The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation

Provenance

Marchese Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari [1841-1908], Siena, by 1904;[1] his heirs; (Alberto Riccoboni, Italy), by 1947 or 1948;[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold 1948 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] Robert Langton Douglas (“The Exhibition of Early Art in Siena,” _The Nineteenth Century and After_ 57 [1904]: 763; James Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, _A History of Painting in Italy_, ed. Robert Langton Douglas, 6 vols., London, 1903-1914: 3(1908): 131 n. 3) and F. Mason Perkins (“Dipinti senesi sconosciuti o inediti,” _Rassegna d’Arte antica e moderna_ 1 (1914): 99) confirm his ownership. Various authors, through Bernard Berenson (_Pitture italiane del Rinascimento_, Milan, 1936: 159), continued to mention that the painting belonged to the Chigi Zondadari family. [2] The dealer Alberto Riccoboni (_Quattrocento Pitture Inedite_, exh. cat., Venice, 1947: 5) gives no ownership; presumably the painting still belonged to the Chigi Zondadari family at the time and was only entrusted to Riccoboni for sale in the following year. [3] The Kress Foundation made an offer to Contini Bonacossi on 7 June 1948 for a group of twenty-eight paintings, including this one; the offer was accepted on 11 July 1948 (see copies of correspondence in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2077).

The Assumption of the Virgin with Busts of the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin of the Annunciation

Fei, Paolo di Giovanni

c. 1400/1405

Accession Number

1961.9.71

Medium

tempera on panel

Dimensions

painted surface: 66.5 × 38.1 cm (26 3/16 × 15 in.) | overall: 79.8 × 51 cm (31 7/16 × 20 1/16 in.)

Classification

Painting

Museum

National Gallery of Art

Washington, D.C., United States

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection