The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul, c. 1430/1435

The Meeting of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul, c. 1430/1435

Dimensions :
painted surface: 46.5 x 33.4 cm (18 5/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
overall: 47 x 33.6 cm (18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in.)
framed: 61.6 x 125.4 x 7.6 cm (24 1/4 x 49 3/8 x 3 in.)

Artist: Master of the Osservanza (painter) Sienese, active late 1420s – early 1440s

Provenance : Granville Edward Harcourt Vernon [1816-1861], Grove Hall, Nottinghamshire; by inheritance to his wife, Lady Selina Vernon [later Lady Hervey], Grove Hall, Nottinghamshire;[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 17-18 June 1864, 2nd day, no. 270, as Two Monks embracing at the Foot of a Mountain by P. Laurenti); purchased by Anthony;[2] Wentworth Blackett Beaumont, 1st baron Allendale [1829-1907], London; by inheritance to his son, Wentworth Canning Blackett Beaumont, 1st viscount and 2nd baron Allendale [1860-1923], London; by inheritance to his son, Wentworth Henry Canning Beaumont, 2nd viscount and 3rd baron Allendale [1890-1956], London;[3] sold 1937 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold June 1938 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

[1] See Ellis Waterhouse, “Sassetta and the Legend of St. Anthony Abbot,” The Burlington Magazine (September 1931): 113, note 7; and a letter of 15 December 1964 from Ellis Waterhouse to the Kress Foundation (copy in NGA curatorial files), discussed in Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:319 n. 2. According to Algernon Graves (A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912, 5 vols., London, 1913-1915: 1:23, 439; 2:768, 883; 3:995, 1247), Harcourt Vernon allowed various early Italian pictures in his collection to be exhibited as early as 1857, at the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester.

[2] Shapley 1979, 1:319. According to Ellis Waterhouse’s 1964 letter (see note 1), the painting “was bought by the dealer Anthony for 1.2 Pounds. It was probably bought by W.B. Beaumont…soon after.”

[3] Ellis Waterhouse, in a letter of 4 March 1965 (in NGA curatorial files) to Fern Rusk Shapley, noted that he had “discovered” the painting “in a bathroom” on 29 October 1930. He adds that “the picture was never, I fancy, in Northumberland [Bretton Hall, Viscount Allendale’s country estate], but in London, at 144 Piccadilly…” The year of the panel’s acquisition by Duveen is given in the same letter.