This monumental figure of St. John the Evangelist was painted between 1454 and 1469 by Piero della Francesca. Of the seven paintings by this artist in American collections, the Frick is home to four of them.
The panel showing a single saint comes from an altarpiece painted for the high altar of the Augustinian church in Borgo San Sepolcro, Piero’s hometown in the upper Tiber valley, in central Italy. The altarpiece featured four saints, which are now divided among museums around the world: a Saint Augustine in Lisbon, a Saint Michael in London, and a Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Milan. The two pairs of saints originally flanked a now-lost central compartment, depicting either an enthroned Virgin and Child or the Coronation of the Virgin. In the lower left corner of the St. John panel, you can still see the porphyry step of the Virgin’s throne.
St. John appears here majestically clad in a crimson toga-like garment, as much enveloped in it as he is in his reading. John is the author of one of the four Gospels and of the last book of the New Testament: the Book of Revelation (or the Apocalypse). His robe is decorated with jewels and pearls and gold filigree. Yet, for all this lavish ornamentation, the saint is barefoot.
The three other works by Piero and his workshop in this room are from the same altarpiece. The small Crucifixion formed part of the base of the altarpiece and was bequeathed to the Frick by John D. Rockefeller Jr. On each side of St. John are two additional panels. They are half-length depictions of a nun and monk wearing the dark habits of the Augustinian order, and they are possibly Saint Monica (the mother of Saint Augustine) and the Blessed Angelo Scarpetti, a much venerated figure in Borgo San Sepolcro, whose body was buried in the church of Sant’Agostino.
The Crucifixion
It has been proposed that this Crucifixion, like two panels also in The Frick Collection portraying an Augustinian monk and nun, originally formed a part of Piero’s S. Agostino altarpiece. The first known reference to The Crucifixion is found in a seventeenth-century document listing paintings in a collection at Borgo Sansepolcro. The Crucifixion is described there in considerable detail, together with three other subjects: a Flagellation, a Deposition, and a Resurrection, all three now lost. The writer did not claim that these panels came from the S. Agostino altarpiece, although in the same collection were four larger panels of standing saints that he specified did come from the high altar of S. Agostino. While he names only St. Michael and St. Augustine correctly, these larger panels may be identified with the four saints discussed in the entry on Piero’s St. John.
The seventeenth-century record does not, therefore, resolve the problem of whether or not The Crucifixion belonged to the same altarpiece. Piero did, after all, paint other works for his native town, which might have had predellas incorporating such scenes. The question of possible workshop participation in painting The Crucifixion is also an unresolved issue. Some scholars argue that an assistant was responsible for the execution, although certain passages of this small yet monumental composition are painted with great refinement.
Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
High altar Sant'Agostino (now Santa Chiara), Borgo San Sepolcro, 1469–1554; probably Sant'Agostino (before 1555 Pieve di Santa Maria), Borgo San Sepolcro, 1555; Luca and Francesco Ducci, Borgo San Selpolcro, 1680; Doria Family, Milan; Marcantonio Colonna (1844–1912), Princes of Paliano; art market, Florence, 1910–15; sold by Luigi Grassi, Florence to Duveen Brothers (£5,000), September 1915; Carl W. Hamilton, New York, 1916 ($65,000); his sale Anderson Galleries, New York, 8 May 1929, lot 1, bought by Duveen Brothers ($375,000); John D. Rockefeller Jr., New York, 1929; donated to The Frick Collection, New York, 1961 (on deposit at Princeton University Art Museum until 1986).
Source: Piero della Francesca in America: From Sansepolcro to the East Coast. New York: The Frick Collection, 2013.
