Possibly, Church of Santa Maria dei Servi, Siena, 1491. [1]

Falzacappa-Benci collection, Acquadepente, Italy, until 1946; [2]

Pietro Maria Bardi, Rome, 1947; [3]

[Probably, Vittorio Forti (1881–c. 1980), Rome, after 1947]; [4]

[Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878–1955), Florence, after 1947–1950];

Sold to Samuel H. Kress (1863–1955), New York, July 1, 1950; [5]

Gift to the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, December 9, 1961;

Administrative transfer to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1972.

[1] This predella panel is widely believed to have belonged to Matteo di Giovanni’s altarpiece The Massacre of the Innocents in the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Siena, commissioned in 1491. This was first proposed by Robert Longhi in 1950 in a handwritten opinion preserved in the Samuel H. Kress Foundation Archive, provided to Kress prior to his purchase of the painting, due to the iconographic connection between The Massacre of the Innocents and The Magi Before Herod. Longhi identifies this panel with the Massacre at the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi instead of Matteo di Giovanni’s other Massacres of the Innocents in Sant’Agostino in Siena and Santa Caterina a Formello in Naples due to the fact that these altarpieces did not have multi-compartment predellas and because the Massacre of the Innocents at Santa Maria dei Servi is stylistically most similar to this panel. However, this predella panel is not mentioned in documentary sources or early monographs that refer to the Santa Maria dei Servi altarpiece.

[2] An inscription on verso of a photo of the painting in the Fotototeca Zeri photographic archive reads: “già Acquadepente, Falzacappa (1946).” Anonimo — Matteo di Giovanni di Bartolo - sec. XV - Visita dei Re Magi ad Erode, 1920–1950, photographic print, 193 x 303 mm, Archivo fotographico, Fondazione Federico Zeri, Fototeca Zeri, Pittura italiana, folder 197.6, inventory number 44953.

[3] Part of the same inscription: “nel 1947 da Bardi.” Anonimo — Matteo di Giovanni di Bartolo - sec. XV - Visita dei Re Magi ad Erode, 1920–1950, photographic print, 193 x 303 mm, Archivo fotographico, Fondazione Federico Zeri, Fototeca Zeri, Pittura italiana, folder 197.6, inventory number 44953.

[4] According to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation Archive. Vittorio Forti was a little-known dealer and collector active in Rome from the early 1920s who specialized in illuminated leaves and cuttings. For more on Forti see Manzari, Francesca, “Illuminations from Northern and Central Italy in the Collection of the Dealer Vittorio Forti,” in The Pre-Modern Manuscript Trade and its Consequences, ca. 1890–1945, eds. Laura Cleaver, et. al. (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2024), pp. 119–121. 

[5] Bill of Sale, Samuel H. Kress Foundation Archive.

Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection: Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1945–1951, cat. (Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1951), no. 125, p. 274.

Report of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and Financial Report of the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1951), p. 31.

Suida, William E., The Samuel H. Kress Collection: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, cat. (San Francisco: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1955), p. 40, repr. p. 41.

Fried, Alexander, “Great Kress Collection Goes on View Saturday,” The San Francisco Examiner, February 13, 1955, p. 192.

Fried, Alexander, “Kress Gift Enriches Local Art Tradition,” The San Francisco Examiner, February 20, 1955, p. 176.

Ellis, Richard, ed., The Gospels of Saint Matthew, Saint Mark, Saint Luke & Saint John, Together with the Acts of the Apostles, According to the Authorized King James Version, with Reproductions of Religious Paintings in the Samuel H. Kress Collection (New York: The Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1959), repr. p. 4, fig. 3. 

Pope-Hennessy, John, “A Crucifixion by Matteo di Giovanni,” Burlington Magazine 102, no. 683 (February 1960), pp. 64, 67.

Rusk Shapley, Fern, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, cat. (London: Phaidon, 1966), vol. 1, p. 157, repr. fig. 424.

European Works of Art in the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, cat. (Berkeley: Diablo Press, 1966), repr. p. 42.

Berenson, Bernard, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and their Works with an Index of Places, Central Italian and North Italian Schools, cat. (London: Phaidon, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 260, 516.

Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-nineteenth-century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, cat. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 139, 273, 633.

Horton, Adey, The Child Jesus (New York: Dial Press, 1972), p. 98, repr., fig. 51.

European Paintings Before 1500, cat. (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974), p. 97.

Korwin, Yala H., Index to Two-Dimensional Art Works: Location Symbols, Title-Subject Index, cat. (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1981), vol. 2, p. 1219.

Kaplan, Paul Henry Daniel, “Titian’s «Laura Dianti» and the Origins of the Motif of the Black Page in Portraiture,” Antichità viva 21, no. 4 (1982), pp. 12, 16, fn. 18.

Kaplan, Paul Henry Daniel, The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985), pp. 118, 280, fn. 114.

Christiansen, Keith, Laurence B. Kanter, and Carl Brandon Strehlke, eds., Painting in Renaissance Siena: 1420–1500, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988), p. 285.

Wright, Christopher, The World’s Master Paintings from the Early Renaissance to the Present Day: A Comprehensive Listing of Works by 1,300 Painters and a Complete Guide to the Locations Worldwide, cat. (New York: Routledge, 1992), vol. 2, p. 314.

Charboneau, Damian M., OSM, “Matteo di Giovanni's Predella from Santa Maria Dei Servi, Siena, Now in San Francisco,” Studi Storici 43, no. 56 (1993), pp. 151–156.

Gardner, Elizabeth E., A Bibliographical Repertory of Italian Private Collections, (Vicenza: Neri Pozza Editore, 1998), vol. 2, p. 125.

Nash, Steven A, Lynn Federle Orr, and Marion C. Stewart, Masterworks of European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, cat. (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1999), pp. 36–37, repr. p. 36, entry by Lynn Federle Orr.