St. Dominic and St. Matthias; St. Paul, St. John the Evangelist and St. Jerome

These panels are fragments from the lower section of a large altarpiece that showed a group of saints looking up at the Madonna and Child seated on a bank of clouds and crowned by two angels. The altarpiece, which bore the signature of Innocenzo da Imola and the date 1534, originally stood over the high altar of the church of San Mattia in Bologna. From left to right the saints are Dominic, Matthias, Paul, John the Evangelist and Jerome. A figure of Saint Peter originally stood next to Matthias but was painted out sometime in the 19th century, probably because it was too damaged. The fragment with the Madonna and Child is now in a private collection. The altarpiece also included a predella, or horizontal base, illustrated with various scenes from the life of Christ and several saints. Three of these panels are in private collections in Bologna; a fourth is in the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.

The Church of San Mattia, Bologna, 1530-1535, by commission [high altar until 1585; 7th altar until around 1870]; Marquess Filippo Marignoli, Rome and Spoleto, until 1898 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Marquess Francesco Marignoli, 1898 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome, 1899 [mode of acquisition unknown] [1900 catalogue supplement: no. 12]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.