbols place the saints below beneath the authority of the Gospels and give the triptych a cosmic, liturgical frame.
The main field of the wing presents three standing saints, identified by red inscriptions on the gold. At the centre stands the Archangel Michael, winged and clad in armour, whose orange cuirass and short military skirt are rendered with careful attention to decorative detail. He raises a sword in his right hand, an image of the heavenly warrior and protector of the faithful. The armoured type of Michael is Byzantine in origin and widely diffused in Italy. Its presence emphasises the protective, apotropaic function of an image made for personal devotion.
Michael is flanked by Saints Cosmas and Damian, the physician martyrs venerated in both East and West as the “unmercenary” healers. Both are bearded men shown frontally, one in a pink mantle over a blue tunic, the other in a green mantle, and they carry small objects that appear to be a box and a book. These are consistent with their attributes as doctors. Their inclusion, unusual in so small a selection of saints, may reflect a particular devotional concern of the patron, perhaps linked to health or to the medical profession. The documents give no evidence on this point.
The lowest field is given to Saint George slaying the dragon, the only fully narrative episode of the wing. The saint, in armour and a red cloak that billows behind him, rides a white horse rearing in a rocky landscape. He thrusts his lance downward into the dragon, which writhes at the lower left of the field. The scene is compact and energetic, with the diagonal of the lance and the curve of the horse’s body creating a dynamic counterpoint to the static figures above. The iconography of the mounted George is again of Byzantine derivation, and was widely adopted in the West by the fourteenth century.
The choice of saints on this wing is weighted towards figures venerated in the Greek East: Michael, Cosmas and Damian, and George. This has been observed in the literature as one of the triptych’s distinctive features. The National Trust also reports, with Bacci, that all the saints depicted were venerated in Venice. On this argument, their selection falls within the range of devotions available to a Venetian patron rather than requiring an Eastern or Neapolitan commission. Venice’s commercial and political ties with the Byzantine world made such a mixture of Eastern and Western cults especially natural.
The wing is well preserved, with bright colours, legible inscriptions and crisp drawing, though there is some wear on the gold and frame. Its style shows the hybrid language the triptych shares with the Sterbini Diptych in Rome. The Latin inscriptions, the Gothic gable and the narrative vivacity of the George scene belong to Italian practice. The facial types, the Eastern saints and the armoured archangel recall Byzantine models.
Central Panel
The central panel is wider and taller than the wings and is crowned by the principal gable. It is the theological and visual core of the triptych. Its structure has three zones. At the top is the Crucifixion. The main field holds the enthroned Virgin and Child, framed by an arch and surrounded by angels and the princes of the apostles. A lower register holds a row of standing saints. The vertical axis thus runs from the sacrifice of Christ, through the Virgin as Throne of Wisdom, to the community of saints who intercede with her. The arrangement condenses the logic of private devotion within a small, portable object.
The gable shows Christ crucified on a red cross with a titulus inscribed in red letters. His pale body hangs in a gentle curve, his head inclined and a white loincloth knotted at the hips. On the left stands the Virgin, wrapped in a dark blue mantle, her hands raised to her face in grief. On the right stands Saint John in a red mantle over a blue tunic, in a similar gesture of mourning. At the foot of the cross Mary Magdalene, in brilliant red, kneels and embraces the wood. The composition closely recalls the Crucifixion of the Sterbini Diptych, where the same three mourners are disposed in the same way. It is one of the most direct links between the two works.
The main field is framed by an arch whose spandrels hold two further evangelist symbols, painted against arcs of blue sky. The National Trust names the evangelists John and Luke in the squinches. Together with the lion of Mark on the left wing and the angel of Matthew on the right, they complete the cycle of the four living creatures. Their placement around the throne recalls the vision of Christ in majesty surrounded by the creatures of the Apocalypse. Here that vision is transferred to the image of the Virgin and Child.
At the centre the Virgin sits on a white marble throne with a high back, set against a red cloth of honour patterned with gold. She wears a dark blue mantle that envelops her entirely, edged with gold. Her head is gently inclined, and her face has the long oval, almond eyes and narrow nose characteristic of the master’s Madonnas. The Child sits on her left knee, dressed in a rose tunic and a blue mantle, turning towards the beholder. The throne is shown in a simple but coherent spatial construction, with steps and sides receding in depth. This reflects the Italian interest in pictorial space that tempers the Byzantine character of the figures.
