New Testament and Apocryphal Scenes with Saints

Description The hinge marks along the outer edge of the left-hand panel suggest that these two reliquary panels are fragments of a larger ensemble. Its incomplete state might explain why the scenes include the Resurrection and the Ascension (upper left), Pentecost (upper right), the Death of the Virgin (middle left), and the Last Judgment (lower right), but not earlier events, such as the Crucifixion. Painted inscriptions identify the saints in the arches: Sts. Stephen and Lawrence and Sts. Vincent and Peter Martyr (middle right), and Sts. Margaret and Christina and St. Ursula and her maidens (lower left). The now-empty cavities in the frame originally contained relics.

Exhibitions

• Treasures of Heaven. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; The British Museum, London. 2010-2011.

Provenance Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1881 catalogue: no. 11-12, as Giotto; 1897 catalogue: no. 35 as School of Giotto]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Transcription] Names of the saints at the top of the frames of the compartments: S. STEPHANUS. S. LAURECIUS. S. UICENCIUS. S. PETRUS MARTYR. S. MARGARITA. S. XRINA. S. URSOLINA.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902