Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (17.1976)

mainly to the works of Turino Vanni and the Maestro deH'Universitas Aurificum. What might be
interpreted as Florentine in those paintings does not have to be traced to a first-hand Florentine
model but might be due to the influence of Pisań painters who embraced some Florentine idoms
such as the painter of the Coronation the Virgin from S. Ranierino, now in the Opera Primaziale,
of a large enthroned Madonna with Angels in the Fogg Art Museum of the Harvard University
(1905. 1) and of the related three standing saints in the museum in Pisa (129) to which group
a Madonna altarpiece in the Memoriał Art Gallery in Rochester, NY, is to be added. I have
proposed tentatively to identify their painter with Bernardo Faiconi of Pisa4.

R. Oertel argued for the Pisań Madonna of Alvaro as being originally the center of an altarpiece
for which the two panels with four saints in the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg would have
formed the laterals5. Yet, in view of the presence at Altenburg of an additional work, a medallion
with the head of St. Cosmas, presumably once forming a part of the same altarpiece, these panels
may be chronologically put next to the Volterra alterpiece because of the great similarity of the
medallion with those present on the Volterra retable. Stcinweg attributed to the Alvaro's early
period a seated Madonna in a private collection in Diisseldorf-Meererbusch but it is a coarser
work devoid of any hint of grace present in the two signed Madonnas and is close to the Madonna
in Cagliari". Zeri's sugestion of an early dating of two fragments of an altarpiece — a St. Catherine
in the museum in Bern and St. Francis from the Platt Collection — can well be accepted because
the facial type of St. Catherine is a continuation of the girlish faces of the angels in the Fossabanda
Madonna (fig. 1,4)7. The typological consistency in Alvaro's paintings can be observed in another
attribution made by Zeri, a smali Annunciation in the Kisters Collection in Kreuzlingen which
he dates 1430-34; the faces are variants of those from the twenties yet the drapery of the
Archangel points to a later stage initiated by the Yolterra altarpiece8. To this level belong two
pinnacle panels with an Annunciation in the Ringling Museum in Sarasota and the panel with
SS. Michael and John Baptist in the National Museum in Warsaw (fig. 5,6)9. A fragment with
a Christchild in a private collection in Florence recalls the Pisań types such as that in Battista
di Gerio's Madonna in Camaiore of 1418 and thus seems to be earlier10. A Suckling Madonna
with SS. Peter and Francis in the museum in Dijon aad a Madonna of Humility in a private
collection in Florence should be viewed in the context of the style of the Suckling Madonna
triptych in Brunswick which is signed and dated 143411.

Let us review the production from a different angle than that of style — from that of decora-
tive procedures used by Alvaro in order to gain additional information about his development.
The key-pieces again will be the two signed and dated works (Volterra and Brunswick),
followed by the signed Madonna in Pisa and Nicosia because these supply us with authenticated
elements of Alvaro's procedurę of gold decoration, the first works providing in addition the
chronological anchoring. An aualysis of the purich work of the haloes yields to us useful evidence.
Alvaro generally conceived the decoration of the haloes (at least of those of larger size) and of the

4. M. Frinta, ,,A Seemingly Florentine yet not really Florentins Altarpiece". The Burlington Magazine, CXVII, 1975, pp.
526—35, figs. 22, 23. Since I wrote the article, I had the opportunity to study again the large painting at the Fogg
Art Museum and comparc it there with an enthroned Madonna by Spinello Aretino (1915. 3) and with other au-
thenticated works of Spinello and reached the conclusion that the Madonna no. 1905.1 eannot bc by Spinello as
generally hcld but that it is a work of a Pisań painter, author of the Coronation. (Carli, op. cii., fig. 49,
reproduced the Coronation as Spinello Aretino).

5. Robert Oertel, Friilie Italienische Malerei in Altenburg, Berlin, 1961, p. 138f, pl. 48a, b.

6. Steinweg, op. cit., fig. 1. Zeri, op. cit., pl. 32.

7. Hugo Wagner, Italienische Malerei 13, bis 14. Jahrhundcrl. Kunstmuseum Bern, 1974, p. 84 ff, 133.

8. Zeri, ..Oualche appunto su Alvaro Pirez", Mitleilungen des Kunsthistirischen Instiluts in Florenz, XVII, 1973, pp"
189-98, fig. 5.

9. Steinweg, op. cit., fig. 7; Malarstwo włoskie XIV i XV usieku (catalogue of the exhibition), Muzeum Narodowe, Kraków,
1961, no. 41, p. 60.

10. Steinweg, op. cit., fig. 4; Carli, op. cit., fig. 181 f.

11. Steinweg, op. ci/., figs. 8, 9; B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. The Florentine School, London, 1963, fig. 468.

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