Four angels stand behind the throne, two on each side, their heads in a staggered arrangement that suggests depth. In front of them, at the sides of the throne, stand the apostles Peter and Paul. On the left, Peter, with white hair and beard, wears an ochre mantle. On the right, Paul, with his characteristic high forehead and dark pointed beard, wears a pink mantle over a blue tunic and holds a book. The two apostles were patrons of the Roman Church and pillars of the universal Church. Their presence gives the image an ecclesial dimension, presenting the Virgin enthroned as the centre of the community of the faithful.
The lower register contains four standing figures, each identified by a red inscription on the gold. From left to right they are a woman in a black mantle, a woman in a red mantle, a figure in the black veil and dark red mantle of a nun, and a crowned figure in a richly patterned red robe with jewelled borders. The National Trust catalogue names the four as Saints Lucy of Syracuse and Margaret of Antioch, Empress Theodora and Saint Catherine, and its text elsewhere singles out Saint Theodosia among the saints more commonly associated with Constantinople than with the West. The published sources do not say which name belongs to which figure, and the inscriptions are only partly legible in reproduction. The mixture of Western and Eastern figures is clear.
The panel shows great technical refinement. It has a burnished gold ground, fine red lettering, brilliant pigments and miniaturist precision in details such as the patterning of the cloth of honour and the jewelled robe of the crowned figure. Its state of preservation appears good, with legible faces and vivid colours. According to the National Trust, the triptych has gabled panels with crocketed edges. This Gothic framing system, of Italian origin, contrasts with the icon-like treatment of the faces and the strongly Byzantine repertoire of saints.
Within the small group gathered around the Master of the Sterbini Diptych, the Polesden Lacey Triptych is the most complex and ambitious work. The National Trust catalogues it as Italo-Byzantine School. Corrie connected it with the Roman diptych in 2005 and 2006 as the work of a single travelling Greek painter, and the museum catalogue of the diptych accepts the attribution to the same hand.
Right Panel
The right wing mirrors the left in structure: a tall gabled panel divided into three fields on a continuous gold ground. When the triptych was open, its imagery answered that of the left wing across the central panel. The Virgin Annunciate faced the Angel Gabriel, a second evangelist symbol balanced the lion of Saint Mark, and a group of saints and a final register of mendicant saints corresponded to Saint Michael’s group and Saint George. In the gable, the Virgin Annunciate stands before a small red building with a sloping roof, shown in simple perspective, on a strip of green ground. She wears a dark blue mantle over her head and shoulders. With one hand raised to her breast in a gesture of humility and acceptance, she holds a red book in the other. The book refers to her reading of the prophecy of Isaiah at the moment of the Annunciation. A red inscription, partly legible, runs along the gold above her. The architectural setting, however summary, introduces an Italian concern with the spatial definition of narrative scenes.
In the lunette below, a segment of blue sky frames a winged figure holding a book, which the National Trust names as the angel of Saint Matthew.
The main field holds three standing saints, identified by red inscriptions. At the centre stands Saint John the Baptist, gaunt and long-haired, in a dark hair garment. He holds an unrolled scroll, alluding to his proclamation of the Lamb of God. On the left stands Saint Nicholas of Myra, bearded and white-haired, wearing the vestments of a bishop with a white pallium marked with crosses and holding a red book. Nicholas was among the most venerated saints of both East and West.
On the right stands a hooded, long-bearded saint in a red mantle over a dark garment, holding a book, whom the National Trust identifies as Saint Anthony Abbot, the father of monasticism. The trio joins the precursor of Christ, the great bishop-saint of the Greek East and a representative of the ascetic tradition.
The lowest field holds the three mendicant saints that give the right wing its specific Western and contemporary character. At the centre, Saint Dominic3, founder of the Order of Preachers, wears his white habit and black cappa and holds a lily, the symbol of purity. On the left stands Saint Francis in the brown habit of the Friars Minor, holding a book. On the right stands Saint Louis of Toulouse, youthful and beardless. He wears a bishop’s mitre and holds a crozier over the habit of the Franciscan Order, which he had entered after renouncing his royal rights.
