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Smart Museum of Art accompanied by an outdated attribution and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
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.