RELIGIOUS ART BY THE OLD MASTER PAINTERS - Paintings from the Bible! Antonio di Pietro THE CRUCIFIXION WITH SAINTS MARY, JOHN AND MARY MAGDELENE AND A DONOR

Antonio di Pietro

ACTIVE IN PADUA 1405 - 1434

THE CRUCIFIXION WITH SAINTS MARY, JOHN AND MARY MAGDELENE AND A DONOR; THE ANNUNCIATION IN THE SPANDRELS ABOVE  

tempera on panel, gold ground

76.5 by 52.5cm.; 30 3/4  by 21 in.

Antonio di Pietro was a rare Gothic artist from Verona active predominantly in Padua. His paintings are often generically attributed to the circle of his uncle, the celebrated Altichiero, Verona's leading painter of the fourteenth century, but also to Jacopo Avanzi, with whom the present work was in the past associated. 
Professor Andrea De Marchi dates this intriguing panel to around 1410 and proposes convincingly that it is the central section of a dismembered polyptych whose original measurement would have been a little more than 80 by 110 cm. The six lateral panels, of approximately 27 by 27 cm., were stacked vertically in two groups of three, and depict episodes from the Passion. These were sold as three pairs in London, Christie's, 23 June 1967, as North Italian School, circa 1350. The panel which depicts the Noli Me Tangere is now in the Museo Civico Amedeo Lia in La Spezia as by the circle of Altichiero and another is in a private collection in Verona.