Saint Louis is the most significant figure for the work’s chronology and context. A member of the Angevin dynasty, he was canonised in 1317. His presence with a halo means the triptych was painted after that date, exactly as with the Sterbini Diptych, where he likewise appears beside Saint Francis. The pairing of Dominic and Francis, founders of the two great mendicant orders, alongside the Franciscan bishop of royal blood suggests a patron devoted to the mendicant spirituality of the early fourteenth century. Angevin patronage has been proposed by Corrie, and the restoration catalogue of 2018 does not accept it. The right wing completes the programme of the triptych and confirms its distinctive balance. Eastern saints and Byzantine facial types meet the most up-to-date Western devotions, those of the mendicant orders and of a recently canonised saint. The Gothic gable, the Latin inscriptions and the spatial setting of the Annunciation are Italian. The severity of the faces, the brilliant gold and the choice of Eastern saints belong to the Byzantine world. Small enough to be carried and closed, the Polesden Lacey Triptych is a portable compendium of Mediterranean devotion. It is the most complete surviving expression of the hybrid art of the Master of the Sterbini Diptych.
Madonna and Child, Assisi, Perkins Collection
This small panel belongs to the collection of Frederick Mason Perkins, the American-born connoisseur who lived in Assisi, and is now in the Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco, where the Fondazione Zeri locates it together with the Perkins collection. The Fondazione Zeri photo archive files the panel under the Master of the Sterbini Diptych and dates it to 1330–1340, citing Zeri’s catalogue of the Perkins collection of 1988 (p. 82, no. 27). The Palazzo Venezia entry lists it among the works of the master, but the restricted reconstruction of the corpus reported in the 2018 restoration catalogue, that of Bacci in 2017, does not retain it, so the attribution remains a matter of debate.
The composition follows the established type of the half-length Virgin holding the Child on her arm. It derives from the Byzantine Hodegetria and is inflected by the tenderness of the Eleousa. The Virgin occupies almost the whole picture field within a raised integral frame. She is turned slightly to the left, and her head inclines towards the Child, whom she holds on her left arm. Faint traces of red lettering in the upper corners of the gold ground appear to belong to the Greek monograms of the Mother of God, a feature consistent with the epigraphic practice of the other works in the group.
The Virgin’s face is a long, pale oval, modelled with a cool greenish underlayer that shows through in the half-shadows of the cheeks, jaw and neck. This handling recalls the verdaccio grounds of Italian panel painting and the olive-toned flesh of Byzantine icons. Her almond-shaped eyes, beneath finely arched brows, are turned towards the beholder with a grave, slightly melancholy expression. The nose is long and narrow, the mouth small and closed, and the neck marked by soft creases. A network of fine craquelure runs across the face. It does not, however, impair the delicacy of the modelling or the intensity of the gaze.
The Virgin’s clothing follows a formula closely shared with other works associated with the master. Over a white headcloth and a veil edged in red, she wears a deep blue-black mantle strewn with gold eight-pointed stars and small clusters of dots, with an embroidered gold band over the forehead. Across her shoulders and breast the mantle turns back to reveal a broad white lining. This lining falls diagonally across the figure and encloses the face in a luminous frame. On the left, a gold-bordered hem descends in an angular fold, and red sleeves are visible at both wrists. The white turned-back lining, the starred mantle and the gold-bordered hem correspond closely to the Madonna formerly in the Clark collection and to the central panel of the Messina triptych. These parallels form the basis of the panel’s association with the group.
The Christ Child sits upright on his mother’s arm, turning his head to look up into her face. His round features, framed by short auburn curls, are modelled with a soft naturalism that contrasts with the more severe, icon-like treatment of the Virgin. He wears an olive-green tunic with an embroidered gold collar and a red mantle sprinkled with small gold sprigs, wrapped around his lower body and legs. One small bare foot emerges from the drapery at the lower left. The exchange of glances between mother and child gives the image an intimate, affective character, in keeping with fourteenth-century devotional sensibility.
The Child raises one hand towards his mother’s veil near her throat, a familiar gesture that binds the two figures together. In the other he holds a rolled scroll, the attribute of the Logos, the incarnate Word who brings the divine law. The scroll replaces the small bird that the Child holds in the Clark Madonna, giving this version a more doctrinal emphasis. The Virgin’s hands present and support him. Her right hand rests across his body with long, slender fingers, and her left hand supports him from below at the lower right. The arrangement corresponds closely to the other half-length Madonnas of the group.
The gold ground is of particular richness. Its surface around the figures is filled with large incised foliate motifs, palmettes and scrolling tendrils that stand out in relief against the burnished gold, especially in the upper corners and at the sides. The haloes are worked with concentric bands and incised foliate ornament. The Virgin’s halo is wide and luminous, and the Child’s smaller halo overlaps it. This elaborate decoration of the gold, more extensive than in the other panels of the group, gives the small image an exceptional preciousness. It may point to a workshop variation or to the expectations of a particular patron. The panel’s state shows craquelure across the paint, scattered wormholes and wear on the gilding of the frame.
In style, the panel shows the fusion of Byzantine and Italian elements characteristic of the group gathered around the Sterbini Diptych. The Greek monograms, the starred mantle, the grave expression and the icon-like frontality of the Virgin belong to the tradition of the icon. The soft modelling, the lively relationship between mother and child, the rich incised ornament of the gold and the Gothic movement of the drapery reflect Italian painting of the second quarter of the fourteenth century, with affinities to the Venetian circle of Paolo Veneziano. Whether by the master himself or by a closely related hand, the Assisi Madonna is a refined example of the hybrid devotional imagery that circulated in the Venetian and Adriatic world.
Stylistic Sources and Artistic Culture
The fascination of the master lies in a combination that early critics found almost disconcerting. Some features belong to the language of Palaiologan icon painting: the modelling of the faces, the gold-saturated surface, the integral frame and the Greek monograms. Others speak the idiom of Italian devotional painting: the Latin inscriptions, the choice of Western saints, the narrative Stigmatisation, the tender anecdote of Joseph’s robin and the Gothic lettering.
The National Trust entry on the Polesden Lacey triptych makes the same distinction in material terms. The format, the frame, the Latin inscriptions, the pigments and the drapery folds follow contemporary Italian practice. The treatment of the faces derives from Eastern Orthodox tradition.
This double character explains why the Sterbini diptych opened the catalogue of the Italo-Byzantine exhibition at Grottaferrata in 1905, as an exemplary synthesis of the two figurative worlds. Antonio Muñoz, in his book on the exhibition of 1906, nevertheless placed it generically at the end of the thirteenth century.
Later commentators, however, read the balance differently, and the early literature looked chiefly to central Italy. In 1905 Adolfo Venturi published the diptych as attributed to Cimabue and reported Jean Paul Richter’s hypothesis of an origin in the circle of Duccio; the following year, in his catalogue of the Galleria Sterbini, he classified the paintings, according to the restoration catalogue, as the work of a Tuscan author of the first half of the Trecento, whereas the Fondazione Zeri files the same catalogue under the school of Cimabue. Pietro Toesca, in 1927, proposed to restrict the author to a Roman milieu. Roberto Longhi, in 1953, held that the work was “certainly to be ascribed to a Sienese school”. Viktor Lazarev, on the contrary, placed it in 1951 fully within Greek culture with Western influences, and the Palazzo Venezia entry renders his judgement as Byzantine culture “certainly present, albeit mediated by Western compositional, iconographic, and stylistic concerns”. Comparisons with Paolo Veneziano, the dominant painter of the lagoon in the first half of the century, have since made the Venetian reading the most convincing.
The Palazzo Venezia entry reports that Bacci explained the “puzzling admixture of Italian and Byzantine elements” of the painting by its intentional “visual hybridity”, a notion that would also account for the deliberate use of mixed stylistic models. On this reading the mixture is a choice and not a sign of indecision. Bacci developed the argument in a series of studies cited by the museum and by the National Trust: “Some Thoughts on Greco-Venetian Artistic Interactions in Fourteenth and Early-Fifteenth Centuries” (2013), “Veneto-Byzantine ‘hybrids’: towards a Reassessment” (Studies in Iconography, 2014) and “Un ibrido di successo: il ‘dittico Sterbini’, la Madonna ‘dal risvolto bianco’ e la Vergine Konevskaja” (2017, pp. 469–483). The last is also the study to which the restoration catalogue attributes the reduction of the corpus to four works.
