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The Meeting of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi

ca. 1427–1429

This small, refined painting depicts an encounter between the founders of the most significant monastic orders in early Renaissance Italy. Saint Dominic, wearing a black cloak and white tunic, recognizes the humble, barefoot Saint Francis from a dream in which the Virgin presented each of them to Christ. Their hands, joined in greeting, form the focal point of the composition. Fra Angelico, himself a Dominican friar, skillfully employed a convincing perspective system to describe the architecture of the church. This panel was once part of a sequence of five narrative scenes arranged along the bottom edge of a large altarpiece.

Artist: Fra Angelico (Italian, ca.1400-1455)
Title: The Meeting of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi
Date: ca. 1427–1429
Object Type: Painting
Medium: Tempera and gold leaf on wood panel
Dimensions: 10 1/4 x 10 1/2 in. (26 x 26.7 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
Accession Number: 61.44.7

As provided by the Kress Foundation: https://www.kressfoundation.org/kress-collection/repository/fine-arts-museums-of-san-francisco:

Chevalier Alexis-Francois Artaud de Montor (d. 1849), Paris, as Baldovinetti, by 1808;

His sale, Seigneur, Paris, 17 January 1851, no. 129, as Baldovinetti.

Georges Chalandon (1852-1925), Paris;

[Bought by Robert Langton Douglas (1864-1951), London), by 1924] [1].

Mrs. Walter Burns, London [2].

[Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878-1955), Rome and Florence];

Sold to Samuel H. Kress (1863-1955) on 13 July 1934;

Gift to the National Gallery of Art in 1939;

Deaccessioned 1952 and returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation;

Gift to Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 1961

[1] Frida Schottmüller, Fra Angelico da Fiesole, Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1924, no. 178. See letter from Douglas to Fowles dated 1 May 1941, Duveen Brothers Records, Box 244 (reel 299), Getty Research Institute, no. 960015.
[2] At least three sales of old masters at Christie's London between 1924-1934 included paintings from Mr. and Mrs. Walter Burns, but none included the Fra Angelico: 3 May 1929, 12 June 1931, and 10 July 1931.
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1924–1925. “Winter Exhibition,” no. 3.

Vatican City, Apostolic Palace, April–May, 1955; Florence, Museum of San Marco, May–September, 1955. “Mostra delle opere del beato Angelico nel quinto centenario della morte,” no. 41.

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 17, 1994– February 26, 1995. “Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300–1450,” no. 47d.

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 26, 2005–January 29, 2006. “Fra Angelico,” no. 25e.

Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, November 25, 2008–February 15, 2009. “Reconstructing the Renaissance: Five Paintings from an Altarpiece by Fra Angelico,” no cat. no.
Gault de Saint–Germain, Pierre–Marie, Ecole Italienne, Guide des Amateurs de Peinture, Paris: M. Bon, 1835, pg. 63 (attributed to Alesso Baldovinetti).

De Montor, Artaud, Peintres Primitifs: Collection de Tableaux rapportée d’Italie, Paris: Challamel Éditeur, 1843, no. 129, pg. 47, pl. 50 (attributed to Alesso Baldovinetti).

Berenson, Bernard, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 3rd ed., New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1909, pg. 107 (attributed to Fra Angelico).

Schottmüller, Frida, Fra Angelico da Fiesole, 2nd ed., Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags–Anstalt, 1924, pg. 178, repr.

Van Marle, Raimond, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 10, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1928, pg. 120.

National Gallery of Art: Preliminary Catalogue of paintings and sculpture, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1941, pg. 6, no. 256.

Salmi, Mario, Mostra delle opere del beato Angelico nel quinto centenario della morte, 1455–1955, exh. cat., Florence: Giuntina, 1955, pg. 67, pl. 52.

Collobi, Licia Ragghianti, “Una Mostra dell ’Angelico,” Critica d’Arte 10 (1955), pg. 392.

Suida, William E., The Samuel H. Kress Collection, San Francisco: M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1955, pg. 12, repr. pg. 13.

Rosenblum, Robert “The Kress Collection: Past and Future,” Arts Digest 29 (March 1955), pg. 23.

