The Reconstruction of an Altarpiece by Andrea Vanni

* I wish to thank Professor Millard Meiss, whose suggestions and criticisms made this Note possible.

Abstract

At the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Fogg Museum, Harvard University, are five panels which at one time formed part of a major altarpiece by the Sienese painter Andrea Vanni. Tancred Borenius was the first to report the probable relationship of a portion of this material, St. Peter and St. Paul in Boston (Fig. 1) and St. John the Apostle (Fig. 2), which was recently given by Dr. Lillian Malcove to the Fogg Museum.¹ Several years ago Millard Meiss suggested that there might be added to this nucleus the two panels of the Annunciation in the Fogg Museum (Fig. 3) and the now oval-shaped Madonna and Child in S. Donato, Siena (Fig. 4). The latter, he thought, was the probable central panel of the altarpiece.² The purpose of this study is to substantiate the opinions of Messrs. Borenius and Meiss, to add three other small panels to the polyptych, and to show that originally the altarpiece was housed in the monastery of S. Eugenio at Siena.