Geographical Origin and the Attributional Debate
No question in the literature on the master has been more persistent than that of where he worked. The restoration catalogue states that the author has always oscillated between an Eastern master or workshop with Gothic influences and, conversely, an Italian master influenced by the Greek manner.
The decisive turn came in 1949. Garrison included the diptych (no. 247) in his illustrated index of Italian Romanesque panel painting and grouped it with related panels in what he called the “Adriatic” group C. The Palazzo Venezia entry credits him with being the first to emphasise the painter’s Adriatic culture, and of the Clark Madonna he wrote “probably Venetian”. Subsequent proposals moved along the shores of the Mediterranean. Mojmír Frinta, in “Searching for an Adriatic Painting Workshop with Byzantine Connection” (Zograf, 1987), suggested that the master was possibly active on the Dalmatian coast. Zeri, in the 1992 catalogue of the Museo Regionale of Messina, accepted the general possibility of an Adriatic production but proposed a workshop on the eastern coast of Sicily, where at Messina the early Aragonese rulers promoted a figurative culture open to Eastern influences. A third direction was opened by Corrie, who wrote on the Polesden Lacey triptych in 2005 (“The Polesden Lacey Triptych and the Presence of Greek Painters in Italy”) and again in “The Polesden Lacey Triptych and the Sterbini Diptych: A Greek Painter between East and West” (Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies, 2006). She linked the triptych and the diptych to a single travelling Greek painter, and the National Trust reports that she proposed the triptych as painted for the royal court of Naples, in Rome, Siena or Naples itself.
Angevin Naples enters the discussion only through this proposal, and it should be treated with caution. Its iconographic basis is evident, since Louis of Toulouse belonged to the Angevin dynasty and his cult was closely associated with it. But the 2018 restoration catalogue states explicitly that the suggestion of Neapolitan patronage, which it attributes to Corrie 2005, “does not seem acceptable”. It adds that stylistic comparisons with the lagoon culture of Paolo Veneziano make the Venetian hypothesis the most convincing, and that the documented coexistence of Constantinopolitan and Venetian artists on Crete makes Greek workshops in Venice highly probable.
The restoration catalogue adds an argument from hagiography: the conviction that the Polesden Lacey altarpiece is by the hand of the diptych allows the hypothesis of a Venetian production, because of the presence in the English panel of Saint Theodosia, venerated exclusively in the lagoon. The National Trust, citing Bacci, reports that all the saints of the triptych were venerated in Venice and regards it as the work of a Greek painter working in Venice according to the precise directions of a Venetian patron.
The present museum position follows this line. The diptych was most likely produced in Venice, by a painter who was most likely an itinerant artist of Greek origin. The museum describes Venice as a city receptive both to Eastern contributions and to the spatial interests of contemporary Italian art.
Conclusion
The anonymous master named after the Sterbini diptych remains a figure defined more by the questions he raises than by the certainties he affords. No document identifies him and no signature survives. What can be said about him rests on a small group of devotional panels and on the reading of their forms, materials and iconography.
The eponymous diptych offers an unusually coherent statement of his culture. Conceived for private devotion, it pairs the Incarnation with the Passion and its echo in the life of Saint Francis, and Saint Louis of Toulouse, canonised in 1317, furnishes its only secure terminus post quem. The 2018 technical findings show a workshop that combined an icon-like structure with decorative procedures, such as the scraped red glaze over gold in Saint Lawrence, that the restorers associated with Venetian practice.
The long succession of proposals, from central Italy, Cimabue, Duccio and Rome to Dalmatia, eastern Sicily and the Angevin court, measures how hybrid the master’s language is. The Venetian hypothesis has the strongest support, from the comparison with Paolo Veneziano, the technical parallels and the Venetian cults of the Polesden Lacey saints. The Neapolitan patronage proposed by Corrie is not accepted by the restoration catalogue. Bacci’s reading of the mixture as a deliberate “visual hybridity” fits Venice as a port open to both worlds. The corpus, however, is as unstable as the attribution: one work gives the name, four are retained by the most recent reduction, and a fifth remains on the margin.
The master is best understood as a Greek painter active in a Latin milieu, most probably in Venice in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, whose small and refined works document the encounter between two figurative cultures.