Note on the Punched Decoration of Two Early Painted Panels at the Fogg Art Museum: St. Dominic and the Crucifixion

Abstract

My observation on the first panel aims to carry one step further a revealing discussion, “A Sienese St. Dominic Modernized Twice in the Thirteenth Century,” recently published in The Art Bulletin.¹ would like to extend its title by the following: “and Again in the Early Fourteenth Century in the Shop of Ugolino di Nerio.” My proposal that the di Nerio shop added to the St. Dominic is based on the evidence of its punched decoration which struck Mr. George Stout years ago as unusual.² The authors of the recent article state: “The St. Dominic was clearly the object of special attention: it even received a new punched halo in the second quarter of the fourteenth century.” This date is essentially correct because the punched decoration by means of large, fancy, “complex” profiles of stamping tools does not seem to antedate 1320. Guido da Siena, to whom the painting (or more precisely one stage of it) is attributed by the Fogg, preferred to decorate his haloes with freehand engraved patterns, or, at the most, with tiny inconspicuous rosette punches and simple tools with oblong tapering profiles which compose larger rosettes such as those on Altarpiece No. 7 in the Siena Pinacoteca.