Medieval muddles

The Magazine might be misrepresenting the excellence of the University by reproducing a fine Trecento painting in the Smart Museum of Art accompanied by an outdated attribution and a typographical error (“Positively Medieval”). Those interdisciplinary efforts on which the article focused should also extend to the staff of the alumni publication, especially since they are able to call upon the distinguished art history faculty on campus.

The “Ugolino Lorenzetti” to whom the painting is attributed never existed; the name was a fiction invented long ago by Bernard Berenson to describe an anonymous artist now generally known as the Ovile Master, after a painting in San Pietro Ovile in Siena. This much can be obtained from the Kress catalog of Italian paintings where this gift to the University is listed. If your readers were confused by the date of “ca. 1530” in an article of a medieval subject, it was obviously transposed from 1350, the correct date according to the catalog.

John S. Howett, AM’62, PhD’68
Atlanta

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Mr. Howett, who is professor emeritus of art history at Emory University, is correct about the date: we inadvertently transposed two numbers in the date of the 14th-century Italian work. As to the attribution given the piece, while an entry in the Smart Museum catalog chronicles the still-continuing scholarly debate regarding the artist’s identity, the Smart Museum attributes it to Lorenzetti, and we followed suit.--Ed.