Frankfurter, Alfred, “The Kress Gift to San Francisco,” Art News 54, no. 2 (April 1955), pg. 58.

Larsen, Erik, “The Samuel H. Kress Collection at the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco,” Apollo 61 (June 1955), pg. 174.

“The Connoisseur’s Diary,” Connoisseur 136, no. 547 (August 1955), pg. 49.

Neumeyer, Alfred, “The Samuel H. Kress Collection of the M.H. De Young Museum in San Francisco,” The Arts Quarterly 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1955), pg. 274, repr. pg. 275.

Salmi, Mario, Il Beato Angelico, Rome: Edizione Valori plastici, 1958, pgs. 36, 111.

Berenson, Bernard, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places, vol. 1, London: Phaidon Press, 1963, pg. 15.

Shapley, Fern Rusk, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, Italian Schools, XIII–XV Century, vol. 1, London: Phaidon Press, 1966, pg. 97, repr. pg. 300, fig. 256.

European Works of Art in the M.H. DeYoung Memorial Museum, San Francisco: M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1966, pg. 38, repr.

Baldini, Umberto and P.E. Morante, L’opera completa dell’ Angelico, Milan: Rizzoli, 1970, pg. 103, no. 68, repr.

Fredericksen, Burton B. and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre–Nineteenth–Century Italian Paintings in North American Collections, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, pg. 633.

Pope–Hennessy, John, Fra Angelico, 2nd ed., Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974, pgs. 196, 232, repr. pg. 105.

Boskovits, Miklós, “Appunti sull’ Angelico,” Paragone 313 (1976), pg. 39.

Lloyd, Christopher, A Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977, pg. 7.

Sutton, Denys, “Robert Langton Douglas, Part III,” Apollo 111 (June 1979), pg. 473, repr., pg. 56.

Fahy, Everett, “The Kimbell Fra Angelico,” Apollo 125 (March 1987), pg. 181, repr. pg. 183.

Strehlke, Carl Brandon, “Fra Angelico and Early Florentine Renaissance Painting in the John G. Johnson Collection,” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 88, no. 376 (Spring 1993), pg. 5, fig. 4.

Brizzi, Gian Paolo and Jacques Verger, eds., Le università dell'Europa: Le scuole e i maestri: il Medioevo, Milan: Silvana, 1994, pg. 156, fig 21.

Kanter, Lawrence, ed., Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence 1300–1450, exh. cat., New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, no. 47d, pgs. 326, 331-332, repr., entry by Carl Brandon Strehlke.

Nash, Steve A., Lynn Federle Orr, and Marion C. Stewart, European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1999, pg. 40, repr. pg. 41, entry by Lynn Federle Orr.

Kanter, Laurence, “A Rediscovered Panel by Fra Angelico,” PARAGONE 599 (January 2000), pgs. 7-8, pl. 4.

Cobianchi, Roberto, “‘Visio et Sincerus Amplexus:’ Un momento di Agiografia Domenicana ed i suoi sviluppi iconografici (secoli XIII–XV),” Iconographica, Rivista di Iconografia Medievale e Moderna 2 (2003), pgs. 68-69, fig, 16.

Strehlke, Carl Brandon, Italian Paintings 1250–1450 in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004, pgs. 48-49, repr. pg. 50.

Kanter, Laurence and Pia Palladino, Fra Angelico, exh. cat., New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005, no. 25e, pgs. 121–132, repr. pg. 126.

Kanter, Laurence, Reconstructing the Renaissance: Saint James Freeing Hermogenes by Fra Angelico (Kimbell Masterpiece Series), Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 2008, pgs. 18, 20, 21, 23, 32, repr. pg. 33.

Grady, Erin Kate, “Imagining Friendship: Images of the Meeting of St. Francis and St. Dominic,” in Select Proceedings from the First International Conference on Franciscan Studies: The World of St. Francis of Assisi, Siena, Italy, July 16–20, 2015, Siena: Betti, 2017, pg. 104, fig. 1.

de Young

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de Young

Legion of Honor

The Meeting of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi

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Social Sharing

Provenance

Exhibition History

Bibliography

Lux Aeterna, 1914

The Road Near the Farm, 1871

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