The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin

Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro)
Italian (Florentine), active by 1417, died 1455
A Bishop Saint
Tempera on wood, gold ground
6/4 x 6 /8 in. (I 5.9 x I 5.6 cm); diameter of painted tondo,
57/8 in. (I4.9 cm)
Bequest of Lucy G. Moses, 1990
1991.z7.2
This tondo of a bishop saint, the first certain work by Fra
Angelico to enter the Museum, is reputed to have come from
the church of San Domenico at Fiesole, where the artist served
his novitiate. In all likelihood it is from the frame of an early
Gothic polyptych that is still in the church, although greatly
transformed by Lorenzo di Credi in the early sixteenth century.
About 1827 the predella panels-much admired by Vasari in
568-were sold to the Prussian consul in Rome; they are
now in the National Gallery, London. Perhaps at the same
time a series of saints decorating the frame were excised and
sold. These include two standing saints in the Musee Conde,
Chantilly, a damaged tondo in the National Gallery, London,
and the Museum's bishop saint.
The mid-I4zos in Florence was a time of enormous change.
Masaccio began the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel in 1425,
and the same year Ghiberti turned his attention to the second
set of bronze doors, the so-called Gates of Paradise, for the
Florence Baptistry. It is Ghiberti's shadow that falls across Fra
Angelico's early work, including this exquisitely wrought figure
of a bishop saint, whose right hand, raised in blessing, is
conceived like one of Ghiberti's elegant bronzes.
KC
Provenance: Probably San Domenico, Fiesole.
Ex coll.: Possibly Samuel Rogers, London (before I856); Canon Sutton,
London; [Langton Douglas, London, before i9z8]; Mr. and Mrs.
Henry L. Moses, New York (by I9z8-6i); Lucy G. Moses, New York
(1961 -90).
Bibliography: Martin Davies, National Gallery, London: The Earlier
Italian Schools, London, i96i, pp. 31-3z; John Pope-Hennessy, Fra
Angelico, New York, I974, p. 227; Umberto Baldini, "Contributi
al'Angelico: il trittico di San Domenico di Fiesole e qualche altra
aggiunta," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Ugo Procacci,
Milan, I977, pp. 236-245.
Peter Paul Rubens
Flemish, 1577-1640
A Forest at Dawn with a Deer Hunt
Oil on wood
z4'/z 3 5 / in. (6z.2x 90.z cm)
Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation, Mrs. Charles Wrightsman,
Michel David-Weill, The Dillon Fund, Henry J. and Drue Heinz
Foundation, Lola Kramarsky, Annette de la Renta, Mr. and Mrs.
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, The Vincent Astor Foundation and The
Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Gifts; The Lesley and Emma Sheafer
Collection, Bequest of Emma A. Sheafer, and Theodore M. Davis
Collection, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, by exchange; Gift of
George R. Hann, in memory of his mother, Annie Sykes Hann,
by exchange; Gifts of George A. Hearn, George Blumenthal,
George H. and Helen M. Richard and Mrs. George A. Stern and
Bequests of Helen Hay Whitney and John Henry Abegg and
Anonymous Bequest, by exchange; supplemented by gifts and
funds from friends of the Museum, i990
I990.196
This superb landscape of about I635 rounds out the finest
group of Rubens paintings in America: with twelve works by
Rubens, The Feast of Acheloiis by Rubens and Jan Brueghel
the Elder, and ten pictures either from Rubens's workshop or
copied after him, a landscape by Rubens has long been considered
one of the most desired acquisitions for the Dutch and
Flemish collection. A Forest at Dawn is the first finished
landscape by Rubens in this hemisphere and is probably the
last to be available for decades.
For nearly zoo years this picture was in the collection of
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn (1772-1840) and his descendants,
at Llangedwyn Hall, Wales. Previously it was in the Lansdowne
collection, auctioned in London in i 8o6. The catalogue entry
("the Sun... darting its fierce Rays from behind a Wood, in
that richness of vivid splendor that art can seldom describe")
is accompanied in one copy by the notation of the collector Sir
Abraham Hume: "This picture... belonged to Sir Joshua
Reynolds... bought by Sir W. W. Wynne [sic] for 3 zo0." The
only known owner before Reynolds was Rubens; it is described
in the 1640 inventory of his estate.
Rubens's late landscapes were often painted for his own
pleasure and have been connected with his purchase, in I635,
of Chiteau Het Steen. Various interests-nature, Titian, and
Pieter Brueghel the Elder-are embraced by Rubens in paintings
such as A Forest at Dawn, where he treats the subject as an
encounter of elemental forces-of light and darkness, life and
death, growth and decay. With this concept of creation Rubens
extended the imaginary, sometimes mystical tradition of Northern
landscape and gave his essentially realistic scenes a sense
of myth and metaphor.
WL
Overleaf
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