Instytut Sztuki (Warschau) [Hrsg.]; Państwowy Instytut Sztuki (bis 1959) [Hrsg.]; Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki [Hrsg.]: Biuletyn Historii Sztuki (62.2000)

189

FRANCIS AMES-LEWIS
Birkbeck College, London
Francesco Pesellino’s “Story ofDarid” panels
in the National Gallery, London

The recent announcement that the National Gallery has acąuired Francesco Pesellino’s
two panels of the Story of David, which have for many years been on permanent
loan from the Loyd Collection, prompts a reconsideration of these important
paintings. These panels, which are generally considered to have decorated a pair of cassoni,
show in seąuential narrative David’s victory over Goliath (the ‘Victory’ panel; ill. 1), and
his triumphal procession (the ‘Triumph’ panel; ill. 2), led by Saul, as it approaches the
gates of Jerusalem. Although the ąuality of their execution is unusually high for mid-15th-
century cassone panels, they have been paid little attention in recent literaturę on Florentine
early Renaissance painting. Assuming that the attribution to Pesellino is correct (and no
alternative has, it seems, ever been suggested),1 they must have been painted before 29
July 1457, the datę of the painter’s death. They were perhaps painted before (but probably
not long before) September 1455, when Pesellino took on the last major commission of
his abbreviated career, the Trinity altarpiece for the Compagnia della SS Trinita in Pistoia,
unfinished at his death and completed in Fra Filippo Lippi’s workshop.2
At a datę in the mid-1450s, these panels show one of the earliest examples of the use of
the theme of David in surviving Florentine cassoni. A pair of cassone panels formerly in
the Spiridon3 and Cook collections appear to be simplified reflections of the ex-Loyd
panels, and have been associated with a Carnesecchi-Lanfredi wedding of 1467;4 two
further pairs are in the villa Castello and in the Horne Collection in Florence.5 A desco da

1 Accepted by P. SCHUBRING, Cassoni, Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Fruhrenaissance, 2 vols, Leipzig
1915,1, pp. 278-9 nos. 264-5, II pl. LIX; by W. WEISBACH, Francesco Pesellino, Berlin 1900, pp. 84-90; and by A.
SCHARF, ‘Zur Kunst des Francesco Pesellino’, Pantheon 14, 1934, pp. 211-21, and universally thereafter; for good
illustrations see now G. HUGHES, Renaissance Cassoni, London 1997, pp. 108-11 and 184. Further on Pesellino, see
G. GRONAU, ‘In margine a Francesco Pesellino’, Rivista d’Arte 20,1938, pp. 123-46. The ex-Loyd cassone panels are
now nos. 6579 and 6580 in the National Gallery collection. I am very grateful to Dillian Gordon for her encouragement
while I was preparing this article, and for her help in retrieving bibliographical references.
2 M. DAVIES, National Gallery Catalogues. The Earlier Italian Schools, London 1961, pp. 414-19; D. GORDON,
‘The “missing” predella panel from Pesellino’s Trinity altar-piece’, Burlington Magazine CXXXVIII, 1996, pp. 87-8.
3 SCHUBRING, op. cit., I, p. 246 no. 115 and II, pl. XXI.
4 E. CALLMAN, Apollonia di Giovanni, Oxford 1974, 39n.4. and pis. 272-3.
5 On the Villa Castello panels see SCHUBRING, op. cit., I, pp. 265-6 nos. 189-90 and II, pl. XL; CALLMAN, op. cit., p. 39
n. 4. For the Museo Home panels see C. BASKINS, ‘Donatello’s bronze David: Grillanda, Goliath, Groom?’, Studies in
Iconography 15,1993, pp. 113-34 (atp. 122 and fig. 5); ibid., pp. 117-20 in generał on cassoni illustrating the Story ofDavid.